Chicago speech for novel
bo...@caltech.edu
on, I'm hoping for observations on Chicago speech. In particular,
speech of a German Jewish Chicagoan (born 1915 in Austria). Do
Chicagoans show accents (as noticed by narrator from Los Angeles)?
Presence or absence of characteristic vocabulary? Turns of speech?
(Suggestions as to remnants of German in English also welcome.)
bo...@caltech.edu
years old.
dontbother
> I should have added that the book takes place in 1995, so she is 80
> years old.
Do you mean that the story is set in 1995?
--
Franke: EFL teacher and medical editor
Unmunged email: /at/hush.ai
Native speaker of American English, posting from Taiwan
It's all in the way you say it, innit?
bo...@caltech.edu
Yes.
Salvatore Volatile
> Apologies if question inappropriate for group.
No, this is entirely appropriate in my view.
> For a novel I'm working
> on, I'm hoping for observations on Chicago speech. In particular,
> speech of a German Jewish Chicagoan (born 1915 in Austria). Do
> Chicagoans show accents (as noticed by narrator from Los Angeles)?
In general, yes (today, certainly; Chicagoan accents are among the most
unusual and distinctive in the US [NTTAWWT]). I'm not sure when your
novel takes place specifically; Chicago accents became more pronounced in
recent decades as their peculiar take on the Northern Cities Vowel Shift
took root.
The accents
of today's Chicagoans are quite distinct, as I've noted, but there are
other sub-accent speech features worth noting as well: (1) a tendency
towards excessive sibilance (Chicago speakers may sound to others like
they lisp, and this is particularly true of male speakers); (2) a tendency
for some speakers to merge /rs/ and /rz/ (but this might be related to the
sibilance thing); (3) a tendency for male speakers, at least, to pepper
their speech with moments of falsetto or at least momentary upturns in
pitch.
For good examples of 20th-century Chicago speech, find recordings of the
following people:
(1) Tom Bosley (Howard Cunningham on _Happy Days_)
(2) Dennis Franz (Andy Sipowicz on _NYPD Blue_)
(3) Dennis Farina (Det. Fontana on _Law and Order_)
(4) Evan Kirshenbaum (Erk on _AUE_)
(5) Murray Arnow (Murr on _AUE_)
(6) Gene Siskel (late film critic)
(7) Joan Cusack (superb example of female Chicago speech)
(8) Jim Belushi (his brother John had a strong accent too)
(9) Dan Rostenkowski (famous Congressman)
Rostenkowski was born in 1928 and Bosley was born in 1927, and they both
had/have fairly strong, noticeable accents, though not quite as strong as
those of younger speakers. A Chicagoan born in Austria, however, might
not have picked up the local accent, of course.
> Presence or absence of characteristic vocabulary? Turns of speech?
Dialectisms:
* "carryout" for takeout (= BrE "takeaway")
* "pizza" for a tomato/cheese tart with a Bisquick base
* "sport peppers" for small hot green peppers
* "cheesecake" for ... well, something very different from cheesecake
That's all I can think of at the moment.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Donna Richoux
How old was she supposed to have been when she arrived in the US? If as
a young child, she would have lost the foreign accent. If as a grown
woman, that's different.
By the way, you're losing any quoted material in your replies. Please
see:
http://www.alt-usage-english.org/intro_a.shtml#TOUSERSOFTHEGOOGLEGROUPSI
NTERFACE
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Father Ignatius
news:1hj6o75.1aryb2j13k6qioN%tr...@euronet.nl...
> By the way, you're losing any quoted material in your replies. Please
> see:
> http://www.alt-usage-english.org/intro_a.shtml#TOUSERSOFTHEGOOGLEGROUPSI
> NTERFACE
Really need to shorten that URL, huh?
Donna Richoux
I'll e-mail Webmaster Mike today. I have to shorten titles in the right
manner or else they goof up the program that converts the Intro docs to
web pages.
Don Phillipson
news:1154055432.5...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Be aware that the standard literary convention is to
use in novel dialogue (in context) whatever non-standard
words or faulty grammatical constructions demonstrate origins,
but to avoid attempting to reproduce a voice's distinctive accent
(e.g. New York goil for girl.) Clarity is the main reason for this
convention.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Matthew Huntbach
> Dialectisms:
> * "carryout" for takeout (= BrE "takeaway")
= EngE "takeaway" = ScotE "carryout".
Matthew Huntbach
bo...@caltech.edu
> <bo...@caltech.edu> wrote in message
> news:1154055432.5...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Be aware that the standard literary convention is to
> use in novel dialogue (in context) whatever non-standard
> words or faulty grammatical constructions demonstrate origins,
> but to avoid attempting to reproduce a voice's distinctive accent
> (e.g. New York goil for girl.) Clarity is the main reason for this
> convention.
Thanks for this fascinating insight, which would never have occurred to
me. I wonder if it does apply to all novelists, though. Didn't Mark
Twain, for instance, reproduce -- or give the esthetic effect of
reproducing -- the complete speech patterns of his characters? (Of
course, I know that Twain was a virtuoso at such things. What I'm
personally aiming for is much more modest.)
Thanks to all for comments! (And by the way, I didn't "lose" quoted
material but deleted it intentionally, as I see no need to reproduce
matter that's obvious from the sequence of messages. Apologies if this
violates a convention of this group!
James Boyk
bo...@caltech.edu
> How old was she supposed to have been when she arrived in the US? If as
> a young child, she would have lost the foreign accent. If as a grown
> woman, that's different.
Apologies for having omitted this. She arrived in USA in 1935 at age
20.
Leslie Danks
> On Fri, 28 Jul 2006, Salvatore Volatile wrote:
>
>> Dialectisms:
>> * "carryout" for takeout (= BrE "takeaway")
>
> = EngE "takeaway" = ScotE "carryout".
It's the extra half and a half.
--
Les
Pat Durkin
<bo...@caltech.edu> wrote in message
news:1154092362.1...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Don Phillipson wrote:
>
>> Be aware that the standard literary convention is to
>> use in novel dialogue (in context) whatever non-standard
>> words or faulty grammatical constructions demonstrate origins,
>> but to avoid attempting to reproduce a voice's distinctive accent
>> (e.g. New York goil for girl.) Clarity is the main reason for this
>> convention.
>
> Thanks for this fascinating insight, which would never have occurred
> to
> me. I wonder if it does apply to all novelists, though. Didn't Mark
> Twain, for instance, reproduce -- or give the esthetic effect of
> reproducing -- the complete speech patterns of his characters? (Of
> course, I know that Twain was a virtuoso at such things. What I'm
> personally aiming for is much more modest.)
Regardless of Mark Twain (whose dialect for Tom and Huck I find
artificial, awkward and nearly incomprehensible at times. . . no matter
that Clemens may have grown up speaking it), if you have to ask
strangers what the dialect of Chicago might be, I suggest that you not
try to imitate it in the dialog you write for the woman. If your novel
gets picked up by Hollywood, let them decide such things. They might
even find a 90-year-old German Jewish immigrant to Chicago to play that
part. You might give her origins and mention that she speaks with a
particular accent, but you really need the "ear" to write the script and
not have it turn comic.
Pat from Wisconsin. (Just up the river a bit from Hannibal.)
Linz
> Thanks to all for comments! (And by the way, I didn't "lose" quoted
> material but deleted it intentionally, as I see no need to reproduce
> matter that's obvious from the sequence of messages. Apologies if this
> violates a convention of this group!
It's only obvious from the sequence of messages if everyone gets the
messages in the same order. This is not the case. That's why it's polite to
quote what you're replying to.
Skitt
> For good examples of 20th-century Chicago speech, find recordings of
> the following people:
> (1) Tom Bosley (Howard Cunningham on _Happy Days_)
> (2) Dennis Franz (Andy Sipowicz on _NYPD Blue_)
> (3) Dennis Farina (Det. Fontana on _Law and Order_)
> (4) Evan Kirshenbaum (Erk on _AUE_)
> (5) Murray Arnow (Murr on _AUE_)
Say, where is ...?
