Accents

So I recently purchased the self-titled debut album by The Futureheads, which I'm enjoying very much (read a review here). The band is (to my mind) a cross between the hyperactivity of The Clash and the vocal harmonizing of The Who, with a dash of the weirdness of Devo. If you like The Clash's first album you'll probably like The Futureheads.

But anyway, on my favorite track on the album, there's a line about "Your hounds of lovin'." Except that the lead singer, being British (not sure where from, though), pronounces the word loovin, which sounds both cool and strange at the same time. And that got me thinking about accents, and how arbitrary they are. That is, no one accent or dialect of a language is any more correct than the others (if you don't agree, read The Power of Babel by John McWhorter) - an Englishman saying loov is no more correct than an American saying luv (which means that we should all take dictionary pronunciation guides with a grain of salt). We only perceive certain dialects/accents as correct/incorrect, nice/sloppy, high-class/low-class due to various social, economic, political, and historical reasons. (Think about it, their respective accents are part of the reason John Kerry is seen as a blowhard and George Bush as a nincompoop.)

The further strange thing about accents is that you don't perceive your own accent (at least I don't - I can't speak for others). That is, as far as I can tell, I speak perfectly unaccented normal English and I'm sure all Scotsmen, Australians, and Jamaicans think the same thing. My best experience with this phenomenom was when my friends and I met a couple South African girls who thought the way Americans pronounce "water" was hilarious. And I had never thought of it before, but it's true that Americans pronounce it wad-ur while others pronounce it wah-ter. Again, neither is more correct, but it struck me as odd that such a simple and common word would and could have two completely separate pronunciations (and yet it led to no barrier in communication). Language is fascinating that way.