@@1HotLegendLS Yes! Sounds like you know! Old school C-town from the bricks as a kid. And later on Warren. Used walk across the bridge and work a Regina’s in the N.End. (An honorary guido) I left there 30 years ago. Now north of SF, CA. My sister still lives there in Somerville- sounds like a James Cagney movie - every time I go back!
I'm from WI and went to Japan with the JET Program. On our first day of training, there I was- surrounded by native speakers of English from around the world- and when I asked someone to hand me my bag, only the woman from MN knew what I was talking about.
Chuck Yeager is the reason so many pilots affect a slight West Virginia accent when talking to the passengers. His stoic and calming tone in the face of death became iconic.
Your Appalachian accent is actually great compared to the rest lol. Those of us from Appalachia always appreciate when people show love for the native accent. Hopefully one day the stigma against that accent can go away and young people won't feel the need to lose their accent to be taken seriously in life.
I'm from NC and growing up I was self-conscious about my accent. When I went to college I suppressed it, but at some point, I stopped caring what other people think about it and started to lean into it.
The Appalachian accent is actually the most closely related to a working class British accent because of the coal mining industry that pulled immigrants primarily from England, Wales, and Ireland.
Father is from Barbados and mother is from North Carolina. I was raised in New York. My southern relatives tease me about my West Indian accent and my West Indian family tease me about my southern accent . I think I sound like a New Yorker. A former boss hired a guy from China who had a thick accent. I was the only one who understood him . My boss took me aside one day and asked me how I was able to understand him so easily . I told him “ Mom is from down south , dad is from the islands and I grew up in a Hispanic neighborhood” ( I’m not Hispanic) “ You think one more accent is gonna bother me!”
Americans are notoriously bad at understanding people from other countries. I love other accents! We've lived in Guyana (at least three distinct dialects, Indians, coast landers, and Amerindians, and I know these all had regional variations), Hong Kong and Singapore, and visited several other Asian countries. My husband has spent time in Europe, and we've lived in three different areas of the US, including the South. I always enjoy learning to understand the different ways of speaking, and rarely have serious difficulty understanding people from other places. It's a blessing.
I have a Welsh friend, and I think I blew his mind by demonstrating four or five different southern accents. You actually did pretty well on the accents you selected, so well done!
I’m from Columbia South Carolina and I like to joke about how I don’t really have an accent because everywhere outside of the city has such a recognizable southern twang, but my accent sounds more akin to a stereotypical general American accent
I'm a Native MinnesOOOOHtan, currently living in W'scAAAAHnsin. If you get up towards the Upper Peninsula of Michigan via the Door County/Green Bay area, the northernness of their accent is unbelievable. And yes, you nailed *most* of the upper Midwest accent. :)
I have friends from both places. I love to ask them how they say Hot Dog. Flint Michigan is definitely a different sound than Wisconsin 😂. There’s HAAT DAAGS in Wisconsin or Howt Dowgs in flint, and then my friend from New Jersey kind of says both like HeAAT Dowgs.
I grew up in Minnesota and I have to say you did pretty good!! Also, I want to share this story: I don’t have a very strong accent. Since moving away from MN, most people don’t notice, and if they do, the best guess anyone has is Midwest. Back in 2018, I was working at a cafe in Seattle when a group of Indian women walked in. I asked one lady for order and she asked “Are you from Minnesota?” I was taken aback! I never had someone be so direct, let alone right. Turns out she had a coworker from Minnesota who lives in Delhi and she just happened to be in Seattle on vacation! I still can’t believe the one and only person to ever correctly guess my accent was from half way across the world! 😂
@lyrajafed That was an interesting story. I was born in Minnesota but have lived in California since I was three. I never acquired a California accent, however, and speak with a Minnesota accent to this day. Most Californians are probably unfamiliar with Minnesota accents, because a lot of people here think I’m Canadian.
@@valerietaylor9615my situation is i am from Florida, live in New York, speak some spanish, lived in Virginia for two months, so most are really confused on where im from, the guesses i got was: British Columbia, Miami, Floricua, and Deep South
I did a similar thing to what that Indian woman in your story did, once. I picked out an Egyptian person's accent because I worked with one. Everyone always asked if they were Middle Eastern, which is kind of correct, but they said nobody ever hit the nail on the head with Egypt.
When I was in my 20s, I moved my family to Wyoming. Right after we got there, through our children, I met a lady who had just moved there from the Northeast. Here we are, one with a deep southern (MS) accent and one with a deep northeastern accent (MA). For the first 2 weeks we hung out neither of us knew what the other was saying! We'd just nod, smile, and agree.😂 We eventually caught on but it was hysterical until we did.
I’m from the Olympic Peninsula (northwest of Seattle) and when you said “Canadian surfer” I laughed out loud. I’ve never felt quite so seen. The accent itself is very similar to British Columbian, but the words we use are often much less formal. Lots of “dude,” “no worries,” and “rad,” even in a professional setting.
I've lived in the Seattle eastern suburbs my whole life, and yeah, we talk like the Ninja Turtles. I've had coworkers who called literally everybody "dude". We also use a ton of slang like coulda, gotta, dunno.
In certain hollars in Appalachia the accent is a mix to different degrees, Scots, Irish, English and a bit of German. They range from a soft to a quicker more nasal accent
I'm originally from WVa but have lived in other states and countries a lot of my adult life. When I moved back to Central WVa upon retirement, people said I sounded "Canadian"! All without any awareness on much part; my accent shifted to something very muddled.
@@sststr Yep, I know having, grown up there, my grandpas if you asked about somewhere, such as Austinville VA, the reply would be "Well, it is a Fur piece" meaning we could not ride both ways, up hill. Ridge, Valley, Hill. The ridge, coming back was the longest and steepest. A fur piece is a good bit further, (miles unless really bad terrain) than over yonder. Taking you behind the woodshed as a warning, Even if they aren't going to do it and give you a break, the 1st time. I found out behind the house, what a repeat would get me. A lot of settlers went in during the early 1700s and a generation or so moved beyond the mountains. Most families had no more than 3 books, The Bible, Pilgrims Progress, and another book maybe Political, Religious, or Shakespeare or similar. When you are limited in what you can carry after food and water, tools etc. Well you need room for feed for the animals as they are working very hard and need a lot of food to stay healthy. Even today they especially the Old Timers speak, Early Modern English, though TV and radio is slowly changing it. When I was growing up there were Gaelic speakers around, They spoke mostly Scots Gaelic, though a few spoke Erse. To the best of my knowledge the last one died around 1980. I would run into them at gas stations, feed stores and such, but didn't know them much more than to say "Hello to." They spoke enough English to get by, but their Native tongue was Gaelic. The Railroads came in the early 1900s to the middle 1920s going to the coal, zinc, lead and silver mines and some gold. That killed off the Gaelic.
Yes, the city accents differ from the mountain accents. I can fall into either quickly or get right back into standard American at the same rate. Love this kind of video.
I grew up in the middle of Pa, and went to school in Philly. You nailed the Philly accent and how diverse the accents of Pa are. Go across the river from Philly to South NJ and check out how the accent changes again
Delco here and yes, my accent was so thick that it became a running joke at work to ask me to say certain words. On tv shows set in Philly though it seems that they just default to a NYC accent and call it a day.
As a southern West Virginian (Wayne County), I have to say you did a great job. It's amazing when I travel I often get asked "Oh we love your accent, where do you come from?" At first when I was a younger man I thought this question was annoying because for me I wasn't the one with the accent, the person talking to me had the accent, but the older I got and more places I have visited I have come to understand that my accent is a beautiful thing and I am proud to tell every one who asks me that question that I am a West "By God" Virginian!
