As much as I’m happy that kids now have access to YouTube, and thus can use the neutral influencer dialect, something about our culture is being erased.
I grew up speaking both a neutral California accent and bits of AAVE. AAVE itself is drastically different depending on the part of the US you’re
in. I can barely understand southern AAVE. NYC AAVE is much faster, but I think NYC people think faster in general.
I really do believe YouTube can bring gaps. If your a kid in Albania you can see life though the eyes of someone in Oakland.
And hop on a zoom 30 minutes later to chat.
This would be unimaginable 50 years ago.
I looked through and found one rejected video from Montreal. It's crazy to me, to reject someone with a French accent. It's how people talk here! Many consider themselves perfectly bilingual and grew up speaking both languages. Even the more Anglo-Quebecois have a very specific vocabulary and accent heavily influenced by French.
I used to visit French speaking Canada when I was in college. I found it interesting to see people who could switch between an Anglo-Canadian accent and a French-Canadian accent, to my ear sounding native at both. This wasn't everyone obviously, but there were people like that.
Radio followed by television has done a lot of homogenization even if you don't have the more formalized received pronunciation you had/have in the UK. Even something stereotypical like a "Boston accent" was mostly a Southie accent on the one hand and an essentially English (Boston Brahmin) on the other. Most urbanites in particular never had others and many weren't even from Boston.
I am the type of person to notice accents a lot, one interesting thing I've noticed is how much NYC AAVE has the vowels of other NYC accents, like the stereotypical "cawfee" vowels. A lot of AAVE across the country sounds kind of like the south to my ear, but NY is one place where the local AAVE has a lot in common with other local accents.
This is even more true if you find old recordings.
I think the conflict is on the term unimaginable. People back then definitely imagined the equivalent of Zoom and it being free even if they didn't know technically how it could happen.
Back in the 80s, Zortech was located in London while I lived in the Seattle area. International phone calls were too expensive, so we would communicate by fax. Late at night, sending a fax cost about a dollar a page. (No email then.)
An unanticipated result is I have a record of our conversations, which would have all been lost if it was phone calls.
> Also, black Americans don't call themselves "African-American" unless they were raised in a white environment. Never have.
I'm guessing you either don't remember or weren't alive in the 1990's. It was a whole grassroots movement and pretending it didn't exist is extremely insensitive, to put it mildly.
> and is often far more similar to their white neighbors than to the black people in the next state over
Actually you might be right depending on how integrated the area is:
Exhibit A: Your Old Droog
Exhibit B: Lord Sko
As an adult my normal speaking voice is closer to a relaxed California accent. It’s clear , but it always leaves room to weasel out of certain situations.
If I could I’d probably use a Mid Atlantic Madmen accent. That accent gets things done.
As much as I’m happy that kids now have access to YouTube, and thus can use the neutral influencer dialect, something about our culture is being erased.
I grew up speaking both a neutral California accent and bits of AAVE. AAVE itself is drastically different depending on the part of the US you’re in. I can barely understand southern AAVE. NYC AAVE is much faster, but I think NYC people think faster in general.
I really do believe YouTube can bring gaps. If your a kid in Albania you can see life though the eyes of someone in Oakland.
And hop on a zoom 30 minutes later to chat. This would be unimaginable 50 years ago.