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My brother the music executive sent me some pop CDs that I asked him for, and sent along the Kelly Clarkson greatest hits album -- which brings me, in a roundabout way, to something I've idly thought about off and on for some time.
It's the pronunciation of the word "you" with a short-e sort of inserted: yeah-oo.
Clarkson uses it in the chorus of "Since U Been Gone", not during the title phrase, but when it's the stressed syllable in the line:
Thanks to YOU
Now I get
What I want...
Since U been gone.
It's not unique to Clarkson, nor, AFAIK, to the changed vowel sounds (ar for er, ah for I, eh or long-a for ee, to name some) frequently encountered in singing as opposed to speech.
I have the feeling, though, that it IS limited to American women, Gen-X and later, and especially to teens, possibly having come in when Valley Girl speech spread through the media back in the 80s. (And only, as above, when it's not an interior part of a phrase or sentence, but something followed by a pause.)
But I'm wondering if I'm way off base. I live and work alone, hardly ever watch films or non-sports television, and rarely talk to anyone I don't know, so I'm not really qualified to judge. And I have the vague thought that "cultured" English of the Cary Grant era had that same pronunciation, not limited to women. (Nor, for that matter, to the word "you". My Dad (b. 1926) always answered the phone "he-LEHoh"...)
Far more space than this was worth -- I've put it in the Writers' Forum because it might conceivably turn up in my Hannah Montana-in-1980 story if I can ever work out the logistics of that one, let alone write it -- but can anyone steer me right on this?
Thanks, Eric
It's going to be variable
because of rhyme, meter and regional dialects and accents. The word You in various British dialects can vary significantly. In South Wales, it can be pronounced Yewww, In Scotland Y'or Ye or youu, in the North of England Yer, in East Anglia Yooo as in bootiful. So unless you're looking at a specific individual or area, almost anything goes, especially the way people move around today.
Oh and remember Archie Leach* came from Bristol, which might explain some of his clipped vowels - he was tryin' to 'ide 'is Brissle accent (*Cary Grant - can't think why he changed it moy deer:)
Angharad
Diphthongization
The broadening of the long u sound in words like too, blue, shoe and do into a diphthong (ee-oo, sort of), is a significant part of a pronunciation shift that is occurring in Western North American speech. It's especially noticeable in the speech of young women from the Bay Area of California.
This is in contrast to the Lake Cities vowel shift in the Midwest which is moving the front vowels upward in articulation, and diphtongizing some of them.
Linguists are fascinated by this kind of thing and sociologists are mystified by how the heck is it co-ordinated among different speakers who don't all have the same origin?
Meanwhile, the Inland Counties of Southern California have this nasalization thing going on that makes me buggy!
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
It's strange, but...
I was born near Portsmouth. on the South coast of England. I went to school and spent my first 50 or so years in Portsmouth. I was constantly reprimanded for not 'speaking properly', which I took to mean The Queen's English.
I retired to the North-West of England (just South of Chester) some ten years ago. I have since visited Portsmouth but had great difficulty understanding what was said to me.
I now consider that I 'speak properly' but many of my friends in the South say that I now speak with a Northern accent and my vocabulary is peppered with Northern words.
Susie
Weird.
I was born in Portsmouth but grew up across the harbour in Gosport. My experience is almost the opposite of yours.
Almost everyone that knew me or any of my friends and schoolmates assumed we were from London. As if! The reason for our non-local accents we eventually decided was down to the floating population - almost literally. At school we had kids go off to all parts of the then Empire and return some (or many) months later with accents they picked up while their parents were posted abroad. Canadian, Aussie, Hongkong, South Africa, Aden, Cyprus, you name it. Of course, we also had new kids whose parents came from all parts of the country with accents to match. After a while back at school these all smoothed out into a general southern accent. These accent changes generally froze about age 15-16 but there was a fair spread.
I didn't even know there was a local Hampshire accent until I met some of my father's work friends. Right rustic they sounded. I think they came all the way from Fareham!
Penny
PS To our way of thinking, civilisation ended north of Guildford.
When I was ...
... a teenager I worked in Welwyn Garden City which, though in Hertfordshire, was a London overspill town and most of the kids my age had a generic N London accent rather than a rural Hertfordshire one. One of my friends was a Scot from Ayrshire and he ended up marrying a local girl. I visited them a few years later back in Scotland and Val had totally lost her London accent and had a broader Scottish accent than her Scots born husband.
I think some people pick up accents very quickly whilst others retain the accent of their childhood unless they take positive steps to change it (ie elocution lessons). I seem to be a member of the former group and my accent remains the NE Midlands one I spoke at school, albeit with, I hope, a better vocabulary :)
Accents change over quite short distances in the UK - certainly in England. I live fewer than 40 miles from Yorkshire and the local accent has no resemblance to Yorkshire as heard in, for example "The Full Monty".
Robi
I think you're right about...
...the way some people retain their childhood accents. Despite having been all over the world thanks to a military father, I still retain traces of the Georgia accent I had as a small child. I often get kidded about it, in fact.
Though lately I find, after having lived here so many years, some Wisconsin traits creeping in, particularly the elongated "o" and "oo" sound. John in Wauwautosa might be better able to explain what I mean.
I myself am amazed by the sheer number of dialects in England. Melvyn Bragg, who wrote a book on the history of the English language, is from a village in the north of England. As a child, he said, he spoke a heavily Norse-influenced dialect unique to his particular village, while folks as little as ten miles away sounded completely different.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
Well I grew up in Liverpool...
I know my place!!!!!!