rrgirl on For yinz DP fans out dair:
I like to play “guess the regional accent.” DP flaunts his twang. I had him from west/southwestern Ohio before I’d read his bio. that’s an easy one, and it’s what I meant about tornado country. he has a wonderful ear for mimicry, though, and I’d guess he could drop the plainsman voice if he wanted to (David Letterman got rid of his twang.) KO seems a little timid with regional speech – he plays with inflections (Chicago, Texas, Joisey) but I like to listen to him play with tone and volume and characters. wouldn’t it be fun to hear his genuine regional voice? and, count me among those who would listen to him read the phone book.
so I don’t try to follow the sports coverage. I love to listen to their voices. and since they have something else to say pretty often…that’s what I’m smiling about most afternoons.
the Pittsburgh dialect is hard to imitate and most people wouldn’t recognize it unless they’d been to the Mon Valley; Meryl Streep, Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken didn’t bother with it. huh. isn’t Clairton Bill Cowher’s hometown? The Deer Hunter
I love accents. I love listening to people speak in foreign languages. I think it’s just way cool. It’s like listening to music.
Not everyone feels this way:
Nick Saban: ” … There was a guy working in the ditch, one of those coonass guys that talk funny. I can’t talk like them, but he can. Most people in Louisiana can.”
(DP spent some time discussing Saban yesterday, but Colin Cowherd went absolutely postal fuego. He made some interesting comments, and they’re worth hearing.)
I could listen to Archie Manning read the phone book. He’s been on just about every ESPN radio show this week. On Colin’s show this morning he said “a flah in th’ oahntmint.” (Translation: “a fly in the ointment.”)
Other great sports accents:
- Dan Reeves – Former NFL coach, called games on radio this past season; deep, smokey, southern accent
- Bill Parcells – Free at last from Terrell Owens’ antics; a real Joisey guy
- Terry Bradshaw – Boy, am I glad he’s not dead; great Louisiana accent
- Barry Melrose – All hockey announcers should have a Canadian accent. This should be made into law by the World Court.
- Mike Detillier – A New Orleans sports journalist, heard him on the 1.04.07 DP Show; another great accent from the Bayou
I wonder if KO has a regional accent. Does Westchester County have an accent? My heart dies a little whenever I see ads for classes for people who want to lose their accent, whether it be a foreign accent or an American regional one. I guess if you’re in sales or broadcast journalism it’s necessary to lose your accent — especially if you want to succeed on the national level. But that’s unfortunate.
Query for rrgirl: Can you tell where Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus are from just by listening to them? Jack’s from Ohio and I think Arnie is, too.
Interview with Arnie at the 2002 USGA Senior Open (.ram file)
Re: KO’s accent. One thing that I notice about KO specifically is his pronunciation of ‘won’t’ as ‘wooont.’ That’s definitely a NYCism; you won’t find that elsewhere. Which fits him among Westchester-ians. Natives have neutral accents, but it’s a bedroom community of NYC, and newer-comers will sport the accents they had before they moved in, usually one of the various NYC accents.
Comment by Merriam — 3 February 2007, Saturday @ 17:12:42 |
Another Keith acceent giveaway: when pronouncing “horror,” he says “hah-rahr.” But it shows most commonly in his pronunciation of “correspondent,” which he pronounces “cah-ri-spon-dint.”
And about Ohio. There is no one single “Ohio accent.” Ohio is roughly divided in half by the National Road. People north of the road tend to have the Great Lakes accent; people south of it tend to have the Kentucky/West Virginia accent, which is a faster form of Southern drawl. In other words, they have Southern accents, but they speak much more quickly than Deep Southerners, who seem to Northerners to take forever to say anything at all. It’s this accent you hear sometimes in Dan Patrick; it is more Dayton, Cincinnati and Columbus than it is Cleveland or Toledo.
Comment by orinenglish — 4 February 2007, Sunday @ 13:54:57 |
the video is with Jack (?), and he sounds like a pretty typical central Ohioan with suburban/rural roots. I hear it in the way he contracts “Ohio” into barely 2 syllables, and puts the strong single accent on the fourth syllable in “congratulations”, except it almost sounds like the third syllable when he says it. his consonants are distinct, but the soft vowels, especially at the beginning of words almost disappear.
checking my homework, I didn’t need to confirm his bio – Dublin and Muirfield are very familiar, but when I realized the video was mis-labeled, I looked for another video of Arnie for comparison. listen to him say “do know something about” at 12-15 seconds. pure PA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26_4FjCYuFY
thanks for the exercise.
Comment by rrgirl — 4 February 2007, Sunday @ 14:02:03 |
I had edited out some comments about Ohio regionalism brought up by orinenglish. listening to MTP this morning, I heard Tim Russert say “career” with a typical nasal lake shore inflection and it reminded me of his migration from Buffalo to Cleveland as a young man. you can travel the entire south lake shore and hear very little change in speech. Move 75-100 miles inland; the changes are stunning and they vary from east to west. Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Columbus, and Dayton are all distinctly different.
Comment by rrgirl — 4 February 2007, Sunday @ 14:20:22 |
I heard a couple of those football broadcasts and Reeves was surprisingly good. He speaks so slowly that I didn’t think he’d be able to keep up. His analysis is great. Cowherd also opened my eyes on hate speech. He can be like Dan Patrick when they get up on their soapboxes, Cowherd getting alot more emotional.
Comment by Karl — 6 February 2007, Tuesday @ 18:13:24 |