The reason why states can have such varying accents is that their compositions are semi-arbitrary. Between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia for example is hundreds of miles, a plateau, and a large mountain range
Writing from northern Maine: parts of the state were settled by people who's first language was French, and that accent is still frequently heard on the streets. There are parts, however, that were settled by other groups: not far away from my home town is a group of Swedish decendants, and when I visited Minnesota a few years ago, they sounded very similar!
Having always lived in a small town in the Appalachian mountains, I do have an accent at times (notably *not* when doing customer service; I was asked if I was a robot by one man I spoke with on the phone), but even when I'm letting my words come out as terrible as they can, my accent is nothing compared to my father's, and his has lessened significantly over the years, which is terrifying. He used to go one state over to hang out with a friend, and random people who heard him speak would stop and beg, "Say something else!" By far my best story regarding accents though is when my dad, my uncle by marriage, and my uncle's brother were attempting to have a conversation. My uncle was legitimately translating between the two, because while they were both speaking English (technically), my dad's unique-to-this-area brand of Redneckanese very much did not mix with Dominic's heavy French accent, and they got to the point where one of them would say something and look at Larry, who obligingly turned it into something the other one would understand like an unpaid interpreter. Good times.
I had friend who had similar experience. She's from the Intermountain West. She was at a party in another part of the country. Someone heard her talking, and said something to the room along the line of oh everybody listen to so-and-so.
This happened to me trying to buy beer around the red river gorge. I have a super thick Chicago accent. The man speaking to me had a super thick Appalachian accent. I couldn’t understand half of what he said and he I suspected couldn’t understand half of whats I said.. It was kinda hilarious. A lot of smile and nodding was had. A super thick chicago accent is like a boston accent with an R. But the vowels are different.
I had to laugh when you said “warshinton”. Coming from the Inland Empire (Washington and Idaho) I had to unlearn “warsh”, “squarsh”, “Ta” (to), and “fer” (for) when I moved. Only to later move to the Deep South and hear ta and fer everywhere.
As a PA Native, there are far more than 2 accents. My personal favorite is from the NW part of the state where you get something that sounds like an unholy amalgamation of Upper Midwest, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania Dutch. It has the hard 'A' (warsh instead of wash) but also has that 'doncha know' fargo sound to the the 'O'. The best description I ever saw was 'this accent is what happens when a bunch of German immigrants learn English 2nd hand from the Scots Irish'.
One of the most ... ummm ... interesting accents I ever heard was a woman who worked for one of our southern branch offices. She was born and raised in China, learned English when her family moved to the southern U.S. OMG, the poor woman had to repeat herself 2 or 3 times just so you could understand 50% of what she said.
It’s hilarious to me (from Philly) how different one side of PA sounds to the other! I never noticed how ‘Philly/Jersey’ I sounded until I moved to Texas and people all the time ask me where I’m from when I say ‘wooder’ (water) or other particular words. 😂
West Virginia English is sort of "southern" you could say, but it falls more into Appalachian English. We have a rich history and, in my opinion, a unique accent that we all share no matter the state (I'm from Kentucky and Eastern KY natives sound more similar to WVians than folks from Louisville KY). We even still have slang and hints in our accent that is still Irish and Scottish.
Appalachian English is derived from Elizabethan English even as far as sentence structure and grammar. Example: Elizabethans made a distinction between the plural phrase “you were” and the singular “you was.” Today many think Appalachian people sound undereducated when the say “you was,” but it’s culturally/historically accurate.
I’m from WV! I don’t have the accent at all but all my family does. It’s fascinating how it is linguistically. West Virginian children are especially cute with the accent.
I'm from central West Virginia, right on the Kanawha river, and to me our accent is a milder version of the "southern" accent. Oddly, I never heard "y'all" growing up, it was "you-all" for the plural and "you" for the singular. To get slightly technical we have the "cot-caught merger" and the "pin-pen merger". Perhaps due to the latter we say "set" for "sit".
I'm from the WV/KY/OH tri-state at the confluence of the Kanawha and Ohio,, but my mom's family is from Mingo County. So I have the River Rat twang, but I have a lot of the idioms from the coal camps and I understand the whole-hog Appalachian lingo.
This is a great video. He actually avoided all of the best known accents (besides Bostonian) and brought up some accents a lot of people don't know about. Appalachian (what he called Southern WV) is a good one that isn't quite the same as a Southern accent and was heavily influenced by Scots-Irish immigrants. And what he called a "Pittsburgh accent" which actually is common in eastern Ohio, Western PA and the panhandle of WV (heavily influenced by German migrants). I've lived all over the US, and this is really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to accents in this country. I spent my childhood moving from place to place as a military kid and it was very apparent to me how the way people talked changed from place to place. And you had to learn really quickly to adopt the same accent as the kids at school to avoid...problems.
I was stupidly pleased when he brought up the Philly accent. A lot of accent content will overlook it or disregard it because of Philly's association with crime and poverty. Which, yeah, Philly's a rough city depending on your location... but it's also a very unique city with a very diverse population and a rich history that contributed to it's accent and phrases. I really wish he would have mentioned the use of "Reese - EEZ" for Reese's Cup candies instead of "Reese - ess." It's sparked a lot of controversy in PA but I think Philly people tend to own the incorrect pronunciation with the most pride.
@@EmmaWhitaker-gf3uc I've always used both. Reese-ess was the brand but the actual cup we referred to as Reese-eez. Such as: "Reese-ess pieces are tasty but I love Reese-eez cups the most."
@@clueless_cutie Its so weird that's a controversy, here on my side of the rockies I grew up calling it 'Rees-iss' not 'ess' and very shortened, almost 'Rissis'
Thanks for noticing our nice, friendly "Wusgonsin" accent. I grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan, taught up North and settled in Central Wisconsin, and there are even differences in all of those accents. I was an English teacher in the Middle East, and I taught all of my students over three years to speak like me. Awesome.
There are definitely other aspects of the Wisconsin accent’s vowels that weren’t covered here. Like the tendency to turn short O vowels into short A. Wiscansin. Hackey. And the exchange of short I for short E. Melk.
This might be my favorite video so far; I'm pretty sure I laughed so hard I snorted at one point. And your American accents are way better than any British ones I could attempt. Hilarious.
Wisconsinite here, I think you broke down our accent beautifully. My first cross country trip, I was in a McDonalds and asked for a bag at the counter. After he asked me to repeat myself several times, the worker didn't know what I was saying until I started to spell the word b-a-g. We were both equally confused by each other.
I was born and spent the first 8 years of my life in a southern Pittsburgh suburb, the following ten years in north western Pennsylvania. My first career was as a radio DJ during which, as you can imagine, I had to read a LOT of copy and critically listen my recorded voice. I discovered I had a very difficult time properly enunciating the L sound, especially when it fell in the middle of words. I really struggled with it and have always thought it was a minor speech impediment. However your observations on the "Pittsburgh accent" puts what I've always thought to be a personal problem into a whole new light. Thanks!
Quite a good take on Pittsburghese. I agree that we tend to lose the Ls within words. It's fair to say they come off close to a W sound, with the tongue failing to touch the roof of the mouth and the lips rounding. Also . . . love that you noted the WV "worshington" pronunciation. I've always worshed my clothes in the worshin' machine up here 'round Picksburgh 😊
@@NotSoHeartBrokensome German, it was a lot more other Eastern Europeans who came to work in the mills. Hence our regional love affair with pierogies and the like!!
Enjoyed your cover of the Philly accent, as that was my accent through age 10. I moved to Michigan, where my cousin laughed at my speech. Within two weeks my accent was gone. When I went back east. I would roll right back into Philly speech again. Just picked it back up without even trying.
