Different American accents

[DiscoBoy]

How ironic:
Your Result: North Central

"North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.

 

[StrictlyAvg]

I'm pretty good at it. I can tell regions well, can separate Welsh from Scots instantly. Liverpool is very easy to spot as is Yorkshire. The southern accent variants give me the most trouble. I can also spot accent by class fairly well. I've gotten to be pretty good with Irish accents as well. County Claire, Cork, Galway, Ulster, Dublin, and others are quite clear to me. I'd love to hear Manx and Channel Islander accent; not sure I ever have.

Thats quite an ear to distinguish Irish accents Jason! I can spot Belfast, Dublin and Cork - beyond that I couldn't pin it down to more than Eire or Ulster

One down for ya .... Manx accent

 

[2322]

That's surprising....
We have what is commonly known as the "Midland Accent" with cuts a wide swath across America. It's what most newscasters speak. Here's the test....

What American accent do you have?

Strong northeast with upper north a strong second which, I think, reflects the fact I don't live in the city. We do use long a long O in words like "roof" or "cool" which is just a holdover from the Dutch days though oddly, this area wasn't strongly Dutch. There's a fascinating accent just over the border from me in rural Sussex New Jersey that's very strongly Dutch and there are still a tiny handful of speakers left who can speak New Jersey Dutch.

 

[2322]

Thats quite an ear to distinguish Irish accents Jason! I can spot Belfast, Dublin and Cork - beyond that I couldn't pin it down to more than Eire or Ulster

One down for ya .... Manx accent

Thing is, when I go there I stay with friends right in County Westmeath and we travel around a lot. Staying with natives gives you a unique perspective and particularly so when one of them is a school teacher and is fluent in Irish.

Thank you for that Manx link. I'm kind of find Man fascinating as it has largely avoided all the various Troubles and Clearances and other political turmoil. I also fined their use of the Triskelion really interesting because it's the exact same symbol used in diverse places such as Estonia and Sicily. How did these three places develop it and were they linked?

To me, that guy sounds a bit Irish, Welsh, Scots, and Liverpudlian all put together. No wonder his teachers though he was a bit odd.

 

[D_Tyrone_Tittickler]

It's 120am and I cannot type!!!

 

[D_Tyrone_Tittickler]

Damn! I wish that I had discovered this thread earlier!

I don't doubt it. To you, the difference between Rhode Island and New York accents is obvious. To someone from outside the Northeast, New York, Boston, and Providence accents are all going to sound pretty similar, because they sound more like each other than they sound like the accents that prevail in the rest of the country -- outside of New Orleans, of course, where the people sound like a bunch of New Yorkers pretending to be Southerners!


En effet Cal !

I frequently have to assure some of the locals that I am indeed a New Orleanian. For some reason I am expected to speak with a drawl that is associated with a native Atlantan. New Orleans was an immigrant city during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. The French were the first to arrive; soon followed by the Bavarians. The Irish populated the riverfront neighborhoods during the mid 19th centuries and then the Sicilians poured into the city beginning in the 1850's through 1920. The blending of all of these European accents has produced a local accent that is similar to a Brooklyn accent. There are variations of the New Orleans accent heard throughout the city. Residents of the 7th and 9th wards as well as St. Bernard Parish have a pronounced accent that is unmistakeable. They are likely to pronounce the city name as Nawlinz. Residents of the Garden District or Uptown, my neighborhood, have a much softer accent and say that they live in New Awlinz. I am generalizing, but accents vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. We are definitely Southerners, Cal. New Yorkers would never tolerate our driving habits!!!

Let me speak in the New Orleans "Yat" dialect for you... "hey bay let me gitta muffaletta an put a lil' lagniappe on'ere, aw betta yet, gimme a roas' beef awn french, dressed. Ya wouldn't a had ta go out ta eat if ya mama'an'em woulda made groceries. I'll be awn'a otha side of the neutral ground if ya need me. Yeah ya rite. I'm a New Orleans native. Oh, I can speak proper if I need to. We can speak in both New Orleans dialect and standard American English too.