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
http://www.geocities.com/opus731/
bo...@caltech.edu
> Regardless of Mark Twain (whose dialect for Tom and Huck I find
> artificial, awkward and nearly incomprehensible at times. . . no matter
> that Clemens may have grown up speaking it), if you have to ask
> strangers what the dialect of Chicago might be, I suggest that you not
> try to imitate it in the dialog you write for the woman. If your novel
> gets picked up by Hollywood, let them decide such things. They might
> even find a 90-year-old German Jewish immigrant to Chicago to play that
> part. You might give her origins and mention that she speaks with a
> particular accent, but you really need the "ear" to write the script and
> not have it turn comic.
Thanks for your thoughts. I would of course not attempt any continuous
representation of non-standard speech unless I were thoroughly familiar
with its non-standardnesses. On the other hand, to indicate or imply
such speech -- just enough to convey an idea to the reader unfamiliar
with that speech, or to stimulate memory in the reader familiar with it
-- is a different matter.
I find disheartening your assumption that words on paper are no longer
the realm of such things, and that they belong to Hollywood, for pete's
sake.
Pat Durkin
<bo...@caltech.edu> wrote in message
news:1154105737.3...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Pat Durkin wrote:
>> if you have to ask
>> strangers what the dialect of Chicago might be, I suggest that you
>> not
>> try to imitate it in the dialog you write for the woman. If your
>> novel
>> gets picked up by Hollywood, let them decide such things.
>
> representation of non-standard speech unless I were thoroughly
> familiar
> with its non-standardnesses. On the other hand, to indicate or imply
> such speech -- just enough to convey an idea to the reader unfamiliar
> with that speech, or to stimulate memory in the reader familiar with
> it
> -- is a different matter.
>
the IPA spellings into your novel.
> I find disheartening your assumption that words on paper are no longer
> the realm of such things, and that they belong to Hollywood, for
> pete's
> sake.
Well, a serious Hollywood director, with enough budget to hire experts,
can (re)create a fair approximation of a foreign-accented Chicago manner
of speech. But you would probably have to fight to get the right
director, producer,
I lived for three years in a Chicago suburb, to which many German-Jewish
immigrants had fled in their escape from Chicago. They had previously
fled to Chicago from somewhere in New York, and I found it amazing that
the second-strongest influence on their accent was the New York
inflection. I suppose either the Yiddish or German accent had a
particular affinity for the very hard "g" in LonGuyland and other "ng"
words. And, they probably hadn't spent enough time in Chicagoland to
have picked up the local dialect (not that I could identify Chicago
accents, after these 40 years).
bo...@caltech.edu
>... the standard literary convention is to
> use in novel dialogue ... whatever non-standard
> words or faulty grammatical constructions demonstrate origins,
> but to avoid attempting to reproduce a voice's distinctive accent
Are you sure this is a "convention"? What's your authority for this,
may I ask? Although I read a lot, I can't claim to have thought about
this one way or the other; but it just doesn't "feel" correct to me.
Does Bellow (speaking of Chicago) follow this "convention"? Roth?
Updike?
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>Thanks for your thoughts. I would of course not attempt any continuous
>representation of non-standard speech unless I were thoroughly familiar
>with its non-standardnesses. On the other hand, to indicate or imply
>such speech -- just enough to convey an idea to the reader unfamiliar
>with that speech, or to stimulate memory in the reader familiar with it
>-- is a different matter.
>
>I find disheartening your assumption that words on paper are no longer
>the realm of such things, and that they belong to Hollywood, for pete's
>sake.
I'm a former resident of Chicago, but I don't think I could pick out a
"Chicago accent". Boston-area accent, yes. Philadelphia-area accent,
yes. New Yawk-accent, yes. But not Chicago.
Areff is constantly posting representations of how Chicago people
allegedly pronounce some words, and I've yet to read one and think
"Yeah, that's Chicago talk". Chicago is famous for "Da Mayor", but
that was a jocular representation and not a real mark of Chicagoese
outside of Bridgeport.
If you are writing a book about Chicago, and striving for
authenticity, research the terms and not the dialect. When I read
books set in Chicago the errors that jump out at me are the mistakes
in geographical references, terms (you don't order "a slice" in
Chicago), and time-line errors.
Spend some time reading old Mike Royko columns to learn what
Chicagoans said, but don't try to mimic how they said it.
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL
Frank ess
M single memory of a distinct Chicago way of speaking was from a
native who consistently said "Yez" when he meant "You-all".
"Be seein' yez".
--
Frank ess
Donna Richoux
> Don Phillipson wrote:
> >... the standard literary convention is to
> > use in novel dialogue ... whatever non-standard
> > words or faulty grammatical constructions demonstrate origins,
> > but to avoid attempting to reproduce a voice's distinctive accent
> > (e.g. New York goil for girl.)....
>
> Are you sure this is a "convention"? What's your authority for this,
> may I ask? Although I read a lot, I can't claim to have thought about
> this one way or the other; but it just doesn't "feel" correct to me.
It feels right to me. 19th century literature is stuffed full of
attempts to portray the sound of dialects, passages with so many
apostrophes and invented spellings as to be nearly unreadable today.
This gradually disappeared in the 20th century, and mostly all that are
left are some familiar informal spellings like "gonna" and "getcha."
> Does Bellow (speaking of Chicago) follow this "convention"? Roth?
> Updike?
I don't own any. If you do, you could perhaps flip through them and see.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> bo...@caltech.edu wrote:
>> Apologies if question inappropriate for group.
>
> No, this is entirely appropriate in my view.
>
>> For a novel I'm working on, I'm hoping for observations on Chicago
>> speech. In particular, speech of a German Jewish Chicagoan (born
>> 1915 in Austria). Do Chicagoans show accents (as noticed by
>> narrator from Los Angeles)?
>
> In general, yes (today, certainly; Chicagoan accents are among the
> most unusual and distinctive in the US [NTTAWWT]). I'm not sure
> when your novel takes place specifically; Chicago accents became
> more pronounced in recent decades as their peculiar take on the
> Northern Cities Vowel Shift took root.
As near as I can tell, there's little or nothing in a North Side
(Jewish) Chicago accent (e.g, mine, my family's) that is noticeable
*to someone from Los Angeles*. The accents appear to be too similar.
If the character was born in Europe, though, they might well have a
noticeable accent, depending on how old they were when they moved to
Chicago. My grandfather was born in Poland in 1912 (to a Yiddish-
speaking family), but he moved to Chicago when he was eight and had no
noticeable accent. Two of my wife's grandparents, on the other hand,
were born in Austria (in 1909 and 1919, respectively, to primarily
German-speaking families), but they didn't immigrate until about 1947,
and they both retained noticeable German accents.
To get a handle on how to deal with that, you might want to check out
Lewis and Margueritte Herman's _Foreign Dialects_
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0878300201
>> Presence or absence of characteristic vocabulary? Turns of speech?
>
> Dialectisms:
> * "carryout" for takeout (= BrE "takeaway")
> * "pizza" for a tomato/cheese tart with a Bisquick base
> * "sport peppers" for small hot green peppers
> * "cheesecake" for ... well, something very different from cheesecake
>
> That's all I can think of at the moment.
Of these, the only one that will strike an Angelino as odd is
"carryout". (A California won't recognize "sport peppers", but
they're unlikely to come up in conversation. When talked about in
context, a Chicagoan will just call them "peppers", which they clearly
are.)
Another noticeable Chicagoism is calling what Californians call a
"freeway" an "expressway", although if the Chicagoan in question has
been in California for more than a couple of years, they're unlikely
to still do that.
Going by my grandparents and their friends, a Chicagoan of that
generation is likely to call a refrigerator an "icebox" and might
"close the lights" rather than turning them off.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Usenet is like Tetris for people
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |who still remember how to read.
Palo Alto, CA 94304
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Skitt
> {...}
> Going by my grandparents and their friends, a Chicagoan of that
> generation is likely to call a refrigerator an "icebox" and might
> "close the lights" rather than turning them off.
I thought only Filipinos opened and closed lights.
Evan Kirshenbaum
Then it's quite likely that she still has a noticeable German accent.