@@Lorrainecats Grew up in Philly. Move to the Dallas area some years ago and hoped I'd lose that Philly speak, but no luck. Still sound like I just finish a Philly Steak sandwich at the corner store.
The best accents are definitely Eastern and Southern states. I’m from Georgia and when I hear myself on a recording, i’m like, whoa is that me. I don’t even think of chicagoans having a distinct accent. TN, WVA, MA, NY, GA, AL, KY, LA, MS, TX, MN, WI all have unique accents. Enjoy your channel and your accent.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, but now I live in NE TN. One should not dare confuse accents from Middle Tennessee or West Tennessee with NE TN accents or even SE TN accents. They are definitely not the same. A lady I knew who grew up in North Carolina moved to NE TN and the locals immediately knew she was "not from around here" simply by her accent.
I can detect the Chicago accent a mile away; even more so since I've lived in the South. One time there was this lady at the pharmacy in front of me. I could tell from hearing her speak that she was from Chicago. As she finished her business and turned around, I said, "So, you're from Chicago?" and she said, "How'd ya know that?" with the Chicago flat "A" and I did not laugh though I was tempted to.
Don't forget SC the Low Country (several variations, Pee Dee, Old English District, divided North South and East West, Piedmont, and several Up State accents. You can do the same with every State you mentioned.
@theresamnsota3925 True! I'm from Milwaukee, and like most Milwaukeeans, when I say the word, it comes out sounding like Miwaukee (no l). May dad was the only native Milwaukeean I knew who pronounced it properly and clearly kept the l in the word.
Good choice in specifying the region in the South instead of simply saying "southern". There are many many different dialects within that genre and vast differences in pronunciation can be observed from one county to the next. My dad is from Mount Airy, NC (aka Mayberry) and he has exactly the same dialect as Andy Griffith. while my mom from neighboring Stokes County has a dialect that I would place in Northern Georgia if forced to generalize.
When you did the southern accent asking people to subscribe now, I just howled. You really captured it so well. We Canadians don't think we have an accent, but I can hear many eastern & western types, not to mention French Canadian .
Ever hear a fellow Canadian when you're not expecting one? Like in an American podcast or news program? It's like, "Oh! So that's what we sound like!" 😂
I live in Orlando, FL. A common accent here is New YoRican. It's mostly Spanish structure and verbs with some English nouns and a Bronx accent, so sometimes the last few letters get chopped off and some Spanish words become non-gendered. Also, after a few years in Florida it becomes less staccato. It comes from people who moved from Puerto Rico to New York and found out they don't like snow.
I live in Texas, grew up here, but my mom is from Massachusetts. To my ears she does not have a Yankee accent, but apparently other people from Massachusetts recognize it (it’s not that Bostonian accent). To my own years I don’t have much of a Texas accent unless I exaggerate it & then it’s just lazy talk. But my family back in Massachusetts certainly can hear it. I’ve watched quite a few videos about all the different American and English accents and it blows my mind sometimes.
I'm a Massachusetts resident. Many people think I should have a classic Boston accent, or sound like someone from the Sopranos, but I don't. It might be because I was an ELA teacher, and worked hard to speak my words clearly when instructing students or reading aloud.
@@Carolmaizy I grew up in Western MA, around Springfield, and we naturally have no New England accent at all. I think it's because our communities began in the mid 1700s and the major trading route was up & down the Connecticut River to New York's harbor, rather than over land to Boston. I've lived in DC for 30+ years and still get asked how I lost my accent.
@@CPTDoom thanks for the response and the insights. I live in S.E. Mass. I love visiting central and western Mass. It always feels like another world when I'm there. Even in our smallish state there's a lot of diversity, which I love.
I love this! Regional accents have always been so interesting to me! I was born and raised in southern California but my dad grew up in Pittsburgh and I remember thinking it was so funny that he pronounded "tile" and "towel" exactly the same to my ear! 😃
10:19 YES!!!! It’s incredibly (and ironically) surprising how the USA’s generic “deep southern” accent, for example, while widely considered its most “distant from classical British”, can actually border Shakespearean English given certain vernaculars - full circle!
As a life long Rhode Islander, I didn't think I even had a New England type accent until I joined the Army. There are so few Rhode Islanders in the Army relative to other states, our accent is rare. So its nice to see it mentioned here, even if it is after mentioning Boston, which I get mistaken for anywhere I travel to.
@@cakecwkecake7479Massachusetts has a lot of accents. You start getting out to the western hill towns and we have a nice lilt. Just across the border to VT or NH the rural folk have a similar way of speaking but with different inflections and local words even just barely across state lines. Like poplar becomes pop-el.
I lived in Pittsburgh from birth to retirement. downtown is pronounced dahn tath. Yinzer is a rather famous Pitts. accent. Yinz has the same meaning as all of you. I know many people who aren't Pittsburgers don't find our accent very attractive but I am proud of my heritage. My ancestors have been in Pittsburgh since before the revolutionary war. Our church records can actually trace them since 1752. When people talk about their family being from Germany, Italy, Ireland etc I proudly say I'm an American - my ancestors fought in the revolutionary war and helped start this country.
I love the study of American accents and take great joy in hearing you stumble over our various regional dialects. I am originally from the Chicago area, am married to a lady from Milwaukee (or "M'Waukee" as the natives pronounce it) and now live in Orange County, California. When I (infrequently) return to visit the Windy City, I can DEFINITELY hear an accent that, as a youth, I was completely oblivious to. Accents are fun!
I went the other way. Originally from Southern Indiana, which actually has a more southern accent than the rest of the state. Didn't really hear it until I'd lived in Chicago for a while.
Being a born and raised Bostonian the best not exaggerated example of a true Boston accent that I can recommend is to listen to either Matt Damon or Ben Affleck in the movie Good Will Hunting both being from Boston. Mark Wahlberg in The Departed who's accent is more what locals would call a Southie accent has a more Irish influence. Nothing is funnier than seeing an actor not from Boston attempting and butchering our accent
British actors say the Boston/New England accent is the hardest for them to do. Very odd considering it originated in the East Anglia region of England.
@@privatelyprivate3285 it's not "Baaaahston", and never was. I don't get why people say this all the time - it isn't even close. It's "BAW-stin", "Bawb", "Gawn, baby, gawn", etc.
@@singlesideman I have a friend named Carl who lived in Boston for a few years. He said that everyone there sounded like crows when they said his name.
Mitch Jayne, bass player for the bluegrass band, the Dillards, often told a story about his 1-year term teaching a class of student in a one-room schoolhouse in the Ozarks in the 50's. These were mountain folks who were isolated from the 'big city' and therefore had retained their version of English for hundreds of years. Their vocabulary was rooted deep in Old English from Shakespearean days. Most of the early settlers were Scotch Irish, so they had that component in their dialect as well. Jayne ended up writing a book about the many phrases the children used in contrast to what was more widely spoken in the US-phrases like "my daddy is duller than a widow woman's ax." Or instead of using the word 'face' they would use the word 'countenance' After a year, one family moved to town, taking half the students with them. The school board did not feel that so few students were worthy of the cost of a private schoolmaster, so Jayne was let go and the remaining children were sent to the town school. A couple years later, Jayne resisted some of the families and found an astonishing difference in the speech patterns of the children. The kids had been bullied at the town school and so over the course of only a few years, they shed their mountains words, phrases, and accents and adopted the more homogenated language of their town peers. Their parents still retained the old ways, but it was then a matter of shame for the children. Those kids grew up and raised their own kids who no longer shared in the regions dialect, and the grandchildren found it hard to understand what their grandparents were saying. I have seen this in my own family, where the offspring of Mexican or Asian parents, correct their parents constantly and roll their eyes at their parents "wrong" pronunciations. So, I guess we can hold kids responsible for changing the language patterns of our history. Growing up it seemed everyone in my world had a thick Italian or Irish accents-now it's been at least 20 years since I've encountered in my neighborhood. The grandchildren of the adults I once knew speak "perfect" Americanized English.