Redbeans and rice, anyone?

 

[lorne]

(North inland - You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop.")


albertan canadian so its almost correct in away.

I find differences in english accents in my city and province with a tiny population in comparison to England or even New York, The fact that accents can be soooo different in one Metropolitan area amazes me. I can place alot of american accents, but when you get to district or class within those areas I am at a loss.

 

[798686]

Thing is, when I go there I stay with friends right in County Westmeath and we travel around a lot. Staying with natives gives you a unique perspective and particularly so when one of them is a school teacher and is fluent in Irish.

Thank you for that Manx link. I'm kind of find Man fascinating as it has largely avoided all the various Troubles and Clearances and other political turmoil. I also fined their use of the Triskelion really interesting because it's the exact same symbol used in diverse places such as Estonia and Sicily. How did these three places develop it and were they linked?

To me, that guy sounds a bit Irish, Welsh, Scots, and Liverpudlian all put together. No wonder his teachers though he was a bit odd.

Isle of Man is great. Kind of seems like a natural part of North-West England, in both landscape (lovely) and accent. They're included in the North-West Region for local news and stuff.

Plus, they're not in the EU, which is a bonus. Might escape there someday.
Weird cats, though. :wink:

 

[gordeux2006]

One of the oddest accents I have heard is the back country accent of people in small towns in way upstate NY. I am talking about the region north of Lake Placid and west of Plattsburgh.

I can't seem to find a good YouTube example of it, though. I believe it has a heavy French Canadian component to it. In fact, sometimes French syntax creeps in as in the demonstrative, "I am going downtown, me.", or similarly, "Hey, ya going downtown there, you?"

I lived in that region about 30 years ago for about 5 years. I can still here an old guy I knew talking about his snowmobile, "Chroist, I took dat dere Artic Cat up ta tha flats aoutside-a Beekmantaywn and got er up about nuyndy muyles per owwer. Jaysus Chroist, yaas. Uy guess so!"

There is an odd way they pronounce words like fire or tire, where fire sounds almost like foyer, but maybe fuyer is more like it.

Colorful epithets, also. Such as "By the Jesus", when mildly emphatic, or when very emphatic, "By the jumped up Jesus Christ."

It is also laced with a midwestern component at the same time where a name like Dawn sounds more like Don.

I was born and bred in Liverpool, with Irish grandparents but don't hold that against me, anyway, I left to live here in Australia when I was 20. I didn't consider my Liverpudlian accent to be strong, as strong as say Ringo Starr (Who incidentally grew up three streets away from me in Admiral Grove) or as my mother would say 'as common as Cilla Black'
But in 1975 when Multiculturalism was a new concept, I was always being told to 'Speak Australian!' 'Why dontcha talk Austray-lian ya pommy bastard!' with that hard 'a' which grated on my nerves. As you said Bostonians pronounce it in 'car' or 'far' like papa. I still can't say it with comfort.
I lived in New Zealand for a while and their accent is very different, their vowels are pronounced as they learned the sounds as a child; Fish and Chips becomes Fuch 'n Chups six is sucks, Smith sounds like Smut, Yeah, has three consonants Ye-a-ha, into becomes Inter, very odd.
So my accent can be a mix of all three depending on who I speak to but the Scouse accent can still be detect by many, especially when I'm tired, or just can't be bothered to make the effort to talk proper!

 

[JustAsking]

gordeaux,
That notion of car = cah, and into = inter is the same around Boston. I used to call it "conservation of R's". As in, "Hey, lets pahk the cah, and get a pizzer. Is that a good idear?" They don't throw away those Rs that they drop. They simply use them somewhere else.

I have heard it enough times in British accents, so I am betting that this is where it comes from.

 

[pleasureboy]

Dog Trainah, Where y'at babe? lol

I used to bartend at Lafitte's and the tourists would do the same thing "Where's your accent?"

"This is my accent."

"So you're not from Louisiana?"

"This is how most people from Louisiana talk."

"Oh..."