Another thing I forgot in my first reply is that there are turns of
phrase that she's likely to have because she's Jewish of that
generation. For instance, it's possible that she won't mention any
bit of good fortune without prefacing it by "kinehora" or "ken ayn
ahora" or the like, which is essentially the Yiddish equivalent of
"knock on wood". (Not that all do, but enough do that if you wanted
to make that be a noticeable feature, it wouldn't be out of place.)
If somebody comments on a dress she's wearing, she'll likely dismiss
it as a "shmatte" (rag), and she'll use the same term to talk
disapprovingly about the clothes young people wear. If something's
more formal than it needs to be (with the implication that somebody's
showing off) it's "fancy-shmancy".
She'll invite people in for a "nosh", which may be quite elaborate.
She will almost certainly have a glass bowl of wrapped hard candy on a
table in the living room. (Not a verbal tic, but it seems to be an
invariant.) Her speech will be peppered with "I should be so lucky!"
and "You should live so long!" and the like.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |_Bauplan_ is just the German word
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |for blueprint. Typically, one
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |switches languages to indicate
|profundity.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Richard Dawkins
(650)857-7572
Salvatore Volatile
> And, they probably hadn't spent enough time in Chicagoland to
> have picked up the local dialect (not that I could identify Chicago
> accents, after these 40 years).
Amazing.
Granted, it's tough to distinguish Kenosha from Chicago proper, but aren't
you from out Madison way?
--
Salvatore Volatile
Salvatore Volatile
> I'm a former resident of Chicago, but I don't think I could pick out a
> "Chicago accent". Boston-area accent, yes. Philadelphia-area accent,
> yes. New Yawk-accent, yes. But not Chicago.
>
> Areff is constantly posting representations of how Chicago people
> allegedly pronounce some words, and I've yet to read one and think
> "Yeah, that's Chicago talk". Chicago is famous for "Da Mayor", but
> that was a jocular representation and not a real mark of Chicagoese
> outside of Bridgeport.
Good Lord, Coop. What about the people I listed? Do you deny that Dennis
Franz or Dennis Farina have very thick regional accents? Or Jim Belushi?
Must be especially obvious to someone from the Midland like you. These
can't all be people from Bridgeport. Granted, different parts of Chicago
must be associated with slightly different accents. North Side, South
Side, etc.
I think it would probably be tougher for many Americans to consciously
notice the more refined type of Chicago accent -- say that of a Tom
Bosley or the late Gene Siskel. But us East Coasters can hear it,
anyways, or some of us can. They sound like their mouths have too much
saliva in them, is basically how I'd describe it.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Evan Kirshenbaum
> M single memory of a distinct Chicago way of speaking was from a
> native who consistently said "Yez" when he meant "You-all".
>
> "Be seein' yez".
Be careful with that. That's a regionalism *within* Chicago. For
most of Chicago (and what I'd expect from someone from a Jewish
neighborhood), the plural of "you" is (mandatorily) "you guys". The
possessive is variously (depending on speaker and somewhat in free
variation) "your", "you guys's", or "you guys'".
It seems uncommon to use one of the full forms if "you guys" has
already been used in a sentence, so
You guys need to bring your books
?You guys need to bring you guys's books
I'll bring your books.
I'll bring you guys's books
Many Chicagoans will only use "your" for the possessive (although the
others might slip out from time to time) and will consider "you
guys's" to be substandard, but nearly all will use "you guys" for the
subject and object.
And note that "you guys" is like "y'all" in that sometimes it
superficially refers to one person but is really intended to be "you
and those associated with you, who happen not to be here at the
moment."
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |A burro is an ass. A burrow is a
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |hole in the ground. As a
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |journalist, you are expected to
|know the difference.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | UPI Stylebook
(650)857-7572
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>
>> {...} Going by my grandparents and their friends, a Chicagoan of
>> that generation is likely to call a refrigerator an "icebox" and
>> might "close the lights" rather than turning them off.
>
> I thought only Filipinos opened and closed lights.
Oh, no. At least two of my grandparents did. (I suspect the other
two did as well, but I don't have clear memories of it.)
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |There's been so much ado already
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |that any further ado would be
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |excessive.
| Lori Karkosky
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Skitt
> "Frank ess" writes:
>> M single memory of a distinct Chicago way of speaking was from a
>> native who consistently said "Yez" when he meant "You-all".
>>
>> "Be seein' yez".
>
> Be careful with that. That's a regionalism *within* Chicago. For
> most of Chicago (and what I'd expect from someone from a Jewish
> neighborhood), the plural of "you" is (mandatorily) "you guys". The
> possessive is variously (depending on speaker and somewhat in free
> variation) "your", "you guys's", or "you guys'".
>
> It seems uncommon to use one of the full forms if "you guys" has
> already been used in a sentence, so
>
> You guys need to bring your books
> ?You guys need to bring you guys's books
> I'll bring your books.
> I'll bring you guys's books
>
> Many Chicagoans will only use "your" for the possessive (although the
> others might slip out from time to time) and will consider "you
> guys's" to be substandard, but nearly all will use "you guys" for the
> subject and object.
Heard on TV today -- some minor celebrity said something like "Bob and I's
house ..." (name changed so as not to bring shame on whoever it was).
bo...@caltech.edu
> ...you might want to check out Lewis and Margueritte Herman's _Foreign Dialects_
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0878300201
I've ordered it; thanks for suggestion. Tnx also to you and others for
v. useful observations. As a concert pianist, I'm used to the idea that
one can do a lot of work on a tiny point, and this gives me pleasure in
novel-writing, also. The character in question appears in only one
chapter, and says ... I don't know... perhaps 500 words total. But
there might be 2 or 3 places where a Chicago-ism will be appropriate,
or ditto a German holdover (e.g., when she quotes a famous remark in
German, then continues for a word or two in that language before
switching back to English). Frankly, I get pleasure out of trying to
find *the* touch that conveys the idea, and establishes the cultural
context, unobtrusively. It's like noticing the difference between two
almost-identical textures with which Ravel presents the same ideas two
bars apart in his Sonatina.
Frank ess
> "Frank ess" <fr...@fshe2fs.com> writes:
>
>> M single memory of a distinct Chicago way of speaking was from a
>> native who consistently said "Yez" when he meant "You-all".
>>
>> "Be seein' yez".
>
> Be careful with that.
How much more careful can I be? A simple declarative sentence,
accurately describing a well-remembered experience.
You guys are really tough.
Must have been the incomplete "My ... "
You guys are _really_ tough.
See yez.
--
Frank ess
Salvatore Volatile
> As near as I can tell, there's little or nothing in a North Side
> (Jewish) Chicago accent (e.g, mine, my family's) that is noticeable
> *to someone from Los Angeles*. The accents appear to be too similar.
To people who don't have an ear for such things, perhaps. It's a burden,
Erk, to have the ear for accents that I do. I recently noticed, for
example, how a friend from the Philadelphia area seems to pronounce "card"
very close to "curd".
There may be some close similarities between some Californian accents and
some Midwestern accents, though. I wouldn't expect there to be such
between Chicago and southern California. Further north is a whole nother
story. Have you ever heard Leon Panetta, lifelong resident of Monterey?
His accent is indistinguishable to me from the Tom Bosley (perhaps with a
touch of Gene Siskel) type of Chicago accent. I once read that San
Francisco was originally settled in linguistically significant numbers by
people from the Chicago area, or something odd like that.
>> Dialectisms:
>> * "carryout" for takeout (= BrE "takeaway")
>> * "pizza" for a tomato/cheese tart with a Bisquick base
>> * "sport peppers" for small hot green peppers
>> * "cheesecake" for ... well, something very different from cheesecake
>>
>> That's all I can think of at the moment.
>
> Of these, the only one that will strike an Angelino as odd is
> "carryout". (A California won't recognize "sport peppers", but
> they're unlikely to come up in conversation. When talked about in
> context, a Chicagoan will just call them "peppers", which they clearly
> are.)
I agree that they are peppers.
> Another noticeable Chicagoism is calling what Californians call a
> "freeway" an "expressway", although if the Chicagoan in question has
> been in California for more than a couple of years, they're unlikely
> to still do that.
New Yorkers (other than those who migrated to Maryland) call it a
"highway" (which is a broader term, but not too much broader to those of
sufficient lack of age).