We still have a unique accent in the ozarks, but that process has continued. My accent, while distinctive, is so much less strong than my grandparents. I've never had trouble understanding them but I expect if I had been able to interact more with my great grandparents I would have noticed things that I didn't understand or hadn't heard before
Note that I did not grow up way out in a holler somewhere, I was a town kid. But even the more rural kids in school talked the same as the rest of us as far as I know. I've gotten good at code switching for "sounding smart" so maybe they did too. But I think it's more that the real isolated mountain dialects are almost truly gone.
@@ThePopopotatoes Yes, that is what Mitch Jayne was trying to convey that the more isolated regions got diluted and even the town dialects became more and more standardized.
I wish people would stop talking about accents and dialects like "we/they just don't say 'O' properly," or "we're lazy so we drop letters," etc. It's not true or correct. Every dialect of English is correct and proper English
@@ThePopopotatoes my dad's dad was from Picher, Oklahoma. His family had super strong accents and used lots of unique phrases but it's all gone now. Even Picher is basically gone
I grew up in Missouri. There are three ways to say the states name. If you live in a city like St. Louis, Kansas City or Jefferson City, its Missouri. I'm from Hannibal in the northeast corner of the state. We pronounce it Mizzurah. And if you're from the Ozarks in the south like the Ozarks, it's Mizzurer. That's a basic example of the three accents in the state.
My father is from Minnesota and my mother grew up in both ohio and Boston. My mom is *very* particular about how she says things, on top of that I listened to a lot of books on tape read by British folks. As you can imagine my personal accent is strange, upper midwest meets "proper" English. I've had people ask which country I'm from (sometimes I say "the old country" and they nod knowingly like they know what I mean 😂). That being said I'd never heard the way some Midwesterners say bag, milk, and sorry until I met my SO. Every time he and his family say "bayge" "malk", and "sooorry" I'm caugh of guard and laugh. I have a fondness for Ohio and Minnesotan accents, but West Virginian and Kentucky accents are beautiful and soothing
I watch a UA-cam channel about a dog. This lady who's the owner is in england. I'm sure that she didn't realize it but she pronounced the words bowl and ball exactly the same way. She wanted the dog to bring his ball, and he brought the bowl. Seriously exactly the same. She was taken aback and repeated to bring the ball. I found it kinda cute that the dog heard no difference, nor did I, but the lady heard a significant difference.
Have recently subscribed to your channel. I'm American, (born and reared in Ohio) and your humor is cracking me up! I'm laughing out loud and the jokes you are cracking between the commentary. Thanks for the laugh, man..! I'm enjoying these videos!
Grew up north of Boston, lived in RI for years then raised my kids outside of Philadelphia. Now I'm back to living in my childhood home now. I have an ear that picks up accents, so few people ever guess where I'm from!!! 😂 I love local accents
I was raised by southern parents (Alabama) in the Chicago area...I have more Chicago than southern accent, but switch depending on if I'm talking to my family or other people. I was working in Brussels for a few months and my co-workers there said I had one of the hardest American accents to follow because I switched/blended the two. They also assumed everyone talked like a New Yorker or someone from the movie Deliverance.
I'm a southern girl who spent 8 of my growing up years in eastern PA (suburb of Philly). I regularly mix up things, without even thinking about it. LOL!
My mother was a Mobile debutante born and raised, and watching her accent evolve as she moved to Utah to be a Mormon, then to Seattle, then to Alaska Panhandle, then to rural Colorado Rockies, to Texas Panhandle to Far Northern MInnesota.. By the time she died a year agao it was a truly crazy thing to hear
I’m from California but lived in Alabama during college. At first I couldn’t make sense of much, but after a couple of years I got good at hearing the different southern accents. Even here in California, you used to be able to hear the difference between NorCal and SoCal but that was mostly in word choice. But at the end, I generally can tell when people aren’t from California because of nuances in mannerisms, phrasing, and accent. Regional accents are fun to listen to.
Californian (and those on the American West Coast) accents are very interesting because there aren't as many regional differences compared to the east coast but there are new accents slowly forming. For example there is apparently an emerging West Coast Asian American accent. This is amongst native English speakers of East Asian descent There the Chicano accent as well, which you can hear in many Latinos in LA. Again generally among native English speakers of Mexican and other Latin American descent. The Chicano accent is not confined to LA, but there are apparently regional differences to the Chicano accent in LA as opposed to Texas or Chicago etc Anyway, accents are fascinating!
@@Boooo_39 Id agreed but I feel the “Asian accent” is mostly first gen who didn’t have native English speakers for English. So more than an accent I hear incorrect grammar that is a cross over. An example is a lot of East Asian languages don’t make use for articles and plurals, so you hear that cross over to English. For Mexicans, ya there is definitely that chicano-esque accent. I’m mixed so I tend to code switch more than anything. But there are some distinct California ways of speaking that cue me as to whether someone is from here or pretending to be from here.
@@Boooo_39 I really think there are far, far more than people tend to let on, but they keep getting disrupted by influxes of new migrants, mostly from California. I.E. Seattle has a number of sub-accents you can pick out, but it was super disrupted by the huge influx of tech-boom people. Similarly you can find very, very different accents in Oregon along the 101 than you do in Portland, but even in my childhood before Portland became the mass-migrant spot, Portland was real different sounding than my native Bremerton-greater area and different still from Seattle, but right now its harder to pick out.
I'm from Tacoma, and I can verify that "Canadian surfer dude" is an accurate description of our regional accent. But on the other side of the mountains, the accent changes dramatically.
As a Washingtonian born in the Midwest, I think we lack an accent up here in the PNW, but we throw a bunch of vernacular into everything, which is like totally surfer dude 😂.
I'm also from Tacoma but I'm not sure about this description. I'll have to hear it first. My family came here from Sweden so I'm probably more used to the Upper Midwestern accent. But I had a teacher ask if I was from the South. And my mother's side is mostly Welsh. I'm a mut.
I lived in the Pacific Northwest most of my life and when I moved to Kentucky, everyone always said to me that they loved my accent. I was thinking I don’t have a accent. Then I started picking up a Western Kentucky accent then I realized I did have a accent. Your right though us PNWers do kinda sound like special southwestern Canadians.
As a PNW'er, i agree we sound like SW Canadians, cant quite hear the surfer thing... except from the surfers and potheads. A lot of people from my area have almost a Minn accent because of all the Scandinavians that moved here in the late 19th-early 20rh century. Heck, i work with someone who's born and bred here in Washington that sounds like he was raised on a Texas cattle ranch.
I live just north of Seattle. We got to talking with a Kiwi when we were in NZ who thought we were Canadian because we sounded like her daughter-in-law from Vancouver.
As someone who was raised by Oklahoma parents in Illinois, Kentucky, and Ohio, I can promise you that the mix of these four regions have been the subject of extreme confusion in my speech. Its a mix of the terms from Oklahoma, the Chicagoan inability to pronounce vowels correctly, and Ohioan accent which results in maximum midwestern insanity
Ha! I have a mix also. I was born in Michigan but raised in south Texas, northern and southern MinnesOta, and northern and central Indiana. I'm now back in northern Indiana, and I'm constantly questioning myself on how to pronounce different words because I'm not sure which side of me is going to come out.
The Upper Midwest accent is actually really interesting because it is going through a vowel shift. That is why our vowels sound strange to other people. From Wikipedia: 'This change pattern is characterized by the longer and lower vowels moving forward and upward, while the shorter vowels move downward and backward.'