(then add in some comment about how it's boring, more questions about how I "lost my accent", or any other thing that would try to argue that I should sound like Scarlett O'Hara or Foghorn Leghorn!

Here's another regional question that's not accent related:

Why do Canadians tip but the Americans who live on the other side of the Canadian border (sometimes maybe 30 minutes away) don't???

Oh yeah and Dogtrainer, if you're not busy, can you run down to Central Grocery and fedex me one of those muffaletas?

Damn! I wish that I had discovered this thread earlier!

I don't doubt it. To you, the difference between Rhode Island and New York accents is obvious. To someone from outside the Northeast, New York, Boston, and Providence accents are all going to sound pretty similar, because they sound more like each other than they sound like the accents that prevail in the rest of the country -- outside of New Orleans, of course, where the people sound like a bunch of New Yorkers pretending to be Southerners!


En effet Cal !

I frequently have to assure some of the locals that I am indeed a New Orleanian. For some reason I am expected to speak with a drawl that is associated with a native Atlantan. New Orleans was an immigrant city during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. The French were the first to arrive; soon followed by the Bavarians. The Irish populated the riverfront neighborhoods during the mid 19th centuries and then the Sicilians poured into the city beginning in the 1850's through 1920. The blending of all of these European accents has produced a local accent that is similar to a Brooklyn accent. There are variations of the New Orleans accent heard throughout the city. Residents of the 7th and 9th wards as well as St. Bernard Parish have a pronounced accent that is unmistakeable. They are likely to pronounce the city name as Nawlinz. Residents of the Garden District or Uptown, my neighborhood, have a much softer accent and say that they live in New Awlinz. I am generalizing, but accents vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. We are definitely Southerners, Cal. New Yorkers would never tolerate our driving habits!!!

Let me speak in the New Orleans "Yat" dialect for you... "hey bay let me gitta muffaletta an put a lil' lagniappe on'ere, aw betta yet, gimme a roas' beef awn french, dressed. Ya wouldn't a had ta go out ta eat if ya mama'an'em woulda made groceries. I'll be awn'a otha side of the neutral ground if ya need me. Yeah ya rite. I'm a New Orleans native. Oh, I can speak proper if I need to. We can speak in both New Orleans dialect and standard American English too.

Redbeans and rice, anyone?

 

[Calboner]

One of the oddest accents I have heard is the back country accent of people in small towns in way upstate NY. I am talking about the region north of Lake Placid and west of Plattsburgh.

I can't seem to find a good YouTube example of it, though. I believe it has a heavy French Canadian component to it. In fact, sometimes French syntax creeps in as in the demonstrative, "I am going downtown, me.", or similarly, "Hey, ya going downtown there, you?"

I lived in that region about 30 years ago for about 5 years. I can still here an old guy I knew talking about his snowmobile, "Chroist, I took dat dere Artic Cat up ta tha flats aoutside-a Beekmantaywn and got er up about nuyndy muyles per owwer. Jaysus Chroist, yaas. Uy guess so!"

There is an odd way they pronounce words like fire or tire, where fire sounds almost like foyer, but maybe fuyer is more like it.

Colorful epithets, also. Such as "By the Jesus", when mildly emphatic, or when very emphatic, "By the jumped up Jesus Christ."

It is also laced with a midwestern component at the same time where a name like Dawn sounds more like Don.

In transcription, it looks a bit like what I've heard of Newfie (Newfoundland) speech. "Oh, oi's the boy that built the boat, and oi's the boy that sails it!"

Let me speak in the New Orleans "Yat" dialect for you... "hey bay let me gitta muffaletta an put a lil' lagniappe on'ere, aw betta yet, gimme a roas' beef awn french, dressed. Ya wouldn't a had ta go out ta eat if ya mama'an'em woulda made groceries. I'll be awn'a otha side of the neutral ground if ya need me. Yeah ya rite. I'm a New Orleans native. Oh, I can speak proper if I need to. We can speak in both New Orleans dialect and standard American English too.

Redbeans and rice, anyone?