> Going by my grandparents and their friends, a Chicagoan of that
> generation is likely to call a refrigerator an "icebox" and might
> "close the lights" rather than turning them off.
Interesting. "Icebox" is, I suspect, common enough multiregionally for
persons of sufficient age.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Salvatore Volatile
> "Frank ess" <fr...@fshe2fs.com> writes:
>
>> M single memory of a distinct Chicago way of speaking was from a
>> native who consistently said "Yez" when he meant "You-all".
>>
>> "Be seein' yez".
>
> Be careful with that. That's a regionalism *within* Chicago. For
> most of Chicago (and what I'd expect from someone from a Jewish
> neighborhood), the plural of "you" is (mandatorily) "you guys".
Even, say, for persons of, say, your grandparents' generation (I'm
assuming you have or had grandparents in Chicago)? In my case, I sense
that the term "guy" became much more popular in American speech beginning
with, say, maybe Sparky's generation or even some younger one. I think
that extends to "you guys" as well.
> The
> possessive is variously (depending on speaker and somewhat in free
> variation) "your", "you guys's", or "you guys'".
In some regions, at least, "your guys'" is heard too. (I heard someone
use this today.)
--
Salvatore Volatile
Salvatore Volatile
> Another thing I forgot in my first reply is that there are turns of
> phrase that she's likely to have because she's Jewish of that
> generation. For instance, it's possible that she won't mention any
> bit of good fortune without prefacing it by "kinehora" or "ken ayn
> ahora" or the like, which is essentially the Yiddish equivalent of
> "knock on wood". (Not that all do, but enough do that if you wanted
> to make that be a noticeable feature, it wouldn't be out of place.)
>
> If somebody comments on a dress she's wearing, she'll likely dismiss
> it as a "shmatte" (rag), and she'll use the same term to talk
> disapprovingly about the clothes young people wear. If something's
> more formal than it needs to be (with the implication that somebody's
> showing off) it's "fancy-shmancy".
>
> She'll invite people in for a "nosh", which may be quite elaborate.
> She will almost certainly have a glass bowl of wrapped hard candy on a
> table in the living room. (Not a verbal tic, but it seems to be an
> invariant.) Her speech will be peppered with "I should be so lucky!"
> and "You should live so long!" and the like.
Granted, Erk, but the Chicagoans who use these expressions picked them up
from New Yorkers. They couldn't have developed independently.
--
Salvatore Volatile
bo...@caltech.edu
>...there are turns of
> phrase that she's likely to have because she's Jewish of that
> generation. For instance, it's possible that she won't mention any
> bit of good fortune without prefacing it by "kinehora" or "ken ayn
> ahora" or the like, which is essentially the Yiddish equivalent of
> "knock on wood". (Not that all do, but enough do that if you wanted
> to make that be a noticeable feature, it wouldn't be out of place.)
> If somebody comments on a dress she's wearing, she'll likely dismiss
> it as a "shmatte" (rag), and she'll use the same term to talk
> disapprovingly about the clothes young people wear. If something's
> more formal than it needs to be (with the implication that somebody's
> showing off) it's "fancy-shmancy".
> She'll invite people in for a "nosh", which may be quite elaborate.
> She will almost certainly have a glass bowl of wrapped hard candy on a
> table in the living room. (Not a verbal tic, but it seems to be an
> invariant.) Her speech will be peppered with "I should be so lucky!"
> and "You should live so long!" and the like.
Would German Jews know and use these? I would have thought of them as
Eastern-European, perhaps because I'm familiar with them all and my
parents were such. Mother born Toledo, OH, 1919 of Rumanian parents.
Father born Pinczow, Russian Poland, 1914; immigrated to Toledo 1920.
(Me born Lafayette, IN, 1943, "immigrated" to Toledo 1948.)
Default User
> Don Phillipson wrote:
> > <bo...@caltech.edu> wrote in message
> > news:1154055432.5...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Be aware that the standard literary convention is to
> > use in novel dialogue (in context) whatever non-standard
> > words or faulty grammatical constructions demonstrate origins,
> > but to avoid attempting to reproduce a voice's distinctive accent
> > (e.g. New York goil for girl.) Clarity is the main reason for this
> > convention.
>
> Thanks for this fascinating insight, which would never have occurred
> to me. I wonder if it does apply to all novelists, though. Didn't Mark
> Twain, for instance, reproduce -- or give the esthetic effect of
> reproducing -- the complete speech patterns of his characters? (Of
> course, I know that Twain was a virtuoso at such things. What I'm
> personally aiming for is much more modest.)
It depends. I'm reading a lot of Terry Pratchett at this time. While
his most famous stories are technically set in a fantasy world, for the
most part the characters are very similar to ones from various UK
subcultures.
For the most part, he writes their dialog in a straightforward manner.
Sometimes he chooses to emphasize their accents. For example, some of
the characters have the accent/dialect that makes some "th" sounds
sound like "f". He will tend to write it that way, so "fick" instead of
"thick". Also, some characters are trying to speak at a higher social
class he'll have them over-aspirating the beginning of some words, and
will add a leading "h" to those words, "hexcuse" or "heverything" for
example. He'll also show vowel changes in their dialog with "Aye"
instead of "I" or "sade" instead of "side".
> Thanks to all for comments! (And by the way, I didn't "lose" quoted
> material but deleted it intentionally, as I see no need to reproduce
> matter that's obvious from the sequence of messages. Apologies if this
> violates a convention of this group!
Google is not usenet. Most people here are reading from regular
newsreaders, and those don't glom together ten messages at a time. We
read them individually. Also, many people like me have their
newsreaders set to display only unread messages. I can go get old
messages, but I choose not to do so. You aren't violating a convention
of this group, but of newsgroups in general.
Brian
--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)
Tony Cooper
<m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>> Going by my grandparents and their friends, a Chicagoan of that
>> generation is likely to call a refrigerator an "icebox" and might
>> "close the lights" rather than turning them off.
>
>Interesting. "Icebox" is, I suspect, common enough multiregionally for
>persons of sufficient age.
I call the appliance either an icebox or a refrigerator, but without
any particular reason for the choice. One or the other just pops out.
I was doing so long before I moved to Chicago.
Of course, we had ice boxes when I was growing up. Our first
refrigerator was a small thing by today's standards, and sat up on
legs. The refrigeration unit was up on top and looked like a white
enameled wedding cake. I think, but I'm not sure, it was gas rather
than electric.
Tony Cooper
<m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>Tony Cooper wrote:
>> I'm a former resident of Chicago, but I don't think I could pick out a
>> "Chicago accent". Boston-area accent, yes. Philadelphia-area accent,
>> yes. New Yawk-accent, yes. But not Chicago.
>>
>> Areff is constantly posting representations of how Chicago people
>> allegedly pronounce some words, and I've yet to read one and think
>> "Yeah, that's Chicago talk". Chicago is famous for "Da Mayor", but
>> that was a jocular representation and not a real mark of Chicagoese
>> outside of Bridgeport.
>
>Good Lord, Coop. What about the people I listed? Do you deny that Dennis
>Franz or Dennis Farina have very thick regional accents? Or Jim Belushi?
>Must be especially obvious to someone from the Midland like you. These
>can't all be people from Bridgeport. Granted, different parts of Chicago
>must be associated with slightly different accents. North Side, South
>Side, etc.
Sorry, Areff, but I had no idea that Dennis Franz was from the Chicago
area until you brought it up. I remember him from Hill Street Blues
(where he was a bad guy) and from NYPD Blue (where he was a good guy).
He's from a northwestern upper-middle income suburb - Maywood IL - and
went to college in Carbondale IL (in the southern tip of Illinois).
Jim Belushi was in a movie where he played a used restaurant equipment
salesman in Chicago. I think it was "About Last Night". Good acting,
good movie, but no recognizable Chicago heritage. His co-star, Rob
Lowe, grew up in Dayton OH and sounded about as Chicago as Belushi.
But the thing is, Belushi's not from Chicago. He grew up in Wheaton,
IL...an upper-middle income western suburb of Chicago that has no
Chicago to it. He went to college in Carbondale IL (in the southern
tip of Illinois). His Chicago background is his stint at Second City.