I had a wedding reception in South Carolina but some of the guests were from New England. The combination of the slow southern drawl and the fast New England was a bit like aural whiplash. 🤣
The great example of playing with accents/speech patterns was Moon Unit Zappa in Valley Girl. She was doing a parody of some of her friends at school for her father, Frank Zappa, who did a record around it.
Philly native here ("Norf" Philly). Just when I thought I had heard it all from people visiting Philly, you mentioned two I hadn't noticed before but are so accurate (jeet and the long o)! The "o" sound also changes a bit depending on the region in Philly. A lot of people are familiar with our term "jawn" nowadays, but few people pronounce it right - it's just like that long o in "on"!
Can confirm, as a native of Germantown. Jawn is not pronounced like lawn, but with the long o. I never realized we said on differently though! And yes, Norf and Souf are accurate as well.
As a West Virginia native who grew up near Pittsburgh but have more of the southern accent with some Pittsburgheseword influence because daddy grew up in that region (mom grew up down South and daddy's parents were from the same area as mom, so I had a lot more southern accent influence), I'm glad to doubly be on your list. 😂 The British people around me here in the UK usually take delight in my accent, as well, like the older man I spoke to this morning as I held a grounded bumblebee, trying to coax her onto a flower. He asked if it had stung me and I said, "that almost never happens. I've only been stung once in 20 years pickin 'em up." His eyes lit up and he asked if I'm from America (like my accent didn't completely give me away) and I said yes. The usual questions followed. 😂 The point being my accent seems to cause delight in many, for whatever reason. 😂
Years ago, like in the last millennium, the wife and I spent an extended weekend in Springfield. Ill visiting the Lincoln sites. I noticed as we interacted with the locals, some had a southern accent while others didn't. When questioned if they were indeed locals, they all said yes. So, it would appear that the Mason Dixon line runs through the middle of Springfield Illinois.
Springfield is a bit of an oddity, being the Capital of Illinois. Most of Central and Southern Illinois has a very strong southern accent, and the people who live in those little towns have been there a long time. Springfield has a lot more newcomers, due to politics, and therefore the accent was watered down.
I also like saying "...in the last millennium..." Just casually drop it in somewhere in a statement about the long long ago. Keeps people on their toes. Well at least keeps them thinking I'm odd....
I just have to say Laurence, I love your southern accent -- or I guess I should specify, southern West Virginia. I'll be enjoying your nice British accent and then you automatically switch into a perfect southern drawl. Cracks me up! 🤣 Thank you for the wonderful work you do with your videos. I really enjoy them.
Philly is as close as you got to the accents of Northeastern Maryland (Baltimore is at the southern end of that continuum), so I'm happy for that at least. :)
The Upper Midwest accent you describe might fall under the umbrella of the Great Lakes accent (or at least Great Lakes vowel-pronunciation pattern), which you can detect in western New York (but not eastern NY), the northern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois (but not the southern parts), then on west of the Great Lakes into Wisconsin, Minnesota, eastern ND and eastern SD. There is a theory that this pattern of pronunciation began with the construction of the Erie Canal, which involved a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic population of laborers, who did NOT have a common way of speaking English, but whose children forged this new American English accent and carried it with them throughout the Great Lakes region.
Oh good call! Listen, my mom is from Southern Ontario and there is a STRONG accent there. The whole side of the family sounds funny. Imagine mixing a Canadian and (what I now understand to be) a Great Lakes accent. I hear lots of endearing similarities when I see real or exaggerated Midwestern accents on TV. The Erie canal theory makes a lot of sense. Now I understand better why that linguistic pattern would appear on both sides of the Lakes. Very cool! I hope that I could help illuminate another piece of the puzzle!
It's interesting to hear you talk about which language features stick out to your ears. You must have listened well because your Southern accent was pretty convincing!
I live in southern IL. Our accent is so much different than in Chicago. I've tried really hard to train the southern drawl out, but, sometimes, I can sound down right hick-afied! For those of you who aren't aware of the size of Illinois, it takes 5 1/2 to 6 hours for me to drive to Chicago, and I'm still about 1 1/2 hours from the southern tip. The closer you are to Kentucky, the thicker the drawl.
Same here in Indiana. Southern Indiana sounds Kentuckian. Northwestern Indiana sounds Chicagoan. The rest of the state sounds pretty much standard Midwest.
Me too, My British girlfriend noticed that when I go home to my mom’s, the southern drawl and slang comes out. I never noticed how southern I sounded until then! Suddenly all my “i”s are “ah”s
You have no idea how happy it made me that number 5 was southern West Virginia. I'm from there and absolutely love it. It's beautiful and full of fantastic people.
Love this! I'm from Wisconsin and had a good laugh over what you've noticed about us. On the other hand my husband is originally from West Virginia! And he's got a few words that throw me for a loop. Crayon sounds like crowns. When he says, "I know" it sounds more like, "I knooww." Fixin was another word I learned, "yeah that door needs fixin..." My in laws tho are a hoot and I just love to listen to them talk.
Rhode Island native here and and a Providence accent is definitely different than Boston. I used to be able to tell the difference between a East Side Providence and Warwick, but sadly I’ve been gone from there too long
I moved to Rhode Island when I was 11, after having lived in Southern California since birth. It was so hard for me at first to understand my native Rhode Island classmates who had classic thick (especially compared to California) Providence accents. As for me, having lived in California, Rhode Island, rural England, and DC, while being raised by Chicago-native parents, my accent and vocabulary are both all over the place.
I've been here 25 yrs. Still couldn't tell Warwick from Prov. Cranston sticks out like crazy, though. And no, I don't need to cheat by looking for the leopard or cheetah print!
The Philly accent is a combination of both New-York accent and a Baltimore accent. The AW vowel is pretty tight like a New York accent. The OH diphthong is southern or sounds a bit like a Baltimore accent. The Philly accent has a very strong rhotic R.
As a person from Minneapolis, I can confirm we have a lot of people with Irish heritage! And I do say “bag” the Minnesotan way- I once tried to teach my Scottish supervisor to say it that (the right) way
In area, Pennsylvania is ~3x the size of The Netherlands. It should come as no surprise that we have multiple accents; at least we are speaking the same language. There's also several regional accents between Pittsburgh & Philadelphia. Where I grew up the accent where I lived varied quite noticeably from the accent in the northern part of our county. The number of accents in the USA is essentially countless.
Yes. I was going to comment on the third (I think) main dialect of PA, the one in the middle. What I’ve heard from Lancaster County to Chambersburg to Williamsport has two features I’ve noticed: 1. In contrast to NYC and Philly, where “leave” is used where either “leave” or “let” fits, in Central, “let” is used for both. 2. Instead of rising at the end, question rise on the penultimate and then drop.
One of my favorite things I've learned in being in a relationship with a Pennsylvanian is that there are different grammar structures alongside our accent differences. As a Californian, it would never occur to me to drop the word "with" in a sentence like "when I'm done with my homework, I'll go for a walk", whereas he routinely says things like "I'm done the dishes". Apparently this is indeed a thing in parts of the US and Canada, but I had never heard anyone say that before meeting him. When I visit Pennsylvania, I now notice the little grammar differences as well as the accent changes.
Additionally, the infinitive “to be” is often considered superfluous. “The lawn needs mowed.” “The car needs washed.” Accents are fascinating - and there’s definitely a lot more to it all. When I moved to Virginia from Minnesota, I was shamed into switching from “pop” to “soda.” Oh, the oppression I had to endure! 😭
I live in Philly…id say im done DOING the dishes. And i have NEVER heard anyone say the sentences in the comment above mine. They must be from a different part of Pennsylvania? I’m not surprised though, PA is a huge state for the mid-atlantic/northeast region. My stepson goes to Penn State and its a 4 hour+ one way trip from Philly. They have a completely different accent just 4 short hours away, but even more fascinating, i grew up 10 min away from my home in Philly…in S. Jersey. The accent is completely different 10 min away! My mom is constantly saying i sound like I’m from philly now 😂
Another example of this: Minnesotans/upper midwesterners often drop the pronoun after 'with' to turn phrases like 'come with me', 'bring it with you', to 'come with', 'bring it with'.
