Talk:accent

How about like Limburgisch?
How do you call Limburgisch as being an accent of Dutch? Mallerd 16:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

RFV discussion: May–October 2012
Is the sense 5, "A nonstandard way of pronouncing", really distinct from the previous sense, "the manner of speaking or pronouncing"? The example phrase seems to illustrated the previous sense just as well. &mdash; Paul G (talk) 17:02, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Everyone has a "manner of speaking or pronouncing", but not everyone has an accent. Defining exactly who has an accent and who doesn't is very subjective, and loaded with cultural biases- but most people would agree that such a thing exists.
 * I wouldn't use nonstandard, myself, since that brings to mind things like ain't and irregardless that prescriptivists love to hate- and having an accent can often be very positive and prestigious, with the implication the speaker is better than normal in some respect. I would say it's a "manner of speaking or pronouncing" that's recognizably distinct from what's considered normal. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:02, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Not everyone has an accent? In an area where most or all speakers share this accent, people don't tend notice their particular accent, but they still have it, even if it's just General American or Received Pronunciation. I think the distinction that the definitions are trying to make is accent as in "He spoke with an American accent" (sense 4) and "He spoke with a heavy accent" (without further context, sense 5). That said, I personally would reword sense 5 to "Any manner of speaking noticeably distinct from the speaker's own", which would explain the "I don't have an accent!" issue. Either that, or I'd delete that sense, and add a usage note that people often don't use "accent" to describe their own manner of speech. Smurrayinchester (talk) 05:51, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think the speakers own speech is always the defining characteristic, it may also just be based on the relatively standard and most unmarked form of pronunciation. For example what one would call 'RP' or 'General American' could be the standard from which anything significantly different is perceived as an accent. 16:53, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
 * ... but then people where I live would regard both 'RP' and 'General American' as "foreign accents".  D b f  i  r  s   13:38, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
 * True, but CodeCat is right that it has to do with a relative standard, not just with the speaker's own accent. For example, my parents both speak English with very noticeable Israeli accents (though all Americans agree that my mother actually sounds French, dunno why), and they would never contemplate using "he speaks English without an accent" to mean "he speaks English with an Israeli accent". The standard is locally defined, of course — for me an RP speaker "has an accent", whereas a GenAm speaker does not — but it's not strictly individual. —Ruakh TALK 15:13, 11 May 2012 (UTC)


 * What about intentional accents where people copy supposed accents, such as people parodying or faking a British accent when making a joke about British people or related to a British topic? Or any other people saying things in stereotypical accents or fake accents, which would be a "nonstandard way of pronunciation", except "the manner of speaking or pronouncing" also works as well. - M0rphzone (talk) 04:59, 13 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The sense has been removed by Speednat. - -sche (discuss) 20:19, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

RFV discussion: November–December 2021
Rfv-sense: (music) The expressive emphasis and shading of a passage. partly RFV'ing this and I don't really undertand it MooreDoor (talk) 21:04, 17 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Webster's reference to "J. S. Dwight" is completely useless. He was a music critic, so he used the word countless times across every one of his publications. As for making sense of the definition, I am a musician myself and I can only assume this definition is referring to the expressiveness of a performance of a piece of music. If someone played with excellent "expressive emphasis and shading", I would say they played "with beautiful expression" rather than "with (a) beautiful accent". This, that and the other (talk) 09:08, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 22:09, 18 December 2021 (UTC)