That's it.
You think you hear some Chicago accent there, but it's all in your
imagination. He's an actor; he can do "Chicago" or he can do
"Brooklyn". Or "Albanian" like his parent's accents.
When you label people from Wheaton and Maywood as "Chicago speakers",
it hits me like it would hit you if I labeled someone from Yonkers as
a speaker with an "authentic" Brooklyn accent just because he's from
the same state.
Skitt
> Salvatore Volatile wrote:
>>> Going by my grandparents and their friends, a Chicagoan of that
>>> generation is likely to call a refrigerator an "icebox" and might
>>> "close the lights" rather than turning them off.
>>
>> Interesting. "Icebox" is, I suspect, common enough multiregionally
>> for persons of sufficient age.
>
> I call the appliance either an icebox or a refrigerator, but without
> any particular reason for the choice. One or the other just pops out.
> I was doing so long before I moved to Chicago.
>
> Of course, we had ice boxes when I was growing up. Our first
> refrigerator was a small thing by today's standards, and sat up on
> legs. The refrigeration unit was up on top and looked like a white
> enameled wedding cake. I think, but I'm not sure, it was gas rather
> than electric.
I could be wrong, but I think that only early electric refrigerators had the
works on the top. Here's an early (1936) gas one:
http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/pictoria/a/1/7/im/a17950.jpg
Skitt
Tony Cooper
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>Then it's quite likely that she still has a noticeable German accent.
>
>Another thing I forgot in my first reply is that there are turns of
>phrase that she's likely to have because she's Jewish of that
>generation. For instance, it's possible that she won't mention any
>bit of good fortune without prefacing it by "kinehora" or "ken ayn
>ahora" or the like, which is essentially the Yiddish equivalent of
>"knock on wood". (Not that all do, but enough do that if you wanted
>to make that be a noticeable feature, it wouldn't be out of place.)
>
>If somebody comments on a dress she's wearing, she'll likely dismiss
>it as a "shmatte" (rag), and she'll use the same term to talk
>disapprovingly about the clothes young people wear. If something's
>more formal than it needs to be (with the implication that somebody's
>showing off) it's "fancy-shmancy".
>
>She'll invite people in for a "nosh", which may be quite elaborate.
>She will almost certainly have a glass bowl of wrapped hard candy on a
>table in the living room. (Not a verbal tic, but it seems to be an
>invariant.) Her speech will be peppered with "I should be so lucky!"
>and "You should live so long!" and the like.
I have driven by her house. I saw the massive centerpiece table lamp
(with the cellophane covering still on the shade) in the picture
window and a glimpse of the white, clear plastic covered, couch. I
couldn't see the clear plastic runner over the carpet near the front
door, though.
Just looking through the window, I knew that the house was
immaculately clean, and that the kitchen always smelled good. I knew
that I would be served something if I went over there, and that the
dish or the glass or the cup would be rinsed out immediately after use
and returned - washed - to the cabinet before I cleared the sidewalk
when I left.
I knew that she could never sit still. Even if she managed to sit for
a moment to listen politely, her eyes were roving around the room and
would sooner or later land on something that needed dusting.
Tony Cooper
wrote:
That's the general style, but I really can't remember if it was gas or
electric. I know that it was placed in the kitchen next to the gas
stove (which was awkward because there really wasn't room on that
wall) instead of in the place where the ice box was. That's why I
assumed it was gas.
Salvatore Volatile
> On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 18:34:17 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
><m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>>
>>Good Lord, Coop. What about the people I listed? Do you deny that Dennis
>>Franz or Dennis Farina have very thick regional accents? Or Jim Belushi?
> Sorry, Areff, but I had no idea that Dennis Franz was from the Chicago
> area until you brought it up.
You've got to be kidding me. You don't *hear* Sipowicz's accent?
> He's from a northwestern upper-middle income suburb - Maywood IL - and
> went to college in Carbondale IL (in the southern tip of Illinois).
> Jim Belushi was in a movie where he played a used restaurant equipment
> salesman in Chicago. I think it was "About Last Night". Good acting,
> good movie, but no recognizable Chicago heritage. His co-star, Rob
> Lowe, grew up in Dayton OH and sounded about as Chicago as Belushi.
Not at all. Jim Belushi has a very strong, noticeable Chicago accent, and
sounds nothing like Rob Lowe (who I'd describe as being more or less
accentless).
> But the thing is, Belushi's not from Chicago. He grew up in Wheaton,
> IL...an upper-middle income western suburb of Chicago that has no
> Chicago to it.
I've been to Wheaton. It's a suburb of Chicago, so it's in the Chicago
linguistic region. Why might not people there have Chicago-related
accents? Do people in Cicero stop having Chicago-sounding accents merely
because Cicero isn't in the Liebso-Erkian borders of Chicago?
> He went to college in Carbondale IL (in the southern
> tip of Illinois). His Chicago background is his stint at Second City.
> That's it.
The linguistic influence of Chicago spreads beyond Cook County.
> When you label people from Wheaton and Maywood as "Chicago speakers",
> it hits me like it would hit you if I labeled someone from Yonkers as
> a speaker with an "authentic" Brooklyn accent just because he's from
> the same state.
Yonkers accents aren't "Brooklyn" accents, no. But Yonkers people (at
least the old ethnic stock) have very strong, noticeably New York-y
accents, sure. It's right next to the Bronx, FCOL. I don't have a big
problem calling a Yonkers accent a kind of "New York accent".
--
Salvatore Volatile
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>> "Frank ess" <fr...@fshe2fs.com> writes:
>>
>>> M single memory of a distinct Chicago way of speaking was from a
>>> native who consistently said "Yez" when he meant "You-all".
>>>
>>> "Be seein' yez".
>>
>> Be careful with that.
>
> How much more careful can I be? A simple declarative sentence,
> accurately describing a well-remembered experience.
Sorry. That was directed at the poster you were replying to. What
you said is not wrong for parts of Chicago, but if the OP is looking
for stereotypical patterns for old Chicago Jews, that's not a good one
to pick.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Sometimes I think the surest sign
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |that intelligent life exists
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |elsewhere in the universe is that
|none of it has tried to contact us.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Calvin
(650)857-7572
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>> "Frank ess" <fr...@fshe2fs.com> writes:
>>
>>> M single memory of a distinct Chicago way of speaking was from a
>>> native who consistently said "Yez" when he meant "You-all".
>>>
>>> "Be seein' yez".
>>
>> Be careful with that. That's a regionalism *within* Chicago. For
>> most of Chicago (and what I'd expect from someone from a Jewish
>> neighborhood), the plural of "you" is (mandatorily) "you guys".
>
> Even, say, for persons of, say, your grandparents' generation (I'm
> assuming you have or had grandparents in Chicago)? In my case, I sense
> that the term "guy" became much more popular in American speech beginning
> with, say, maybe Sparky's generation or even some younger one. I think
> that extends to "you guys" as well.
That's a good question. Unfortunately, none of my grandparents (all
of whom spent their lives in Chicago, at least from age eight) are
still around. You are probably right, though that this started a fair
bit later, perhaps with my parents' generation.
Then again, perhaps not. I don't have access to the Chicago Tribune
archive, but it shows up in the _New York Times_ pretty early:
"I want to get away," he said, "until something blows over. If
you guys were wise you might pinch me for something big."
[7/19/1909]
"You guys had better not bother me. I'm a gunman. I'm the guy
who shot the cops over in Manhattan. I've got two guns in my
pocket." [8/9/1923]
There are (unverified) hits for "you guys" going back to 1872. Of
course, this doesn't prove that it was common that early.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Yesterday I washed a single sock.
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |When I opened the door, the machine
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |was empty.
| Peter Moylan
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>> As near as I can tell, there's little or nothing in a North Side
>> (Jewish) Chicago accent (e.g, mine, my family's) that is noticeable
>> *to someone from Los Angeles*. The accents appear to be too
>> similar.
>
> To people who don't have an ear for such things, perhaps.