As someone who was born and raised in southern West Virginia (Beckley area), your accent was pretty much spot on. You could use it the next time you're visiting your in-laws and everybody would just assume you were a local.
I worked near Beckley for a summer and I love that accent. Really reminiscent of the GA and NC mountain accents that I'm more familiar with but with its own unique differences
I grew up in Fayetteville, WV... loved your accent!! I'm in East Texas now, where the accent is pretty close to my WV accent... I was quite surprised. 😊
Great video, and so excited that Pittsburgh made the list! I was born and raised in a small town bordering the city of Pittsburgh, then moved to Cleveland for college. My cousins who live about an hour east of the city have the stereotypical Pittsburgh accent, but most people I knew closer to the city did not. We definitely pronounced our L in words, but often drop the final G on -ing words, so that shopping becomes shoppin, living becomes livin, etc. My first time attending Mass in Cleveland, my Philly roommate and I were stunned to hear "Thanks be to Gad" instead of God (rhymes with cod, pod, mod).
I have always been really fascinated by the interpretation of non-americans to different regional accents. I watch a lot of non-english speaking media and have begun to notice different cadences in (for example) the Korean language between Seoul and somewhere like Busan. I just find this interesting from a linguistic standpoint because I didn't understand the language at all when I first noticed it, but I could tell by the cadence. I have really wondered since how others might perceive us in similar (or dissimilar) ways.
I'm starting to get like that with different regional Aussie dialects because I watch so much of their media, but my family can't hear the difference between AU or UK dialects of English which is so funny to me.
As a Pittsburgher I'm (pleasantly) surprised to hear our accent mentioned! Yup, "dahntahn" is what you'll hear around here. We're more than happy to make fun of ourselves for it, too:) The dropping of "l" is interesting. It's not something I've noticed -- except maybe with kids. I'll have to keep an ear out. You totally nailed the WV accent, BTW!
I'm not sure about neighborhood subtleties. I grew up in the northern suburbs, so I'm going based on subjective personal experience and what we were taught by our dialects professor at one of the performing arts universities in the city. In my own family those who have the accent more thickly almost change the L to a W and those with more of just regional speech patterns or a light accent just hit the L really lightly. I've found that the vowels in both yinz and worsh can vary from person to person. But I love hearing your input because I'm a dialect nerd.@Atheos B. Sapien (Ubi dubium ibi liberatas)
@@lane6866 I get accused of saying "warsh" all the time but I don't pronounce it that way--but neither do I pronounce it with a standard low back vowel. I use a lax high back vowel.
My dad, born and raised in rural Arkansas, had a permanent and pronounced corresponding accent… or so I was told by other people, because I couldn't hear any of his accent markers, since I'd been hearing him talk since I was a baby and to me it was just his voice. That is, with one exception: he pronounced "wash" as "warsh," and I was always able to hear it. I don't know why it was the only accent marker I could hear from him.
Interesting, whereabouts in Arkansas? Don’t need a town or anything but just a general idea or n/s/e/w direction…I’d wager below Little Rock and either central or westerly areas…to really throw a dart blindfolded I’ll say somewhere between Murfreesboro and Bradley….
My grandfather was born & raised in rural SW Arkansas (Sparkman) & he had a few markers. Like you're saying, he always "worshed" his hands before dinner. Cooking said dinner was "worman's" work, which leads me to believe the added "r" sound was connected to the "w." Wait. Now that I think about it, there were a lot of "r's" where "r's" were not: That "feller" who lives over yonder in the "holler" with the "yeller" hunt'n "dawoog" offered me a chaw of "tuhbacka" (you thought I was gonna say "tobaccer") but "ah toe-dim 'nahthankya, ah doen dip.' Mah deddy toad us kids that chewn tuhbacka wurnt good fur nuth'n but cyurrin wurms. I think that feller's a bit titched in the head anyhow. No tell'n what he's fix'nta do." I miss my grandpa 😔
The upper midwest accent is really similar to a Canadian accent, in my experience. You hear it a lot in Michigan as well. I definitely picked it up while I lived there.
Indeed, but Canadians have a distinct “a” sound. You will never hear an upper midwesterner use “oh yeah eyh” like a Canadian. The upper midwestern accent is Yoopernese.
I used to cover sports for the Crookston Times in northwestern Minnesota, and the head coach of the University of Minnesota-Crookston men's basketball team could be convinced to do a demo of all the accents he encountered scouting for players. I had no idea Minnesota had so many different accents. I would think that the smaller the town, the easier it would be to retain the accent too. I knew a woman whose mother lived in a Finnish town and in the 1980s still spoke only Finnish. The things you learn.
I come from a nearby county to Pittsburgh. It is interesting how much of an influence that city's accent affected me growing up. I say most things "correctly" however I still can't say iron "correctly" without thinking about it and saying it a few times in my head. Sometimes a downtown slips out of me. You forgot the most important word... YINZ! it is a form of you all. I pronounce it with a southern style accent "y'all". Great video glad the Pittsburgh accent made this list! I hoped it would.
Even just different parts of California have different accents. The Malibu accent is extremely different from the Bakersfield accent which, is extremely different from the rural mountainous coast accent, which is extremely different from a five cities accent, which is very different from a Compton accent.
The Bakersfield accent is derived from the Okies and the Arkies who came to California during the Great Depression looking for work. Many of them had lost farms to the dust, and they found the San Joaquin Valley farming life familiar.
I was born & raised in Middle Tennessee. It’s strange that if you go anywhere else in the south, they’re confused about your accent. It’s not real southern but foreigners & yankees still hear the southern in us. My husband is from Mississippi & I love his super southern delta accent. He says “ol” one syllable for the word “oil”. ❤
I’m from western central MN and it is fascinating that to the west of my town people talk way down in their throat and in the southeastern side of Mn people talk up into their nose. I’m the Duluth area and up the north shore they sound quite Canadian. I love accents and the idea that even a state a small as MN we can have at least three unique accents. Love it!
I’ve been a fan for a while but I didn’t know you came to WV fairly regularly. There are a ton of regional dialects here and they vary quite a bit from one another. There are also a million different things to see for a world-renowned hiker/UA-cam sensation like yourself. It’s a beautiful state for the most part.
Loved this video! Here’s my best story: My family has lived in Oregon for 150yrs. I live in Eugene, where we speak BC/surfer/hippie. We were being seated by a waitress in a Cracker Barrel restaurant north of Nashville, Tennessee. She told us the dinner specials, and side vegetable dishes of the day, one of which left us bewildered. It was cornbread d’raisin. We asked her to repeat it, twice, perplexed about how a cornbread dish with raisins could be considered a vegetable. Flustered with us, she changed verbiage to “cornbread stuffing”. Aha! She had been saying “cornbread dressing”, we heard “cornbread d’raisin”. We still couldn’t understand how that was considered a veggie dish. 😂
Haha, Im two and a half hours southwest of you, down on the coast! We moved here when I was 1 and a half, so I was raised (and still live) here. There probably are some differences between the coast and the valley, but I cant say Ive heard them. We go to Eugene to go shopping mostly (and eat) so I havent heard too much from people raised in Eugene. Not a full conversation anyway. We use your airport too because its a lot cheaper. 😂 I would have also been wildly confused about the dressing. I kept reading it as raisin. Eventually realized what it must have actually sounded like. Never heard of "cornbread dressing" before though.
