After playing each of the quizzes, I found that the American language can be quite confusing. It seems like we should be able to understand simple things like our own language, but with the different dialects in different regions, things are not always as easy as they seem.
The first quiz I took was the one where you had to match the accent with the region. I was feeling pretty confident when I went into this quiz. Usually I can place like a southern accent to the south or a New Jersey accent on the east coast. Midwest is usually pretty easy because we often times get made fun of for the way we talk. After listening to those sound clips, however, I was definitely out of my element. I didn’t know where any of them belonged! Most of my placements were put there based on guessing and the ones I guessed right had a lot to do with luck! I felt kind of silly because I really thought I knew where they were supposed to be going. I guess I was proved wrong. It also probably didn’t help that a couple of them weren’t working, but oh well; it was pretty funny to see how far off I was.
The second quiz was guessing what word they were saying. This again proved to be a lot more challenging than I originally thought. I know I struggle with accents and I often times feel a little embarrassed when I am talking to someone and I cannot understand them and have to continue to ask them to repeat themselves, but I can’t be held responsible for that. I listened to the sound clip with just the word and then listened to the sound clip with the phrase and felt like the answers for most of them were pretty obvious. I was all excited because I felt like I had aced it, but then I got the answers back and found out I only got about two of them right. Embarrassing! The first two I was confident that I had the right answer, but after getting them back, I was one letter off on both. Sounds good right? Not so much. This letter was unfortunately one of the most important letters. The first word I put black instead of block and the second word I put sacks instead of socks. This all has to do with region and the accent that is generally associated with that region. If you’re not from there, you will probably not understand it. The other ones were pretty far off, but once I knew the answers and listened to them again, it seemed so simple!
Overall, these quizzes were fun and really showed me what it was like to live in different regions of the world and how the accents changed from one region to the next. I thought I was some accent genius and could easily decipher between two regions or different accents, but these quizzes sure proved me wrong.
What do you think our knowledge on these accents shows?
I think it shows that we don't talk to enough people who are from different areas than us or have different backgrounds. I think we tend to stay in our little bubble too much. The accents we think we know are probably mostly from television or the sad attempts our friends make at copying different accents.
ReplyDeleteI think that our knowledge - or lack thereof - of these dialects shows us that many dialects are more subtle than they are typically portrayed in film and television. The media so greatly exaggerates regional dialects, perhaps mostly for comedic value, that we just assume that that is how everyone from that region speaks. Movies like "Fargo" make it sound like everyone from the midwest speaks in that accent, and this is seen in many other regionalized movies as well.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Cheryl that seeing as we had very knowledge of some of these accents that we are not communicating with people from other regions enough. Although another issue may be that some of the accents are so minor that we don’t realize them when we hear them.
ReplyDeleteI think it showed me that I need to get out more and experience even our own country a bit more! I've only been in the midwest and out west so I'm only familiar with those accents, and not even fully familiar with them I've just heard them! I think it'd be fun to travel out east or down south to hear what their dialects specifically sound like as well so I can get a feel for those accents too!
ReplyDeleteI think our knowledge about accents shows we may have a little experience with accents. It is hard to pin point someone to one area of the country with only a sentence. Our country is diverse and someone may live in the south but may not have that accent. I think we should all have more exerience with people from all over the country but that takes traveling and not everyone has that opportunity.
ReplyDeleteI think that it just goes to show there are cummunication barriers every where you go not just outside the unided states with other foreign countries. I only got 1 write on the accents one and 3 write on the map one. Diversity does exist all over the world in many differetn contexts.
ReplyDeleteIt shows that we are not exposed to many accents in the regions we live, and this is simply because our region has a thread of commonality in the accents it houses. It's more beneficial for a person to be exposed to more accents in order to respect more, but the natural occurrence of similar accents in a region make this a challenge.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything that Laura Krawczyk has said. What's interesting, I think, is that when individuals move to a new place, such as from the south to the midwest, people tend to gradually assimilate their own dialects to reflect the common speech in their new region. Thus, that makes Laura's point even more substantial. It seems that human beings in general prefer to be around people whom talk similiarly to themselves.
ReplyDeleteAfter taking these quizzes, I would say that our knowledge of different dialects and accents is very poor. I think that it is sad that television portrays these dialects and accents so poorly because for most of us we may never get to travel to the country/region that the dialect/accent is from so it would be nice if we could learn them from the television.
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