Re: Californian vowels [was Re: Liking German]

<<Heh, i actually know people from Orange County in Southern California who

actually talk with the "valley" accent. I myself can imitate it. Usually

when i'm teasing my friend Vince.>>

    Hey, I'm from Orange County!  You mean that the way I talk isn't the way
everyone on Earth would talk if they stopped talking with their accents?  ;)

<<It'll be interesting to see if and when and where this

spreads.  Another interesting dialectal fact I've noticed

upon moving to Chicago:  a significant number of people

here, most of whom aren't from the South, use <y'all>

for the second person plural pronoun.  Jerry Sadock,

the syntax professor here, informs me that <youse> is

also fairly widespread, but <y'all> is spreading faster.

That too does not surprise me;  there are between 75 and

100 million Southerners who use it.>>

    This, I think, is a lot more widespread than you might think.  ("Youse"
is not.  I've only heard it before the word "guys" in such phrases as "Youse
guys wanna play stickball?" --The Simpsons.)  People all over California use
it, I think, regularly.  Maybe not older folks...  However, to distinguish
ourselves from the South, we (or, at least, I myself) often say [juwAL] (or,
to be correct, [juwA5] ;), or [juwVL] rather than [jAL].  Rather than eliding
the first vowel, we insert a glide in between the two--which is, of course,
the more refined and tasteful way to handle it.  ;)

-David

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