Just a little note:
This is my last contribution to this thread before any major change occurs. I have no longer wish to spend hours of my time (that I already don't have) in research if it is to get back unnecessary unfriendly comments and feel insulted as shown in the recent post.
Please note that in my comments there are two things, my personal opinion, and an objective one (dialectal differences).
It's been more than a year that this debate has been opened and it is still unsolved. I sincerely thought that this debate was going to be over now, but I was deadly wrong. As we already discussed all possibilities, I've never paid close attention to the pronunciation and I've never used intentionally my professional skills to compare the way Jason, Porte, Michael or anyone else, pronounces different words. Once, I did however open a thread about the linguistical details hoping to find other linguists and discuss the issue, but it was eventually closed in order to limit the Cascio discussion to this thread. So it all stopped there.
Now, I have recently asked to hear Jason's albums in order to try to analyse his accent, although it is a difficult task when someone sings.
At the same time I was gathering information about different dialects in the U.S.A.
As many people have been claiming to hear Jason Malachi on the Cascio tracks, I needed to have an objective confirmation by comparing Jason's dialectal pronunciation with the Cascio singer's ones. As I already know Michael's accent, I left it for later.
I've been listening to Jason's albums Critical and Resurrection for a week or two now trying to pinpoint the slightest dialectal pronunciation from his region, Maryland and eventually Washington D.C. which is somewhat influenced by the Virginia dialect from the northern part of that State.
Here is a map of the dialectal differences in English on the American ground:
here is another example of the map:
We can clearly see that the eastern part of the United States (JM's region) has more dialectal nuances than the Western part (MJ's region).
The region of Maryland is believed to be one of the first regions to be occupied by the settlers. According to the historians and linguists the reason why we have impression that they do not have any distinctive accent (when in reality they do) is because all other English dialects accross the U.S. have developped from the initial Maryland's region. Of course they do have their own distinctive dialect with their own jargon too, mostly influenced by the region of Baltimore.
Here are some characteristics in the Maryland's dialect:
Vowels
- [oʊ] shifts to [eʊ].
- prerhotic monopthongizations: [eɪ] becomes ; so bared can rhyme with leered and *[aɪ], [ɔɪ] ,and [aʊ] become [ɔ]; choir and hire rhyme with war, aisle and boil with ball
[*][aɪ] becomes [a] before [ɹ]; fire is pronounced as [fɑɹ], sometimes rendered pseudophonetically as far
[*]As in Philadelphia, the word "water" is often pronounced as "wooder" (/wʊdər/) or, more uniquely, (/wɔɹdəɹ/).
[*]Resistance to the "cot–caught" merger is common in Baltimorese. The words 'cot' /ɑ/ and 'caught' /ɔ/ do not rhyme. Similar word pairings are 'don' and 'dawn', 'stock' and 'stalk', 'tock' and 'talk'. The word 'on' rhymes with 'dawn', but not 'don'.
[*]As in most Mid-Atlantic cities, short-'a' is pronounced two different ways: for example, the word 'sad' /æ/ will not rhyme with the word 'mad' /eə/. Pronunciation is dependent upon a complex system of rules that differ from city to city.[SUP][4][/SUP] For more details on the Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore systems see: phonemic æ-tensing in the Mid-Atlantic region.
[*]epenthetic [ɹ]; notably, "wash" is pronounced as [wɑɹʃ], popularly written as "warsh."
[*]elision is common
[*]There is a consistent distinction between the pronunciation of "can" (to be able to) /kɛn/ and "can" (aluminum/tin) /ˈkæːn/.
Consonants
- [f] is often substituted for [θ]
- [ʒ] is often substituted for [z] and, sometimes,
[*]As is common in many US dialects /t/ is frequently elided after /n/, thus hunter is pronounced [hʌnɚ] sometimes written pseudophonetically as hunner
[*]The [ɪŋ] (-ing) ending of participle forms is pronounced [iːn] as in "They're go-een to the store."
