"Cherce" v. "Grahss"

Once there was a young rat who couldn't make up his mind. Whenever the other rats asked him if he'd like to come out with them, he'd answer "I don't know." And when they said, "do you want to stay at home?" he wouldn't say yes or no either. He'd always shirk making a choice. One day his aunt said to him, "Now look here! No one'll care for you if you carry on like this. You haven't any more mind than a blade of grass." The young rat coughed and looked wise. . . .

This little story (there is more to it) was cunningly composed not for sense but for sound. Twelve people picked from various parts of the eastern U. S. read the story aloud to a phonograph. Dr. Walter H. Wilke and Joseph F. Snyder of New York University's Department of Speech played the records to ten audiences, also geographically scattered and totaling about 500 listeners, who were asked whether they recognized the accents, and whether they liked them or not.

Most thoroughly disliked, most easily located was the proletarian accent of New York City. ("He'd alwiss shoik making gah cherce.") This accent is characterized by a dentalized t (pronounced with the tip of the tongue between the teeth), by an excessively hissing s, by heavy ng sounds (e.g., "making gah" for "making a"); and by closing and diphthongizing certain vowels, so that "ask" sounds like "ay-usk" (or "ay-ust"), and "cough" sounds like "co-uff." The uneducated New Yorker seems to say "shoik" for "shirk" and "cherce" for "choice." Actually he uses the same sound, intermediate between ir and oi, for both words.

Best liked, hardest to locate were neutral dictions without noticeable peculiarities--what the investigators called "generalized American speech." The listeners liked best a speaker (not Pennsylvania Dutch) from Lancaster, Pa., voted second place to one from Syracuse, N. Y.--both good examples of neutral, generalized diction. A speaker from Boston won third choice. But though he gave himself away by saying "grahss" (grass), "ahsk" (ask) and "look heah," few listeners placed him correctly.

Southern speech was less well liked than that of Boston but more easily guessed. But the listeners had practically no luck in trying to tell one Southern dialect from another. Nevertheless there are distinct regional differences in Southern accent, apparent to a trained ear. A Virginian pronounces ou sounds with a quick upward-looping inflection, so that "out" sounds like "a-oot." A North Carolinian may leave out the r's in "carry," but he puts a heavy r in certain other words. He says "Yes urr no" instead of "Yes uh no," as most Southerners would.

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