As an aside, when I see people from Oregon online theyre basically always from, or live in, Portland, which is so sad because we're a large state with a lot of cities. Adds a little to the "Oregon is just Portland" misconception. I know the rest of the state population is smaller but damn. Glad to see some rep from anywhere else hahaha.
Re Boston- Since living in the UK (England) people often ask if I am Irish... but just to mention about Boston- the r's in words don't get used until you get to the end of the sentence where we have to put them so they don't clutter up the next sentence..."Way-ah did we pahk tha cah? I have no i-deer..." Again, applause to the channel, it's wikkid pissah. :)
You did so well with this! You have a good ear! Honored that you chose 2 accents from my home state. I'm from the Pittsburgh side and can tell you that you nailed it! No Ls! 😆 In fact, I think I was in high school or college when I realized that the word "riled" had an L in it. I had always said, "rowd." And you absolutely got the "dahn tahn" thing, too. Flower = flahr. And I agree with you that it sounds like cockney. :)
Pennsylvania has a couple of accents..... Sure, everybody knows about the Pittsburgh, & Philadelphian accents. There's also the south central Pennsylvanian accent. There's the northeastern PA accent that combines NYC, Philly & south central Pennsylvanian accents.
If you get just a little bit outside of Pittsburgh, the Yinzer accent turns into the slightly more "rural" Yunz/ You'nz accent. Some old-school city dwellers really bristle at the idea that it's the same accent.
Lawrence, I have to say, well done for the algorithm. But also, well done. You might read John Steinbeck's final book, _Travels With Charlie_. He drives across the US in a campervan with his dog Charlie, and talks about accents a bit, remembering his childhood and early years before television. My parents grew up in that world a bit as well.
Nailed Philly, but it was Pittsburgh where I heard: "jeet, no, jou, no, squeet" "Did you eat, no did You, no, lets go eat" Priceless ... Southerners put an r in Wash and Washington. Makes me nuts. I love the Chicago Accent, my original home town. But I have a Tennessee Accent, but with, ... correct grammar and I don't put an "R" in Wash! Boston Accent is #1 !
I am so happy that Pittsburghese was included here. It's such a unique dialect. The OW sound is pronounced as AH so it would be Dahn Tahn, or at a Stillers game, it's "That's another Pittsburgh Stillers, FIRST DAHN"
I find it funny he picked on L’s. I grew up in Ohio and moved to New England when I was a teenager, so my accent’s all over the map… but my parents and grandparents are all from Pittsburgh. More than once I’ve been called out for “swallowing my L’s,” specifically when I say “pickle.” Wonder if it’s a holdover from my PGH language roots…
Iowa native raised by German-American Iowans. As an adult I lived in Kansas City, Colorado, Albuquerque, NM, and now Kentucky for the past 25 years. KY has its own accents but mine is a Midwestern mishmash. Great video, Laurence. These are my favorite of yours. Always interesting.
Yay! I’m so glad WV made the list. ❤ I was born and raised in WV. I now live in South Central TX. My accent gets asked about a lot. My husband is from MI. Our kids have wack-cents, for sure.
As a native of the Bayg.... A friend from Rhode Island visited and lost his mind at a state park gift shop when they asked if he wanted one. A few work-trips to California made me very aware how not-normal it was just about anywhere else in the states. Among other phrases and words spoken...
Rhode Islander here, was friends with someone from Ontario in college. First time she dropped a “bayg” in conversation it definitely through me for a loop. 😂
Laurence, please don't forget the vast area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Some call it 'fly-over country' but it is filled with a rich collection of cultures and accents.
My neighborhood in Boston had five regional accents alone. You can tell which street people lived on by their accent.
Charlestown?
Whoa - amazing!
YES! I experienced the same thing when I lived in Boston. I actually grew up in a suburb outside of Boston and accents also vary by town.
So true
@@1HotLegendLS Yes! Sounds like you know! Old school C-town from the bricks as a kid. And later on Warren. Used walk across the bridge and work a Regina’s in the N.End. (An honorary guido) I left there 30 years ago. Now north of SF, CA. My sister still lives there in Somerville- sounds like a James Cagney movie - every time I go back!
I'm from WI and went to Japan with the JET Program. On our first day of training, there I was- surrounded by native speakers of English from around the world- and when I asked someone to hand me my bag, only the woman from MN knew what I was talking about.
Oh ya? 😁
Fellow Wisc"aan"sinite here don'tchaknow.
Two of my friends did the JET program for 4 years! They still do some of the get togethers with their cohort in Milwaukee
Born in WI here, when was 12 we moved to Hawaii where my dad was from. You can imagine what happens when you ask where the “bubbler” is.
For real, people who aren’t from MN or WI will ask me to say bag like it’s some kind of party trick 😂
did you meet @abroadinjapan ?
Chuck Yeager is the reason so many pilots affect a slight West Virginia accent when talking to the passengers. His stoic and calming tone in the face of death became iconic.
Lol that’s really funny, there is something comforting about a slightly upper-south twang from a guy with a deep voice who says “folks” a lot.
Down the holler. I love my accent
It’s true. I haven’t heard a CY sound alike in a while. That voice coming over the intercom was always soothing. 😊
it's also known as the "Houston Center voice" and ATC does it too
Yaeger was a racist. He told the astronauts to shun the first black astronaut who was selected.
Your Appalachian accent is actually great compared to the rest lol. Those of us from Appalachia always appreciate when people show love for the native accent. Hopefully one day the stigma against that accent can go away and young people won't feel the need to lose their accent to be taken seriously in life.
I love it. My mom is from Appalachia (matewan).
I'm from NC and growing up I was self-conscious about my accent. When I went to college I suppressed it, but at some point, I stopped caring what other people think about it and started to lean into it.
You go Appalachia! We feel the same in the Boston area.
The Appalachian accent is actually the most closely related to a working class British accent because of the coal mining industry that pulled immigrants primarily from England, Wales, and Ireland.
Same goes for the menagerie of Southern accents.
Father is from Barbados and mother is from North Carolina. I was raised in New York. My southern relatives tease me about my West Indian accent and my West Indian family tease me about my southern accent . I think I sound like a New Yorker.
A former boss hired a guy from China who had a thick accent. I was the only one who understood him . My boss took me aside one day and asked me how I was able to understand him so easily . I told him “ Mom is from down south , dad is from the islands and I grew up in a Hispanic neighborhood” ( I’m not Hispanic) “ You think one more accent is gonna bother me!”
Haha, wow! Very versatile.
Would like to hear it thats a very cool story, history and combo.
If you was raised in New York do the south a favor and don't pretend you're one of us. North Carolina is NOT "down south" SMH. Gtfoh.
Funny
Americans are notoriously bad at understanding people from other countries. I love other accents! We've lived in Guyana (at least three distinct dialects, Indians, coast landers, and Amerindians, and I know these all had regional variations), Hong Kong and Singapore, and visited several other Asian countries. My husband has spent time in Europe, and we've lived in three different areas of the US, including the South. I always enjoy learning to understand the different ways of speaking, and rarely have serious difficulty understanding people from other places. It's a blessing.
I have a Welsh friend, and I think I blew his mind by demonstrating four or five different southern accents.
You actually did pretty well on the accents you selected, so well done!
Every southern state has multiple different accents! My favorite is Virginia Piedmont. So pleasant.
@@meedwards5 I like Tidewater...sort of posh and Canadian-ish yet definitely southern. Unique!
@@ScottKnitter some of my favorite people are from the tidewater area😊. Yes, very nice accent!
I’m from Columbia South Carolina and I like to joke about how I don’t really have an accent because everywhere outside of the city has such a recognizable southern twang, but my accent sounds more akin to a stereotypical general American accent
@@meedwards5 I live there, it’s a very charming accent.
