Over here, sheetrock is called plasterboard and yes, dry liners are the same trade as sheetrock tapers, except they fit the battens and the plasterboard sheets as well as taping, filling and sanding them.
On the subject of “people who are trying to escape their erstwhile regionalisms”, over here there are certain giveaways, like the pronunciation of “us”, which has a hard “s” in the south but a soft one in the north.  I remember a newsreader who spoke BBC English (of course!) except for the telltale “uz”..

This is what we (or at least I) in the UK know as plasterboard, bought with one side (usually grey) pre-prepared for plastering and the other (white) for dry-lining/dry-walling. The techniques used are more-or-less the same as described above.

Edit: pipped by bayard.

bayard - 31 March 2007 07:19 AM

the pronunciation of “us”, which has a hard “s” in the south but a soft one in the north.

I’m almost getting to the point where I remember which is hard and which is soft.  Voiced and unvoiced just makes a whole lot more sense to me.

Now you’ve got me baffled.  “Unvoiced” to me suggests not pronounced at all, like the p in psychology.

voiced generally means the use of the vocal cords or other parts of the throat to make a sound combined with the tongue and teeth or palate.  Unvoiced means that these parts are not used.  A “z” sound uses a combination of throat and mouth where as a “s” sound does not.  A “z” is therefore voiced and an “s” is not.

Have I got that right Faldage?  I had to look these things up the last time he used the distinction.

That’s my recollection too. I’d call the ‘p’ in psychology silent.

“Unvoiced” to me suggests not pronounced at all, like the p in psychology.

My Uncle Richard (more of a wag than a linguist) used to say: “There are numerous words in English in which the “P” is silent, as in bathing”.

Oecolampadius - 31 March 2007 10:12 AM

voiced generally means the use of the vocal cords or other parts of the throat to make a sound combined with the tongue and teeth or palate.  Unvoiced means that these parts are not used.  A “z” sound uses a combination of throat and mouth where as a “s” sound does not.  A “z” is therefore voiced and an “s” is not.

Have I got that right Faldage?  I had to look these things up the last time he used the distinction.

That’s it.  To me the voiced sound of the Z sounds like a saw blade and the unvoiced sound of the S soulnds like silk sliding over something.  The former is hard and the latter soft, but that’s the opposite of the pronunciation usage.  I gather the hard/soft disticntion derives from the fortis/lenis distinction, but the last time I looked that one up it had some other meaning and the unvoiced/voiced aspects were just incidental.

See:

Fortis

Lenis

Voiced and unvoiced just makes a whole lot more sense to me.

You can skip the “to me.” I always find myself annoyed by these traditional terms like “hard,” “soft,” “broad,” “flat,” and the like; I’m rarely sure what’s being described.  How I wish everyone could take a basic linguistics course in high school or the equivalent so that “voiced” and “unvoiced” and other such terms would be common usage, and we’d all know what was being said!

Thanks, everyone.  Now I know how the terms “voiced” and “unvoiced” arise, they make sense to me, too.

Why is it that Californians don’t have an identifiable accent? Do any other American states share this characteristic? (Checking with the Speech Accent Archive, Alaska seems to have no placeable accent either, if the woman from Palmer, Alaska, is representative).

As a rule, the American west does not have distinguishable accents. I’m not an expert on the subject, but I would chalk it up to immigration patterns. The west was settled by Anglos relatively late (California, the first of the western states, got statehood in 1850. Arizona, last of the continental states, was in 1912. And Alaska was in 1959.) And the bulk of the population is of even more recent vintage. Relatively few Californians can trace their roots back through several generations of California residents. There hasn’t been that much time for accents to take root.

(I’m both typical and atypical. I’ve been a Californian for less than ten years, but my dad was born here, as were his parents, if I remember the birth certificates correctly. I have cousins who can trace their California heritage through at least three generations. That’s a long time for these parts.)

Also, the immigrants came from all over. They didn’t bring a single accent with them, but rather many. As a result, a generic, neutral accent became the norm.

foolscap - 30 March 2007 07:12 PM

My freshman linguistics professor at UC Santa Barbara

A fellow Gaucho! (for lack of a non-stupid mascot name...) I was there in the early ‘80s?  How about you?

This thread got me introspecting (damn near killed me, took half a bottle of vodka to calm me down). I’ve always said “roof” with a ‘to-whit-to-whoo” sound --- but i suddenly realized that all my life i’ve actually been pronouncing “room” in two different ways. when i say “room” on its own, it’s a long “oo” as in “gloom”, “tomb”, etc. --- on the other hand , “bedroom” comes out with a short “oo”, the sort of sound my father (a native of Merseyside) would make when saying “come” or “drum”.  Is this a peculiarity of mine, I wonder, or are there others who do this? Perhaps it’s because of the accent in “bedroom” being on the first syllable?

Richard-

I hate to say it but I was there in 75-76! Mygod that was a long time ago. State Street is now completely revamped. I remember having some trouble starting my car on the street and looking around getting a little worried for my safety and well being. Then some guy—one of the “bums” standing around—walked over and politely told me I had flooded the engine and what to do about it. Goleta didn’t appear to have changed much when I went through a few years ago. An older cousin of mine was actually living in Goleta when they burned the Bank of America down. (damned Hippies) When I was there, Borsodi’s had a psychic who charged five dollars for fifteen minutes. One of the first things out of his mouth was that it didn’t matter where I lived, wherever I felt I could do my work best. I had been considering a transfer to UC Berkeley, so I went ahead and did it. Well, not only on his say-so but also a couple of friends of mine were transferring and, deep down inside that’s where I wanted to be. SB is truly a paradise though. Glad I spent some time there.

Lionello,

As long as you rhyme bedroom with redrum it’s OK, and if you mix the two it’s OK, just don’t mix so much you spell the latter backwards. The hangovers are like tekillya.