Unless the narrator is identified as one who is very good at noticing
such things, it would be a mistake to have them do so. In all the
years I've lived here (and all the times I've visited Southern
California), I can't recall a single time that anybody has commented
on my pronunciation being unusual or tried to mimic it. It appears to
be within the normal range of variation for both Northern and Southern
California.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The mystery of government is not how
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |Washington works, but how to make it
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |stop.
| P.J. O'Rourke
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Evan Kirshenbaum
Oh, clearly not. Yiddish speakers in Chicago (and elsewhere) could
never have decided to use Yiddish words or calques of Yiddish
expressions on their own. Clearly, they must have modeled their
speech after New Yorkers.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Those who would give up essential
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |Liberty, to purchase a little
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |temporary Safety, deserve neither
|Liberty nor Safety.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Benjamin Franklin
(650)857-7572
Skitt
> Salvatore Volatile writes:
>> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>>> As near as I can tell, there's little or nothing in a North Side
>>> (Jewish) Chicago accent (e.g, mine, my family's) that is noticeable
>>> *to someone from Los Angeles*. The accents appear to be too
>>> similar.
>>
>> To people who don't have an ear for such things, perhaps.
>
> Unless the narrator is identified as one who is very good at noticing
> such things, it would be a mistake to have them do so. In all the
> years I've lived here (and all the times I've visited Southern
> California), I can't recall a single time that anybody has commented
> on my pronunciation being unusual or tried to mimic it. It appears to
> be within the normal range of variation for both Northern and Southern
> California.
Yup, we have people of all sorts here, doncha know.
--
Skitt (of a sort himself)
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Would German Jews know and use these? I would have thought of them
> as Eastern-European, perhaps because I'm familiar with them all and
> my parents were such. Mother born Toledo, OH, 1919 of Rumanian
> parents. Father born Pinczow, Russian Poland, 1914; immigrated to
> Toledo 1920. (Me born Lafayette, IN, 1943, "immigrated" to Toledo
> 1948.)
German (and to a lesser extent Austrian) Jews, especially those from
the big cities, would likely have grown up speaking standard German
rather than Yiddish, and so would be less likely to use them, I'd
think.
Chicago had two main waves of Jewish immigration. The first, from
about 1840 through about 1875, consisted largely of German-speaking
Reform Jews from Germany. The second, from about 1880 through about
1925, consisted largely of Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jews from Eastern
Europe. The timing, and the fact that the shtetl-dwellers were seen
as bumpkins meant that the first wavers tended to look down on the
second wavers.
Someone coming from Austria in 1935 doesn't really fit either
pattern, but I'd guess she'd be more likely to be a German speaker and
thus less likely to associate with Yiddish speakers and to pick up
their verbal habits.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Those who study history are doomed
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |to watch others repeat it.
Palo Alto, CA 94304
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Tony Cooper wrote:
>> On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 18:34:17 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
>><m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>Good Lord, Coop. What about the people I listed? Do you deny that
>>>Dennis Franz or Dennis Farina have very thick regional accents? Or
>>>Jim Belushi?
>
>> Sorry, Areff, but I had no idea that Dennis Franz was from the
>> Chicago area until you brought it up.
>
> You've got to be kidding me. You don't *hear* Sipowicz's accent?
I do. As someone who grew up in Chicago, I'll say that it struck me
as a dialect from outside of Chicago. When I saw him on _Hill Street
Blues_, I assumed he was supposed to be from somewhere out east.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If the human brain were so simple
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |That we could understand it,
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |We would be so simple
|That we couldn't.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Tony Cooper
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>Salvatore Volatile <m...@privacy.net> writes:
>
>> Tony Cooper wrote:
>>> On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 18:34:17 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
>>><m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Good Lord, Coop. What about the people I listed? Do you deny that
>>>>Dennis Franz or Dennis Farina have very thick regional accents? Or
>>>>Jim Belushi?
>>
>>> Sorry, Areff, but I had no idea that Dennis Franz was from the
>>> Chicago area until you brought it up.
>>
>> You've got to be kidding me. You don't *hear* Sipowicz's accent?
>
>I do. As someone who grew up in Chicago, I'll say that it struck me
>as a dialect from outside of Chicago. When I saw him on _Hill Street
>Blues_, I assumed he was supposed to be from somewhere out east.
Yeah, the Sipowicz character has a way of speaking that is partially
Dennis Franz the person and partially Dennis Franz the actor trying
(successfully) to sound like Sipowicz the cop.
To say, though, that the Sipowicz character is identifiable as a
Chicago native is Areffian nonsense. It's hearing an actor and
reverse engineering that sound to the be the Chicago sound.
David Caruso, on Hill Street Blues, had a vistigal Irish - that harsh
Dublin Irish - accent that went with a character that was part of a
Bridgeport-type neighborhood. That accent has disappeared from Caruso
as he's moved on to other roles. Franz's speaking manner has not
changed since he's essentially playing the same role he did on Hill
Street.
Tony Cooper
<m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>Tony Cooper wrote:
>> On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 18:34:17 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
>><m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>Good Lord, Coop. What about the people I listed? Do you deny that Dennis
>>>Franz or Dennis Farina have very thick regional accents? Or Jim Belushi?
>
>> Sorry, Areff, but I had no idea that Dennis Franz was from the Chicago
>> area until you brought it up.
>
>You've got to be kidding me. You don't *hear* Sipowicz's accent?
I hear an actor portraying a character. What I don't hear is a person
from Chicago that carried a Chicago accent into a role.
>> He's from a northwestern upper-middle income suburb - Maywood IL - and
>> went to college in Carbondale IL (in the southern tip of Illinois).
>
>> Jim Belushi was in a movie where he played a used restaurant equipment
>> salesman in Chicago. I think it was "About Last Night". Good acting,
>> good movie, but no recognizable Chicago heritage. His co-star, Rob
>> Lowe, grew up in Dayton OH and sounded about as Chicago as Belushi.
>
>Not at all. Jim Belushi has a very strong, noticeable Chicago accent, and
>sounds nothing like Rob Lowe (who I'd describe as being more or less
>accentless).
They are *actors*. Actors hire dialog coaches to rid them of accents
and then to teach them different accents. Unless you've met Belushi
and Lowe and, say, taken a road trip with them, you have no idea how
they speak. If Belushi can do what you think is a good Chicago
accent, it's because his dialog coaches in the movies and television
appearances he's made gave him tips that agree with your
preconceptions. He sure didn't learn the accent in Wheator or
Carbondale.
>> But the thing is, Belushi's not from Chicago. He grew up in Wheaton,
>> IL...an upper-middle income western suburb of Chicago that has no
>> Chicago to it.
>
>I've been to Wheaton. It's a suburb of Chicago, so it's in the Chicago
>linguistic region. Why might not people there have Chicago-related
>accents? Do people in Cicero stop having Chicago-sounding accents merely
>because Cicero isn't in the Liebso-Erkian borders of Chicago?
Areff, you *never* did get to know Chicago. First of all, you weren't
there that long. Secondly, you went there with some preconceptions
and successfully fought off anything that might have shaken those
preconceptions.
Wheaton's a white bread, upper-income western suburb that grew up
around a bible college and became home to incomers who wanted to feel
safer than they thought they would be in the Chicago area. It's a
place that people move to, and their children move away from.
Cicero's a whole different place. Cicero's a suburb that doesn't
attract or welcome incomers. People grow up and die in Cicero, and
their children grow up and die in Cicero. They consider people from
Berwyn and Oak Park to be foreigners.
You seem to think that accents are acquired from the drinking water or
something. Definable accents evolve where people have long exposure
to similar people. They are picked up by children who hear the
pronunciation from people who they grew up around.
Tony Cooper
<tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>David Caruso, on Hill Street Blues, had a vistigal
sb: vestigial
Robert Lieblich
[ ... ]
> David Caruso, on Hill Street Blues,
NYPD Blue.
> had a vistigal
Oy! (spelling, Coop; probably a typo, or were you thinking of vestigal
virgins?)
> Irish - that harsh
> Dublin Irish - accent that went with a character that was part of a
> Bridgeport-type neighborhood. That accent has disappeared from Caruso
> as he's moved on
Better: "disappeared as Caruso has moved on".
