fffast languages vs. s-s-slow languages

[bluebeard]

Oh hey y'all.

I found this interesting article in Scientific American (link!) and had to share. :D It's only three paragraphs long, so I won't bother to copypasta or summarize here.

My thoughts (put under spoiler-tag for incoherent rambling):

[Spoiler (click to open)]* Ofc Spanish is spoken faster than English. Or at least, my dialect is compared to the English spoken

Comments

[di_glossia]

Cuban and Puerto Rican dialects are some of the fastest Spanish I've ever heard, because, as you said, words are slurred together.

In general, I would say that Southern accents are slower than more northern accents as well as rural accents being slower than urban accents. New Yorkers are typically defined as speaking both rudely and quickly, while Deep South accents are characterized by slow speech and drawling. I have no opinion on any UK , New Zealand, Canadian, or Australian accents. They seem neither fast nor slow to me. I don't really know: I think it has more to do with personal preference than dialect.

Btw, y'all is mostly an American thing and typical of Southern dialects, AAVE, and some Western American dialects. It's not something the vast majority of native English speakers would say in any seriousness. I don't even know if the vast majority would recognize it as a word.

[bluebeard]

loool I love "y'all". English needs a plural "you", let's be real. :3

[ameliorate23]

Native English speaker here, from the Southern United States. I can, of course, only speak for myself, but I think most would agree with me:

Y'all is a pretty common term. It fills an obvious need in the English language, and with technology being what it is nowadays, y'all is definitely no longer exclusive to the South.

I don't think anyone would find you being a wannabe and/or offensive for using the word occasionally. As long as you're not using it in formal situations (because it's still not acceptable there), I think most people wouldn't even notice it. Of course, if you adopt a fake Southern accent, pepper the word into natural conversation as much as possible, or start wearing a cowboy hat - that's a different story. ;P

[bluebeard]

lol i can't fake accents. every time I try to imitate British speakers or Southern US speakers a bunch of fail comes out. I'm amazed at people who can switch accents like a boss; I can't at all. I'm stuck with my Cuban one, lawl.

as for formal situations, I rarely find myself in those, and since at school I study Linguistics (not to mention a few of my profs are American) no1curr and/or notices, hehe. but mostly I use it online, since it's pretty standard to find Americans in forums, LJ comms. and so on and so forth, so I've never had someone be all like "y'all ain't from around here so don't be speakin' like us, now" or something, hehehe. /stereotyping, sorry

[di_glossia]

I'll admit, it's so out of sorts with what I'd expect a non-native speaker to use that it comes across as mocking. That's all I was trying to clarify: that it's indicative of some very stigmatized dialects. When I want to or need to remove the stigma, I use "you guys", "you all", or "all of you". Other possibilites, though very regional, are "you guys", "youse", and "you lot". It's part of my native dialect, so I love and fully understand "y'all".

That's why I try to have teachers and listen to music/radio/interviews from many different dialects to balance out whatever dialect I was first taught. It just happens you picked up a word that a lot of people look down upon.

[bluebeard]

okay, now I'm just confused. stigma? what the hell? o.o haven't you been around the Internet a lot? people use y'all all the time, or at least the places I frequent with high number of American members sure as hell do. if there's stigma it must be in those places (Texas, the South, idk), except I've never been there (never been to the USA, period). I use it because I see it being used, I don't understand how this is weird. O.o

I asked a friend about it, he said this (he from Texas, but lives in Vegas):

Who the hell told you that the word "ya'll" was stigmatized? They made it a word in the dictionary because it was extraordinarily common colloquial slang throughout various English speaking countries, as far as I know. It certainly has a special home in the Southern U.S., but it isn't like it's derogatory. No more so than using a double negative. Which. You know. Is also common in the south. I fail to see how something commonly used in a particular region is an offense to that region. I couldn't give two shits if you came bursting

[ljs_lj]

Erm, as a native speaker of American English from a region outside of the South (and Texas), 'y'all' is *very* stigmatized, and Southern US English dialects, particularly if spoken by individuals from poor areas, in general are *very* stigmatized. The US is a very big place, and the examples you gave (True Blood, Princess and the Frog) are not only very recent productions, but take place in the South, and therefore would require Southern US dialects for any sense of authenticity. MLP is also recent, but I don't know enough about it to comment properly on the role of dialect in the production

[bluebeard]

that's too bad, about the stigma. :c

luckily, I don't live there, and up here (Canada), no1curr, so I'm gonna keep on using y'all. c:

[muckefuck]

I don't know how useful it is to talk about "stigmatisation" outside of particular contexts. Sure, "y'all" is unacceptable in formal registers, but then so are the other informal alternatives like "youse" and even "you guys".

I live in Chicago and I wouldn't characterise "y'all" as "*very* stigmatized" in informal contexts. In fact, I think a lot of people would say it connotes warmth and familiarity--even to Northerners. In fact, I know some Northerners who did not grow up with "y'all" but have adopted it into their speech non-ironically.

[di_glossia]

Um, life? I'm not sure how to respond to this. Like I said, y'all is part of my native dialect. I've faced discrimination and ridicule for using it. Within the United States, at least, it has connotations of low intelligence and a lack of education because it is a marker of Southern speech and AAVE. The examples you listed all use Southern or Western dialects. True Blood and The Princess and the Frog are both set in Louisiana, Applejack is, I believe, a cowgirl pony, and your friend's from Texas. Those are not just y'all-positive dialects but also extremely stigmatized dialects

[bluebeard]

whatever, I'm not other people. I know something about being ridiculed for one's dialect, but isn't discrimination a bit much? Forgive my skepticism - it's probably because I've lived in places where certain dialects are mocked (Quebecois French is looked down upon, so is Santiaguero Spanish within Cuba) but not actually discrminated against (what does that even mean? you can't get a job because of your dialect? lol isn't that illegal?). Then again, it's the U.S., where intolerance and injustice runs rampant (much more than in Cuba or Canada, lol) so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

At any rate, I use "like" and "y'all" all the time online and offline despite being neither from California nor the South, and irony or mockery has nothing to do with it. -shrug- It's too bad that it's stigmatised, but that's never stopped me before. My dialect is stigmatised too, and so is Quebecois French (which I'm hoping to learn one day, not just "standard" French).

[di_glossia]

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Canon-paper.pdf

Page 5 talks about dialect discrimination.

[tekalynn]

I had a Texan professor who would clarify "y'all" with "all y'all".

[freak_thankyou]

I had a friend explain the necessity of "all y'all" the best I've heard and I've remembered his point ever since. "Y'all" can refer to an entire group or any number of subgroups. If you have a situation where you're speaking to 2+ groups, you can use "y'all" to speak to any single group and "all y'all" to make it clear that you're speaking to the entire group. For example "I want *indicate group* y'all to do this and *indicate group* y'all to do that. Now I want all y'all to make sure you...."

[tekalynn]

That's actually a very useful distinction. Maybe more idiolects should adopt that one.

[di_glossia]

Y'all refers to one group of multiple people; all y'all (or as we say it around here: all of y'all where "of" is pronounced as a schwa) refers to an identifiable group plus additional people. It can also be used for emphasis.