burntcopper | accents of the damned colonials, further diaries of a pseudo-lunger

The cough's back. Yay. (not that it ever really goes away...) Deep barky version with occasional wheezing, no fits. Slight bit of blood, or at least taste of blood, tiny bit of phlegm. Already got one 'ah, the tuberculosis is back' from Gregor. Someday I really should get an indepth check, only it's a wee bit difficult to get that kind of thing on the NHS if you're basically healthy and your previous doctor never saw any reason to comment. (Dr Keast having known me since I was in junior school and having seen me through bronchitis and expecting it as part of me getting even slightly run-down) Going in and saying 'er, I have a cough that's a symptom of being run-down which becomes almost non-existent if I live in a really damp area, otherwise they're completely healthy, can I have them checked out? I've had my TB injection twice.' would almost certainly be seen as taking the piss...

Other question, for the colonials : Was wondering what the upper class accent situation is like in the US. (not that it in any way counts as actual upper class - we only just count the British Royal Family as upper class) Excluding the South (who have an accent all to themselves) is there a specific upper-class accent, like there is in the UK, which mostly results from mixing with only one class and everyone going to the same schools, or does it vary from region to region? Pretty much all the people you see on film who're portrayed as upper-class (by which I mean old money - if you're new money you can never be more than jumped-up middle or working class, but your children are allowed to be upper class - is that the same in the snobbier classes in the colonies?) seem to be theoretically from New York or Maine. And they all have what sounds like the same accent.

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upper class accents definately vary by region. what you see on TV is either New York (new yawk) or Boston (baaaaaaahston) but there are upper class people all across the country and those accents aren't universal.

Also, there isn't just one school or school system that rich snobs go to. Could be Yale or Harvard (Northeast) or Princeton (New Jersey, very different). Upper class Californians may still attend UC schools and never 'go east' for college...

Class is still one of those "shhhhhhh we don't talk about it" here in the States, so it's rather difficult to say - as a *non upper class girl* what's 'usual' or 'expected'....

Take that cough to your GP! Really, no NHS GP I've ever had would have a problem looking into a chronic/persistent cough.

gah. my problem is that I'd feel like a time waster - having had it viewed as 'heather's irritating quirk' my entire life by everyone who knows me, which is almost certainly compounded by me going 'oh, ignore it, it just means I'm not in perfect health'. Not to mention the fact that my current surgery runs on the 'phone up in the morning/afternoon of the day you want an appointment' system.

Have you gotten checked for "walking pneumonia?" Seriously, I had that for three months earlier this year, and it sounds much like what you're describing.

As for accents--I expect there would be a different "old money" upper class one for each region. (Not that I KNOW any "old money.") Some regions would be more likely to have a large upperclass community, of course, for various historical reasons. (For instance, Virginia had a lot of plantations, the whole "Gone with the Wind" thing going. Neighboring North Carolina, for reasons of climate/geography and original settlement by a much higher percentage of banished prisoners/people working off debts etc., tended much more toward little scruffy tenant farms. NC only joined up on the Confederate side in the Civil War after they were SURROUNDED by Confederate states and would have been basically starved out of existence otherwise. And Virginia (and South Carolina too) STILL have much more of a "plantation" vibe, and an obsession with antebellum and Civil War history. Frickin' historical markers ever eight feet or so.)

Um, that got a bit off topic. Anyway, my point is: many regional variations! And some of them not merely by region, but by tiny little sliver of state. (For instance, in "Best in Show", Christopher Guest does an amazing, SPOT-ON not just "Southern" accent--there isn't ONE Southern accent, really--not just North Carolina accent--but a perfect "Western North Carolina mountain hollows."

I'll shut up now.

Huh. interesting.

As for the cough - I doubt it's walking pneumonia. I've had this almost my entire life, my parents generally attribute it to me getting something in Indonesia as a child, it goes almost completely if I live at the seaside and it probably wouldn't sound nearly as bad if my lungs weren't so damn powerful. gah. I'd probably feel less guilty about complaining if it wasn't treated like an irritating quirk by everyone. My brother runs a temperature in the 100s, I get the cough.

(am surfing friendsfriends)

spuffyduds is right--there are no universal accents in the States. I've lived in North Carolina my entire life, and in one county for most of it. Certain parts of the *county* have their own accent, and sometimes I can pick out which county someone grew up in on the basis of accent alone.

I just checked--North Carolina is larger than England. It probably has about as many accents as well.

I've never heard an accent from the States I'd associate with the upper class. There are a few I'd associate with specific old money, but they differ by where the old money is.

I think distinguishing between accents comes with familiarity. If you've not spent much time in the States, American accents sound broadly similar, and the same would be true of Americans who haven't visited England. The distinctions may be subtle to an outsider, but they're there.

Most of the big important prestigious schools are in the Northeast -- Massachusetts especially -- so a variation on that accent often goes along with the American upper class, or at least the public perceptions of it.

There's also, I should note, a very specific Southern accent that goes along with it, too -- the South is a huge place and a Georgia accent is very different from a Louisiana accent is very different from a Texas accent (hell, there's a ton of variation just within Texas). I'd say a kind of Georgia/Virginia accent is associated with the old old old upper classes of the South (for the obvious reason that Virginia was where most of the aristocracy has been from the eighteenth century onward: see the Pages, Tuckers, Nelsons, etc), and a Texas variation for the more new-money families.

I'd disagree. I'd say the old old upper classes of the South are only from the Tidewater in Virginia and Charleston in South Carolina, with the only possible exception being Savannah in Georgia. When and who settled Georgia keep it out of the old money elite.

Additionally, SC and VA were settled at different times by different groups, so the old money in the two places don't have the same accent.

Gah. It ate my post.

But the point of the GP is to check things like that out and make sure it isn't something more serious.

The poshest American accent I ever heard was on some TV adaptation. I think it was Great Expectations? Quite a while ago... A women from Texas was mixing with the aristocrats in London...

I've had a persistant dry cough for years, and when I took it to the GP, rather embarrassed, they at least sent me for a chest x-ray, to rule out something very nasty. They also tried me on various inhalers, which gave me the shakes, and made me breathe into a tube to check it wasn't asthma. I suspect it's a stress cough, exacerbated by living in London.

But the doc won't think you're a malingerer and it's definitely worth mentioning, especially if you're coughing up blood! No one will think you're a timewaster.

accents of the damned colonials, further diaries of a pseudo-lunger

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