> to other roles. Franz's speaking manner has not changed
comma urgently needed here
> since he's essentially playing the same role he did on Hill Street.
This one you've got right. Franz played a character in the later
years of Hill Street Blues that was similar to Sipowicz in a number of
ways. But although Caruso made a few appearances in Hill Street Blues
in the early 1980's (as an Irish gang leader), his role as Irish cop
was on NYPD Blue, and he and Franz never appeared in a Hill Street
episode together.
--
Bob Lieblich
Better trivia than the Middle East
Salvatore Volatile
> Then again, perhaps not. I don't have access to the Chicago Tribune
> archive, but it shows up in the _New York Times_ pretty early:
>
> "I want to get away," he said, "until something blows over. If
> you guys were wise you might pinch me for something big."
> [7/19/1909]
>
> "You guys had better not bother me. I'm a gunman. I'm the guy
> who shot the cops over in Manhattan. I've got two guns in my
> pocket." [8/9/1923]
>
> There are (unverified) hits for "you guys" going back to 1872. Of
> course, this doesn't prove that it was common that early.
Also, "guy" might still have had a narrower sense back then.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Salvatore Volatile
> Salvatore Volatile <m...@privacy.net> writes:
>> You've got to be kidding me. You don't *hear* Sipowicz's accent?
>
> I do. As someone who grew up in Chicago, I'll say that it struck me
> as a dialect from outside of Chicago. When I saw him on _Hill Street
> Blues_, I assumed he was supposed to be from somewhere out east.
You've got to be kidding me too!
Erk, you *majored* in Linguistics (or linguistics), FCOL!
--
Salvatore Volatile
Salvatore Volatile
> David Caruso, on Hill Street Blues, had a vistigal Irish - that harsh
> Dublin Irish - accent that went with a character that was part of a
> Bridgeport-type neighborhood. That accent has disappeared from Caruso
> as he's moved on to other roles. Franz's speaking manner has not
> changed since he's essentially playing the same role he did on Hill
> Street.
I mainly know Caruso from his work in the first season of _NYPD Blue_, but
to me he has a recognizable Queens (New York)-ish accent.
I didn't think he was Irish, BWDIKIJATP.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Salvatore Volatile
> On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 21:58:23 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
><m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>>
>>Not at all. Jim Belushi has a very strong, noticeable Chicago accent, and
>>sounds nothing like Rob Lowe (who I'd describe as being more or less
>>accentless).
>
> They are *actors*. Actors hire dialog coaches to rid them of accents
> and then to teach them different accents.
Some do, some don't. A guy like Belushi doesn't, clearly. He always
plays the same character with the same accent. The same recognizably
Chicagoan accent. Maybe it's relevant that he came out of the improv
comedy tradition rather than, presumably, the theatre.
> Unless you've met Belushi
> and Lowe and, say, taken a road trip with them, you have no idea how
> they speak.
With Belushi one can guess that the accent he always uses is his real-life
accent. It's not that different from John Belushi's.
> If Belushi can do what you think is a good Chicago
> accent, it's because his dialog coaches in the movies and television
> appearances he's made gave him tips that agree with your
> preconceptions. He sure didn't learn the accent in Wheator or
> Carbondale.
Carbondale, sure. The place where I worked in Chicago, the recruiting
chick was from Carbondale, and she sounded like she had a Southern accent.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Tony Cooper
<r_s_li...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Tony Cooper wrote:
>
>[ ... ]
>
>> David Caruso, on Hill Street Blues,
>
>NYPD Blue.
He was in Hill Street Blues. He was the leader of an Irish-American
teen gang.
>> had a vistigal
>
>Oy! (spelling, Coop; probably a typo, or were you thinking of vestigal
>virgins?)
Corrected shortly after that post.
>> Irish - that harsh
>> Dublin Irish - accent that went with a character that was part of a
>> Bridgeport-type neighborhood. That accent has disappeared from Caruso
>> as he's moved on
>
>Better: "disappeared as Caruso has moved on".
Agreed. Agreed about the sentence construction, but not about
Caruso's career. He's in a successful vehicle now (although I don't
watch it), but I don't think he's ever learned to act. He poses.
>
>> to other roles. Franz's speaking manner has not changed
>
>comma urgently needed here
>
>> since he's essentially playing the same role he did on Hill Street.
>
>This one you've got right. Franz played a character in the later
>years of Hill Street Blues that was similar to Sipowicz in a number of
>ways. But although Caruso made a few appearances in Hill Street Blues
>in the early 1980's (as an Irish gang leader), his role as Irish cop
>was on NYPD Blue
Although his screen name was Kelly in NYPD Blue, I don't remember him
as playing the part of a specifically Irish-American cop. He was more
"Irish" in HSB.
>, and he and Franz never appeared in a Hill Street
>episode together.
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL
Tony Cooper
My brother graduated from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
He probably has the only beer mug in Denmark with a Saluki on it.
Cost me more to ship it than it did to buy it.
Tony Cooper
<m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>Some do, some don't. A guy like Belushi doesn't, clearly. He always
>plays the same character with the same accent.
So did that famous Western actor from Winterset, Iowa.
Pat Durkin
"Salvatore Volatile" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:eadkti$13v$1...@news.wss.yale.edu...
> Pat Durkin wrote:
>> And, they probably hadn't spent enough time in Chicagoland to
>> have picked up the local dialect (not that I could identify Chicago
>> accents, after these 40 years).
>
> Amazing.
>
> Granted, it's tough to distinguish Kenosha from Chicago proper, but
> aren't
> you from out Madison way?
Madison, right.
Here was the whole paragraph from which you cherry-picked the last
sentence:
"I lived for three years in a Chicago suburb, to which many
German-Jewish
immigrants had fled in their escape from Chicago. They had previously
fled to Chicago from somewhere in New York, and I found it amazing that
the second-strongest influence on their accent was the New York
inflection. I suppose either the Yiddish or German accent had a
particular affinity for the very hard "g" in LonGuyland and other "ng"
words. And, they probably hadn't spent enough time in Chicagoland to
have picked up the local dialect (not that I could identify Chicago
accents, after these 40 years)."
Now, is that clear? Forty years ago (from '60 until mid-'63) I lived in
the Chicago suburban milieu. Having left in 1963, I haven't spent a
single night there.
Salvatore Volatile
> Agreed. Agreed about the sentence construction, but not about
> Caruso's career. He's in a successful vehicle now (although I don't
> watch it), but I don't think he's ever learned to act. He poses.
He's in that awful spinoff of _CSI_ ("spinoff" can't be the right word --
what is?), _CSI Miami_, which for some reason hasn't been cancelled.
> Although his screen name was Kelly in NYPD Blue, I don't remember him
> as playing the part of a specifically Irish-American cop.
I agree. He *seems* Irish because he has red hair and vaguely Celtic
features.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Peter Moylan
> Father born Pinczow, Russian Poland, 1914; immigrated to Toledo 1920.
> (Me born Lafayette, IN, 1943, "immigrated" to Toledo 1948.)
We've done this before, but I'm still struck by this phenomenon every
time I see it. I would have written "emigrated" on the first line, and
"migrated" on the second. The impression I have is that in AmE
"immigrated" is the generic term that covers all cases. In AusE
"migrated" is the generic term, and we use "immigrated" only when
talking from the perspective of someone who's already here at the time
of the other person's migration.
Are other Englishes closer to AmE or to AusE in this respect?
--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
reliably receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses.
The optusnet address still has about 2 months of life left.
Peter Moylan
> Tony Cooper wrote:
>> had a vistigal
>
> Oy! (spelling, Coop; probably a typo, or were you thinking of
> vestigal virgins?)
This is going to keep me awake all night. What's a vestigial virgin?
(I assume you weren't thinking of the other kind, who were leaving for
the coast.)
Salvatore Volatile
> Now, is that clear? Forty years ago (from '60 until mid-'63) I lived in
> the Chicago suburban milieu. Having left in 1963, I haven't spent a
> single night there.
Lucky you. Coop and Erk are also lucky; Coop hasn't lived in Chicago
since the early '80s, I believe, and the same is true of Erk.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Aaron J. Dinkin
> It's a burden, Erk, to have the ear for accents that I do. I recently
> noticed, for example, how a friend from the Philadelphia area seems to
> pronounce "card" very close to "curd".
