Zompist Bboard Again

I've gotten the impression over time that I might just have what people perceive as a 'foreign' accent even in my home state, even though I've only lived outside it for a few years as an adult over a decade ago. When I talk to coworkers at things like work lunch events they often ask me unprompted where I'm from, even though many people I work with are also from Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest in general.

I've also had coworkers from other parts of Wisconsin remark about my characteristic ja, which I previously had thought of just as an alternate pronunciation of yeah when I thought about it at all. (My mother herself has remarked that she was unfamiliar with ja before she moved to the Milwaukee area.)

Note that I once had someone I'd never met before pick out which suburb I grew up in solely from how I spoke, and specifically said that I had an accent associated with that suburb.

A good friend of mine who grew up within walking distance of the house I grew up in (who too has the characteristic ja) has also said that people in Chicago would comment on her accent when she was there, especially as, from how she put it, the very "long" vowels as they saw it.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Apr 25, 2025 8:49 am I've also had coworkers from other parts of Wisconsin remark about my characteristic ja, which I previously had thought of just as an alternate pronunciation of yeah when I thought about it at all. (My mother herself has remarked that she was unfamiliar with ja before she moved to the Milwaukee area.)

I also say ja sometimes. In my case it’s a South Africanism, ultimately from Afrikaans.

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Apr 25, 2025 8:48 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Apr 25, 2025 8:49 am I've also had coworkers from other parts of Wisconsin remark about my characteristic ja, which I previously had thought of just as an alternate pronunciation of yeah when I thought about it at all. (My mother herself has remarked that she was unfamiliar with ja before she moved to the Milwaukee area.)

I also say ja sometimes. In my case it’s a South Africanism, ultimately from Afrikaans.

You've said that your idiolect has significant influence from SAE, but how much influence has Afrikaans had on it? (I've read that there are significant differences in the English of South Africans of, say, British and of Afrikaner descent.)

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Apr 25, 2025 9:23 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Apr 25, 2025 8:48 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Apr 25, 2025 8:49 am I've also had coworkers from other parts of Wisconsin remark about my characteristic ja, which I previously had thought of just as an alternate pronunciation of yeah when I thought about it at all. (My mother herself has remarked that she was unfamiliar with ja before she moved to the Milwaukee area.)

I also say ja sometimes. In my case it’s a South Africanism, ultimately from Afrikaans.

You've said that your idiolect has significant influence from SAE, but how much influence has Afrikaans had on it? (I've read that there are significant differences in the English of South Africans of, say, British and of Afrikaner descent.)

Afrikaner English is definitely distinct from the South African English of native English speakers. But Afrikaans has had a strong influence on the latter too, in lexicon and probably phonology too. For myself, I couldn’t comment on the phonology, but I do have a few Afrikaans loanwords: though off the top of my head I can only think of /jɑː/ ‘ja’ and /χoχo/ ‘creepy-crawly’. (My parents use more Afrikaans words than I do.) Sometimes it’s unclear to me whether a word is from Afrikaans or Yiddish, e.g. /χap/ ‘take away’.