[*][ə] is often eliminated entirely from a word; (e.g. Annapolis = Naplis, cigarette = cigrette, company = compny)
[*]Baltimore English tends to use a voiced "d" sound for words beginning with a [ð] sound. This is very characteristic of dialects in the Northeast. The popularly cited example of this is "dis, dem, and dose" in place of "this, them, and those".
[*]L vocalization is common. The sound /l/ is often replaced by the semivowel or glide /w/ and/or /o/ or /ʊ/. Pronunciation of words like "middle" and "college" become [mɪdo] and [kɑwɪdʒ] respectively. The word 'hulk' become the same as 'hawk' /hɔk/. L vocalization almost never occurs if the /l/ is at the beginning of the word.
As I am extremely busy, this has been only the beginning of my research.
So, while listening to Jason's albums, I took into account all these criteria and tried to detect them. As a matter of fact I did detect some things:
When Jason Malachi sings, he does elide "t" phonemes from his words. For example in his own songs he pronounces:
patiently - / ˈpeɪʃnlɪ/ [patien'ly] instead of / ˈpeɪʃntlɪ/
want you - /wɒnjʊ/ [wan'you] isntead of /wɒntjʊ/ or /wɒntʃjʊ/[wantyou] or [wantchyou]
The Cascio singer pronounces:
mirror - / ˈmɪ:r(ə
/ (MD's dialect) instead of / ˈmɪrər/
stalking -/ ˈstɒkɪŋ/ (MD's dialect) instead of / /stɔːkɪŋ/
In the song Monster "stalking" is pronounced as in MD's dialect. In Breaking News, in the beginning of the song, you can hear the singer pronounce it the MD's way too - "stocking" instead of stalking.
Michael clearly pronounces the word correctly as it can be heard in his song PRIVACY. Indeed, the way Michael sings it there is much slower, but the issue is not the speed, but the vowel itself. So even if we sped up Michael's "stalking" in PRIVACY, the vowel be pronounced faster, not differently.
Here are some more words of the same family to give you an idea:
walk vs mock
talk vs clock
stalk vs stock
in phonetic transcription [al] = ɔː and not [ock] ɒ as pronounced by the people from Maryland. So we can clearly see that it is the vowel that is different, not the speed of its pronunciation.
The cascio singer elides the sound [t] in some words, which is also a MD characteristic (but also in many other parts in the U.S.). Earlier I showed also that Jason elides the [t] sound, which is normal, since he's from MD. Despite the fact that elision of [t] is quite common in the U.S., I don't recollect MJ doing it. I still haven't had time to on that yet.
Examples in the Cascio songs:
wanting is pronounced / ˈwɒnɪŋ/ [wanning] instead of / ˈwɒntɪŋ/ [wanting]
waiting is pronounced / ˈweɪŋ/ [wai'ing] instead of / ˈweɪtɪŋ/ [waiting] or / ˈweɪdɪŋ/ [weiding]
The way the word Monster is pronounced, it is not clear for me if it is common for MD people, but undoubtedly it is common in the northern part of Virginia and Washington D.C. where [-uh] sound replaces [-r] sound after a vowel.
It is pronounced:
/ ˈmɒnstʌ/ [monst-uh)] instead of / ˈmɒnstər/ [monster]*
I would just like to add that Michael Jackson pronounces "mirror", "wanting", "waiting", "stalking" the way it is suggested in the dictionary and not the way people from MD pronounce them.
And another thing, I haven't heard any snorts in MJ's songs, but I did hear a snort in Jason Malachi's "Room to breathe", it could be caused by his own individual pronunciation or because of the dialect he uses.
I was going to do more thorough research, but after the latest conversation I've had, I'm just gonna give it up.
Bye everyone.
*Addendum I:
The chorus part in the song "Monster" is pronounced differently from the way singer does it, the standard way: / ˈmɒnstər/ [monster]
Addendum II:
Almost, if not all, words in the song Monster ending with -ing are pronounced -een (MD's dialect). Has Michael done it in his songs too? Yes, in Workin' Day And Night or Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' (Common U.S. slang). However, I don't have impression that Michael does it systematically in all his songs, whereas Jason does it in all his songs on his albums.
