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Why are Americans so articulate?

When interviewed, Americans talk in a continuous stream of words, unlike the Brits who mumble, stumble and bumble. Anyone know why this is so?

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+4 Views: 910 Answers: 8 Posted: 9 years ago

8 Answers

robertgrist

Karma: 279491

Best answer!

Americans learned to talk by emulating folk on TV, Radio and Commentators. If you want the butter passed to you at breakfast, you have to ask for it by sounding like Walter Cronkite..."Pass the butter, please." and "Thank you". The effect of the media has greatly affected everything we say think and do. The words spoken on old dicta-phones, wax, wire and early vinyl recordings are difficult to understand by anyone beyond that generation today.

9 years ago. Rating: 5
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ROMOS

Karma: 2300350

Dey is de best tawkers in de land like, i luv dem!

9 years ago. Rating: 13
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Tommyh

Karma: 609115

A lady in Florida told me "I love the way you Aussies speak,Y'all talk so beautifully".I guess beauty is in the ear of the beholder.LOL.Americans on TV do articulate tho.I guess to avoid being misunderstood.

9 years ago. Rating: 11
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jhharlan

Karma: 1457190

Americans just want to be understood and think pronouncing each word carefully will undermine any language barrier. Kind of superior, don’t you think?

9 years ago. Rating: 10
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lindilou

Karma: 480785

Canadians just want to know 'When's dinner, eh?' ;D

9 years ago. Rating: 10
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mycatsmom

Karma: 393685

I find quite the opposite to be true. The British talk quite clearly, while the young adult Americans slur their words together and don't articulate. Even the newscasters run their words together and mispronounce words, and use the wrong syntax.

9 years ago. Rating: 9
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sunnyB

It's much the same here in the UK a lot of young people talk with the new accent which is a sort of mixed race Cockeny , very strange but not surprising.

commented 9 years ago

zorro

Karma: 182125

Im sure if you asked Latrick, Tyrone, Deshun, Latrelle, you would not get an answer you would understand. They would ax you what you talkn bout. Its a culture thing. They have to be articulated first before they articulate.

9 years ago. Rating: 9
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Bob/PKB

Karma: 945575

It truly depends upon with whom you are speaking or to whom you are listening. There are, as zorro reminds us, many people who pride themselves in speaking a dialect so obscure in recognizable English that it isn't even CALLED English.

Those you hear are supposed to articulate, enunciate, and speak at a rate that is easy for people to comprehend, with inflections properly placed to accentuate important concepts.

I can barely understand my 5 year old granddaughter, but the one who won't be 2 until the end of November speaks clearly already.

Speech therapy is pending for the 5 year old...

9 years ago. Rating: 3
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Flip

My daughter has her masters in speech therapy, and I am sure she is very good when she is teaching. When she is on the phone however, I constantly have to remind her to slow down and enunciate her words because I can't understand a word she is saying. I don't have that problem with others though...

commented 9 years ago

zorro

Its usually all about how people are raised, their culture. How they care about speaking language. They can be lazy or care. The worst I have ever seen is the deep woods people in the Ozarks in Missouri. A small group of people living off the land.

commented 9 years ago

Bob/PKB

zorro, were the people educated in public schools, getting support from parents to learn? When my eldest started kindergarten, one of his classmates was ESL. The next year, his brother joined my second, and didn't know a word of English in spite of his brother's "learning" the previous year. TWO more years later and my youngest is a classmate of their younger sister. SHE didn't know a word of English, either. It tells me the parents didn't care enough to learn ANYTHING to share with their kids. Really opened my eyes to ESL. That should include the whole family from the get-go.
Flip, maybe she is good at teaching but not so good at practicing what she teaches!

commented 9 years ago