AT what point will Valleygirl be classified as a California accent?

[imdjh]

Watching fire coverage on MSNBC, and while the spokeswoman for the Red Cross isn't actually saying, "Like OMG! We so totally help people who need help, like, when they need something like .... help, you know?" you can definitely hear the Valleygirl accent and tonality in her voice.

Will valspeak come to be regarded as a legitimate regional accent?

[Bertha Venation]

1. If your brush were any broader

you MIGHT be able to paint my butt . . .

Signed,

A Mildly Offended Southern California Native Who Now Speaks With, Like, An Eastern Tennessee Accent

;) all in fun

[SteppingRazor]

2. Well, it's a broad brush I suppose, but it's not as though the accent doesn't exist.

I grew up in the valley, in the 80s no less, and I knew a slew of people who talked like that.

[Bertha Venation]

4. I used to speak fluent Surfer myself

:)

[Iggo]

12. I still do.

48 next month. No reason to stop now...lol.

[SoxFan]

15. The "Bill & Ted" accent?

[imdjh]

7. The part I really hate is the inappropriate rising intonation.

[XemaSab]

11. I've never heard that?

n/t

[Bertha Venation]

16. Up-speak!

Yeah, I really hate that? When people make questions out of statements. It's really irritating?

[Chan790]

3. You haven't yet acquired the southern MD accent?

Oh well, all in good time. :hide:

I swear the first day of college freshman year, I could understand everybody in my incoming class(from 49 states and 16 countries)...except the kids from 5-40 miles up the road. (PG County, Montgomery Co., Howard Co., some from as far as Baltimore and Annapolis.) 4 years later, I was accused of having the same accent.

[Bertha Venation]

5. I don't get out much . . .

:)

[PunkinPi]

14. Really?

Baltimore, yeah hun. Baltimore County (Catonsville, etc.), yeah.

But Howard County, not so much. (Granted, I may be biased since I was born and raised there, but I never heard anyone say they couldn't understand our "accent" or that I even had one.) Oh the things you learn. :rofl:

[Chan790]

22. The PG County kids were actually the worst...

not so much the kids from the DC side of the county...the kids from Glenn Dale, Bowie, etc. all talked like they had a mouth full of marbles though. It took me months to figure out that the kid who sat next to me in Spanish class was not from some magical land called Boo-ah and that Laura (Laurel) was the town he drove through to get home and not his girlfriend.

[HopeHoops]

6. It already is

Actually, it has been for over 20 years! Fer shur.

[Odin2005]

8. It already is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_English#Phonology

Somebody come and gahg me with a spewn...

[NNadir]

9. When I first moved to California, I had a very heavy Brooklyn accent

which caused me, after repeating "thirthy third and third" for the 80,000th time (always by people who couldn't do the accent anyway), to get very annoyed by natives who insisted "we don't have accents."

Of course when I was growing up I had no idea that I had an accent.

[XemaSab]

10. Like, totally

n/t

[DeepBlueC]

13. It's gone national

It will soon replace standard English. You will learn it if you want to be intelligible to your children and grandchildren. All films and TV in Standard English will be subtitled for them.

[Patiod]

17. Argh! One of my colleagues does that

She's no spring chicken, and yet a client who only dealt with us over the phone thought she sounded "too young" and wanted a more senior person put on the project.

It's a shame, because she has an amazing resume, and the actual CONTENT of what she says is very sophisticated. Unfortunately, the inflection makes her sound like a vapid 20-yo sorority girl

"and quantiative rela time plymerase chain reaction? Is a laboratory techinque? Which is used to amplify and simulatneously quantify a targed DNA molecule?"

[imdjh]

18. Many school teachers do it. They think it's engaging. I think it's a bad habit ...

... that I don't want passed on to the kids. So I do my own schoolmarm thing.

They talk like this?

And I say, please stop that, it's annoying.

[begin_within]

19. Strangely, I rarely ever hear anyone talk like that any more. In fact,

I think the stereotypical "valley girl" type of person purposely avoids talking like that when possible, so as not to get pigeonholed as that type of vapid personality. People like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian would be perfect candidates for that type of speech, particularly when talking to their friends on the phone, but I think they purposely hold back. It's as if nobody wants to get labeled as a "valley girl" or a blasé "surfer dude" so people consciously keep their mouths shut to avoid being pigeonholed. They may act out in stupid and childish ways but not in previously identified and labeled ones.

[imdjh]

20. Paris Hilton is an act.

I used to think she was a total waste of air, but clearly Paris Hilton is a character played by Paris Hilton.

[begin_within]

21. That is the best description I've ever read of her.

[ashling]

23. kewl

[anneboleyn]

24. Um, I am like from Socal, from Belmont Shore akchewally & I like take a fence at your post? As if!

I revert to valspeak on occasion, even though I lived near the ocean and not in the San Fernando Valley. I think it's more of an affectation, truthfully, than a legitimate accent.

[imdjh]

25. It's a fad that became a habit and now won't go away. Something similar happens in the East.

Valspeak was mocked by more people than came by it "naturally" and it became a habit. Especially the rising terminal or inappropriate rising intonation, which already had some support in the Human Potential Movement and elementary school teachers who had taken courses in being "effective" (defective).

In the East, white people mocked "ebonics" with such frequency that some things made it through as habits or additions. Ebonics was such a joke that in mocking it, it actually became a part of accepted speech to some degree. Evidence is everywhere with middle aged suburban white women doing the chicken neck and saying "Oh no, you deh-ehnt."

[Captain Hilts]

26. It's so odd how it affects women so much more than men....nt