Isn’t this only true for a forest gump accent?
Comment on xkcd #2907: Schwa
TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 3 months ago
What kind of fucked-up Forest-Gump accent does Randall have?
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 months ago
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Midwestern possibly. It works with my accent at least
WoahWoah@lemmy.world 3 months ago
?
TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Most English accents make a strong distinction between most of the voewls in that sentence. If you relentlessly turn everything to schwa, you get a cross between the aforementioned Forest Gump and “Ermagerd, shers”.
Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Out of curiosity, what words does your accent pronounce without a schwa? Every single vowel sound in that is a schwa sound in those sentences sounds perfectly natural to me with a schwa sound.
TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 3 months ago
/wɒts ʌp? wʌz dʌg gənə kʌm? dʌg lʌvz bɹʌntʃ. nʌʔʌ dʌgz stʌk kɒz ɒv ə tʌnəl ɒbstɹʌkʃən. ə tɹʌk dʌmpt ə tʌn ɒv ʌnjənz. əχ./
WoahWoah@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I was putting the question mark because Tom Hanks affects a Mississippi accent, which would not pronounce all of these words with a schwa.
“Ermahgerd” uses two vowel sounds, the repeated sound at the beginning and end is more akin to a Ɵ than ə (schwa).
Given all three of these items–XKCD, Forrest Gump, and the meme–are from the United States, it makes sense to think of them in that context. I realize that you’re Australian, and that accent perhaps doesn’t pronounce these words with a schwa, but it’s important to remember that the entire population of Australia is roughly equivalent to the metro area of New York City.
As of 2022, there were roughly 400 million native English speakers in the world, of which roughly 306 million are in the United States, so I’m not sure about your “most English accents” comment either.