If I had a recording to go with that, I could probably get it down, but I don't have enough of an independent auditory impression of the accent to derive the sound from the transcription. I'll have to look for samples on YouTube.

Isle of Man is great. Kind of seems like a natural part of North-West England, in both landscape (lovely) and accent. They're included in the North-West Region for local news and stuff.

Plus, they're not in the EU, which is a bonus. Might escape there someday.
Weird cats, though. :wink:

Ever see the Manx characters in The Fast Show? Pretty harsh caricature, but funny, at least if you're not Manx.

I lived in New Zealand for a while and their accent is very different, their vowels are pronounced as they learned the sounds as a child; Fish and Chips becomes Fuch 'n Chups six is sucks, Smith sounds like Smut, Yeah, has three consonants Ye-a-ha, into becomes Inter, very odd.

Are you sure it wasn't more like "fesh and cheps"? I had the impression that New Zealanders conflate short "i" and short "e." Once when I had moved into a new apartment (in the US), I needed to buy a new bed, and happened to mention this to my landlord, who was from New Zealand. The next time I saw him, he said to me, "Did you get a bid?", which flummoxed me until I figured out that he was asking if I had found a bed.

gordeaux,
That notion of car = cah, and into = inter is the same around Boston. I used to call it "conservation of R's". As in, "Hey, lets pahk the cah, and get a pizzer. Is that a good idear?" They don't throw away those Rs that they drop. They simply use them somewhere else.

I have heard it enough times in British accents, so I am betting that this is where it comes from.

Only Bostonians put R's on the ends of words that have no written R in them when there is no vowel following. The English put R's in between a word ending in a vowel and an immediately following word beginning with one. They don't say "Good idear!", but they will say "The idear-is," or "Emmar-and I," and even "I sawr-it" and "drawring." The R is only a link between two vowels. In phonetics the phenomenon is called "intrusive R." What some Bostonians have, when they insert an R after a vowel without a following vowel, as in "That's the idear," is called hypercorrection.

 

[D_Jared Padalicki]

As an Englishman (sort of some would say being a Geordie ) I can often work out to with a few miles where in England someone is from by their accent.

Years ago I thought all Scots sounded the same until I lived in various parts of Scotland over about a 9 year period. Now I can clearly make out an accent from Glasgow, Edinbugh, Aberdeen, Inverness etc. Some of these place are not that far apart. Glasgow and Edinburgh are around 40 miles apart for example but very different.

I struggle though with American accents. I can just about tell apart an East or West coast accent and a southern accent. Those of you in the US can you pin point an accent quite closely? Or do the accents vary less over greater distances by comparison to the UK?

I live in Belgium, small country, well imagine the north of Belgium, Flandres... We have so many dialects/accents in that little area... So I believe it is like that everywhere in the world. :smile:

 

[D_Tyrone_Tittickler]

Dog Trainah, Where y'at babe? lol

I used to bartend at Lafitte's and the tourists would do the same thing "Where's your accent?"

"This is my accent."

"So you're not from Louisiana?"

"This is how most people from Louisiana talk."

"Oh..."

(then add in some comment about how it's boring, more questions about how I "lost my accent", or any other thing that would try to argue that I should sound like Scarlett O'Hara or Foghorn Leghorn!

Here's another regional question that's not accent related:

Why do Canadians tip but the Americans who live on the other side of the Canadian border (sometimes maybe 30 minutes away) don't???

Oh yeah and Dogtrainer, if you're not busy, can you run down to Central Grocery and fedex me one of those muffaletas?


Hey dere Pleasure Boy,

No problem, I bin knowin' the Grocery a long time, yeah! I make sure 'dat you get some lagniappe wit 'dat.(pronounced lanyap, a little something extra)

I used to live on Lowerline St. in the Carrollton neighborhood of Uptown. I frequently had to travel to the CBD to see to office business. I would board the St. Charles Ave. streetcar (not the trolley) at Willow and Carrollton. One morning I was waiting at the stop with a couple of out-of-town visitors. The lady approached me and asked, "How much does it cost to ride the trolley?" I replied, "One dollah and a quartah, mam." She then commented about my accent. "I just love your Noo Orleenz accent." My reply to her and her companion was, "Oh, I don't have an accent, y'all do!"