That's kind of odd, since the Philadelphia-accent treatment of the "ar"
vowel is that it's backed and rounded as well as raised. So Philly "card" can
sound like "cord" to non-Philadelphians.
I have heard a Vermont speaker whose "card" sounded as if it were "curd",
though.
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
Aaron J. Dinkin
> Salvatore Volatile <m...@privacy.net> writes:
>
>> Tony Cooper wrote:
>>> On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 18:34:17 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
>>><m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Good Lord, Coop. What about the people I listed? Do you deny that
>>>>Dennis Franz or Dennis Farina have very thick regional accents? Or
>>>>Jim Belushi?
>>
>>> Sorry, Areff, but I had no idea that Dennis Franz was from the
>>> Chicago area until you brought it up.
>>
>> You've got to be kidding me. You don't *hear* Sipowicz's accent?
>
> I do. As someone who grew up in Chicago, I'll say that it struck me
> as a dialect from outside of Chicago. When I saw him on _Hill Street
> Blues_, I assumed he was supposed to be from somewhere out east.
For what it's worth, Bill Labov uses Dennis Franz as his standard example
for telling journalists what a Chicago accent sounds like. (I have no
opinion on the matter, since I've never seen anything Dennis Franz was
in.)
http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0506/feature4_2.html
"Tell me who doesn't fit in. It's Dennis Franz, who's from Chicago. He
has a very strong Northern Cities Shift. So when Dennis Franz says, 'What
he-appened?' Americans say, 'What's he doing in the New York City police
department?'"
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/travel/escapes/17accent.html
"If you're not sure what Chicagoan sounds like," he said, "watch old
episodes of 'NYPD Blue' and wait for Detective Sipowicz to ask, 'What
hee-appened?' Having Dennis Franz, a Chicago native, portray a New York
City cop is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole."
Pat Durkin
"Peter Moylan" <pe...@DIESPAMMERSozebelg.org> wrote in message
news:44cb50ef$0$22123$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
> bo...@caltech.edu wrote:
>
>> Father born Pinczow, Russian Poland, 1914; immigrated to Toledo 1920.
>> (Me born Lafayette, IN, 1943, "immigrated" to Toledo 1948.)
>
> We've done this before, but I'm still struck by this phenomenon every
> time I see it. I would have written "emigrated" on the first line, and
> "migrated" on the second. The impression I have is that in AmE
> "immigrated" is the generic term that covers all cases. In AusE
> "migrated" is the generic term, and we use "immigrated" only when
> talking from the perspective of someone who's already here at the time
> of the other person's migration.
I believe that I would have used "immigrated" to Toledo in line one
(speaking from a US resident's point of view--in-migration--in which
national borders are crossed). Within a country, I suppose "migrated"
should be preferred. However, in readings in the history of the
westward movement of people from the original colonies to the plains and
mountains, I have grown accustomed to seeing "emigrants", based on the
concept of "out-migration" (moving out from "the states", or the more
settled areas).
Salvatore Volatile
> For what it's worth, Bill Labov uses Dennis Franz as his standard example
> for telling journalists what a Chicago accent sounds like. (I have no
> opinion on the matter, since I've never seen anything Dennis Franz was
> in.)
>
> http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0506/feature4_2.html
> "Tell me who doesn't fit in. It's Dennis Franz, who's from Chicago. He
> has a very strong Northern Cities Shift. So when Dennis Franz says, 'What
> he-appened?' Americans say, 'What's he doing in the New York City police
> department?'"
>
> http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/travel/escapes/17accent.html
> "If you're not sure what Chicagoan sounds like," he said, "watch old
> episodes of 'NYPD Blue' and wait for Detective Sipowicz to ask, 'What
> hee-appened?' Having Dennis Franz, a Chicago native, portray a New York
> City cop is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole."
So too with Dennis Farina, the replacement for the late Jerry Orbach on
_Law and Order_. His accent is pretty similar to Dennis Franz's. (Farina
is actually an ex-Chicago cop, or, perhaps I should say, 'caap'.) (Is
"Dennis" a more common name in Chicago than other cities?)
It's entirely conceivable that a Chicagoan would move to New York (LCIA)
(although it's not *too* common -- Chicagoans tend to stay put; Erk is
rather exceptional in this regard in having successfully migrated to the
Peninsula). The ridiculous thing about _NYPD Blue_ is that Sipowicz was
supposed to have grown up in Brooklyn (FLCIA). Har!
_Law and Order_ deserves credit for working accents into the story
in believable ways -- Farina's character, a Det. "Fontana", is supposed to
have grown up in Chicago. (Moreover, Jack McCoy, who has a Midwestern
accent of some sort, is supposed to have grown up in Chicago.)
As a final note, Jerry Orbach was a New Yorker by upbringing, and used an
accent on _Law and Order_ that seemed pretty natural to me, but he went
to Northwestern for college (in Evanston, Ill., right outside of [= OmrudE
"in the conurbation of"] Chicago). As a final final note, Coop used to
live in Evanston, IIRC.
--
Salvatore Volatile
bo...@caltech.edu
> bo...@caltech.edu wrote:
> > Father born Pinczow, Russian Poland, 1914; immigrated to Toledo 1920.
> > (Me born Lafayette, IN, 1943, "immigrated" to Toledo 1948.)
> We've done this before, but I'm still struck by this phenomenon every
> time I see it. I would have written "emigrated" on the first line, and
> "migrated" on the second.
I agree. The first was sloppiness on my part. The second incorporated
the same sloppiness but was intended as a mild joke, hence the quote
marks.
Robin Bignall
wrote:
>Tony Cooper wrote:
>> Salvatore Volatile wrote:
>
>>>> Going by my grandparents and their friends, a Chicagoan of that
>>>> generation is likely to call a refrigerator an "icebox" and might
>>>> "close the lights" rather than turning them off.
>>>
>>> Interesting. "Icebox" is, I suspect, common enough multiregionally
>>> for persons of sufficient age.
>>
>> I call the appliance either an icebox or a refrigerator, but without
>> any particular reason for the choice. One or the other just pops out.
>> I was doing so long before I moved to Chicago.
>>
>> Of course, we had ice boxes when I was growing up. Our first
>> refrigerator was a small thing by today's standards, and sat up on
>> legs. The refrigeration unit was up on top and looked like a white
>> enameled wedding cake. I think, but I'm not sure, it was gas rather
>> than electric.
>
>I could be wrong, but I think that only early electric refrigerators had the
>works on the top. Here's an early (1936) gas one:
>http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/pictoria/a/1/7/im/a17950.jpg
That is virtually identical to one my supervisor gave me just after I
started my PhD in 1964. It was at least 20 years old at that time,
worked perfectly for the three years my first wife and I were in that
flat, and was taken over by the new tenants when we left. It was so
heavy that it exhausted three of us getting it up two flights of
stairs.
--
Robin Bignall
Herts, England
John Holmes
<bo...@caltech.edu> wrote in message
news:1154092362.1...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> Thanks to all for comments! (And by the way, I didn't "lose" quoted
> material but deleted it intentionally, as I see no need to reproduce
> matter that's obvious from the sequence of messages. Apologies if this
> violates a convention of this group!
Not everybody sees the messages in the same sequence, and some messages
may not appear at all for some readers. Therefore it is always best to
quote at least a little of what you are replying to, along with a
correct attribution.
--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au
Salvatore Volatile
> On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 19:11:40 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>
>> It's a burden, Erk, to have the ear for accents that I do. I recently
>> noticed, for example, how a friend from the Philadelphia area seems to
>> pronounce "card" very close to "curd".
>
> That's kind of odd, since the Philadelphia-accent treatment of the "ar"
> vowel is that it's backed and rounded as well as raised. So Philly "card" can
> sound like "cord" to non-Philadelphians.
This person was born in Philadelphia but moved to a suburb of Philadelphia
after a few years. I've heard her say "the Philadelphia accent is
*horrible*", so I wonder if this is one of those cases of moving in the
opposite direction from the disfavored accent feature.
--
Salvatore Volatile