I have attached a youtube link so that y'all can hear firsthand authentic New Orleans accents.

YouTube - A variety of New Orleans accents from YEAH YOU RITE!

 

[slurper_la]

... I can tell major differences apart now. New York seems easy to spot...

Having grown up in NY (NYC) I can tell the difference between a Bronx accent and a Brooklyn accent as well as the differences from around the state - Albany to Buffalo to western NY State.

 

[gordeux2006]

Are you sure it wasn't more like "fesh and cheps"? I had the impression that New Zealanders conflate short "i" and short "e." Once when I had moved into a new apartment (in the US), I needed to buy a new bed, and happened to mention this to my landlord, who was from New Zealand. The next time I saw him, he said to me, "Did you get a bid?", which flummoxed me until I figured out that he was asking if I had found a bed.

Only Bostonians put R's on the ends of words that have no written R in them when there is no vowel following. The English put R's in between a word ending in a vowel and an immediately following word beginning with one. They don't say "Good idear!", but they will say "The idear-is," or "Emmar-and I," and even "I sawr-it" and "drawring." The R is only a link between two vowels. In phonetics the phenomenon is called "intrusive R." What some Bostonians have, when they insert an R after a vowel without a following vowel, as in "That's the idear," is called hypercorrection.[/QUOTE]

Love the ''bid butt"- bed bit!
I lived in Auckland for a while then Queesnstown down on the South Island where the the accent is so 'Thuck' and guttural you could cut it with a knife, especially around the Scottish cities such as Invercargill and Dunedin.
I'm not 100% sure but I do remember some debate about 'chuldrun et primary school learning the lenguage phonetically, end there's a beg influence on it being learned thet way ez thu kuds seem to puck up reading end writeung a lot qwickur'
That's how it sounds to me anyhow, in New Zillion 'The land that rhymes with penicillin!'

 

[gordeux2006]

gordeaux,
That notion of car = cah, and into = inter is the same around Boston. I used to call it "conservation of R's". As in, "Hey, lets pahk the cah, and get a pizzer. Is that a good idear?" They don't throw away those Rs that they drop. They simply use them somewhere else.

I have heard it enough times in British accents, so I am betting that this is where it comes from.

I may be wrong but some New Yorkers sound quite harsh too. Remember the television show Rhoda from the 70s; the two Morganstein sisters were forever yelling 'Mah, hey mah' brash voices for brash women?
I notice a lot of words we used in Liverpool and being told I was wrong coming to the fore these days like; 'like' for example, instead of such as or similar to; 'by' rather than near and the best of all; 'Youse' for the plural of you which is used a lot here in Sydney.

 

[2322]

Isle of Man is great. Kind of seems like a natural part of North-West England, in both landscape (lovely) and accent. They're included in the North-West Region for local news and stuff.

Plus, they're not in the EU, which is a bonus. Might escape there someday.
Weird cats, though. :wink:

And no speed limits!

 

[798686]

Ever see the Manx characters in The Fast Show? Pretty harsh caricature, but funny, at least if you're not Manx.

:frown1: I haven't seen much of the Fast Show unfortunately, apart from 'Scorchio!' lol. Paul Whitehouse is cool, though.

We have so many dialects/accents in that little area... So I believe it is like that everywhere in the world. :smile:

I think you're probably right.

 

[Calboner]

:frown1: I haven't seen much of the Fast Show unfortunately, apart from 'Scorchio!' lol. Paul Whitehouse is cool, though.

Paul Whitehouse is AWESOME! I have watched the Fast Show on YouTube. Even though it can be very feeble at times, the good bits, like the "Suit You" tailors and "Country Matters with Bob Fleming" can be very good indeed. Here are the "Isle of Man" characters (not one of their best inventions, but pertinent here):

YouTube - Fast Show - Isle Of Man