I'm a Native MinnesOOOOHtan, currently living in W'scAAAAHnsin. If you get up towards the Upper Peninsula of Michigan via the Door County/Green Bay area, the northernness of their accent is unbelievable. And yes, you nailed *most* of the upper Midwest accent. :)
My family hails from Oconto/Shawano counties. You wouldn’t understand what folks would say dat accent is so thick DontchaKno
I have friends from both places. I love to ask them how they say Hot Dog. Flint Michigan is definitely a different sound than Wisconsin 😂. There’s HAAT DAAGS in Wisconsin or Howt Dowgs in flint, and then my friend from New Jersey kind of says both like HeAAT Dowgs.
I live 4 hours from northern Minnesota Canada border and no one talks with an exaggerated accent like that lol
@@atr6930 Friend of mine from Chicago: [fast] HAAAHHT dwAUG.
Or the iron range!! THAT is a thick accent!
I grew up in Minnesota and I have to say you did pretty good!!
Also, I want to share this story: I don’t have a very strong accent. Since moving away from MN, most people don’t notice, and if they do, the best guess anyone has is Midwest. Back in 2018, I was working at a cafe in Seattle when a group of Indian women walked in. I asked one lady for order and she asked “Are you from Minnesota?” I was taken aback! I never had someone be so direct, let alone right. Turns out she had a coworker from Minnesota who lives in Delhi and she just happened to be in Seattle on vacation!
I still can’t believe the one and only person to ever correctly guess my accent was from half way across the world! 😂
@lyrajafed That was an interesting story. I was born in Minnesota but have lived in California since I was three. I never acquired a California accent, however, and speak with a Minnesota accent to this day. Most Californians are probably unfamiliar with Minnesota accents, because a lot of people here think I’m Canadian.
@@valerietaylor9615my situation is i am from Florida, live in New York, speak some spanish, lived in Virginia for two months, so most are really confused on where im from, the guesses i got was: British Columbia, Miami, Floricua, and Deep South
@@valerietaylor9615 Some Minnesota accents are close to be Canadian. I like the Norwegian Minnesota accent it's just so friendly dontcha know.
I did a similar thing to what that Indian woman in your story did, once. I picked out an Egyptian person's accent because I worked with one. Everyone always asked if they were Middle Eastern, which is kind of correct, but they said nobody ever hit the nail on the head with Egypt.
Oh yeah you betchya😂
When I was in my 20s, I moved my family to Wyoming. Right after we got there, through our children, I met a lady who had just moved there from the Northeast. Here we are, one with a deep southern (MS) accent and one with a deep northeastern accent (MA). For the first 2 weeks we hung out neither of us knew what the other was saying! We'd just nod, smile, and agree.😂 We eventually caught on but it was hysterical until we did.
When I moved to RI from the Midwest, people often misunderstood me, and vice versa
Thus the reason we should all speak "correctly." :)
I’m from the Olympic Peninsula (northwest of Seattle) and when you said “Canadian surfer” I laughed out loud. I’ve never felt quite so seen. The accent itself is very similar to British Columbian, but the words we use are often much less formal. Lots of “dude,” “no worries,” and “rad,” even in a professional setting.
Can confirm, from Vancouver and call everyone dude.
I've lived in the Seattle eastern suburbs my whole life, and yeah, we talk like the Ninja Turtles. I've had coworkers who called literally everybody "dude". We also use a ton of slang like coulda, gotta, dunno.
Dude, eh?
I live in PeeEh. Some of my friends do use oot and aboot and don't even know it. Canadian Surfer is spot on.
Yesss! I moved to Utah and they were sure I was Canadian. It's so true!
In certain hollars in Appalachia the accent is a mix to different degrees, Scots, Irish, English and a bit of German. They range from a soft to a quicker more nasal accent
Appalachia isn't just about accents, they have a whole vocabulary that is largely unique to them.
Some WV towns were Italian immigrants brought in to mine. Pepperoni rolls are a state food.
I'm originally from WVa but have lived in other states and countries a lot of my adult life. When I moved back to Central WVa upon retirement, people said I sounded "Canadian"! All without any awareness on much part; my accent shifted to something very muddled.
@@sststr Yep, I know having, grown up there, my grandpas if you asked about somewhere, such as Austinville VA, the reply would be "Well, it is a Fur piece" meaning we could not ride both ways, up hill. Ridge, Valley, Hill. The ridge, coming back was the longest and steepest.
A fur piece is a good bit further, (miles unless really bad terrain) than over yonder.
Taking you behind the woodshed as a warning, Even if they aren't going to do it and give you a break, the 1st time. I found out behind the house, what a repeat would get me.
A lot of settlers went in during the early 1700s and a generation or so moved beyond the mountains. Most families had no more than 3 books, The Bible, Pilgrims Progress, and another book maybe Political, Religious, or Shakespeare or similar. When you are limited in what you can carry after food and water, tools etc. Well you need room for feed for the animals as they are working very hard and need a lot of food to stay healthy. Even today they especially the Old Timers speak, Early Modern English, though TV and radio is slowly changing it. When I was growing up there were Gaelic speakers around, They spoke mostly Scots Gaelic, though a few spoke Erse. To the best of my knowledge the last one died around 1980. I would run into them at gas stations, feed stores and such, but didn't know them much more than to say "Hello to." They spoke enough English to get by, but their Native tongue was Gaelic. The Railroads came in the early 1900s to the middle 1920s going to the coal, zinc, lead and silver mines and some gold. That killed off the Gaelic.
Yes, the city accents differ from the mountain accents. I can fall into either quickly or get right back into standard American at the same rate. Love this kind of video.
I grew up in the middle of Pa, and went to school in Philly. You nailed the Philly accent and how diverse the accents of Pa are. Go across the river from Philly to South NJ and check out how the accent changes again
We still say wooder. XD
Delco here and yes, my accent was so thick that it became a running joke at work to ask me to say certain words.
On tv shows set in Philly though it seems that they just default to a NYC accent and call it a day.
As a southern West Virginian (Wayne County), I have to say you did a great job. It's amazing when I travel I often get asked "Oh we love your accent, where do you come from?" At first when I was a younger man I thought this question was annoying because for me I wasn't the one with the accent, the person talking to me had the accent, but the older I got and more places I have visited I have come to understand that my accent is a beautiful thing and I am proud to tell every one who asks me that question that I am a West "By God" Virginian!
The reason why states can have such varying accents is that their compositions are semi-arbitrary. Between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia for example is hundreds of miles, a plateau, and a large mountain range
He did much better with the accents than I was expecting
Agreed
Writing from northern Maine: parts of the state were settled by people who's first language was French, and that accent is still frequently heard on the streets. There are parts, however, that were settled by other groups: not far away from my home town is a group of Swedish decendants, and when I visited Minnesota a few years ago, they sounded very similar!
Hello, fellow County dweller!!!
Having always lived in a small town in the Appalachian mountains, I do have an accent at times (notably *not* when doing customer service; I was asked if I was a robot by one man I spoke with on the phone), but even when I'm letting my words come out as terrible as they can, my accent is nothing compared to my father's, and his has lessened significantly over the years, which is terrifying. He used to go one state over to hang out with a friend, and random people who heard him speak would stop and beg, "Say something else!" By far my best story regarding accents though is when my dad, my uncle by marriage, and my uncle's brother were attempting to have a conversation. My uncle was legitimately translating between the two, because while they were both speaking English (technically), my dad's unique-to-this-area brand of Redneckanese very much did not mix with Dominic's heavy French accent, and they got to the point where one of them would say something and look at Larry, who obligingly turned it into something the other one would understand like an unpaid interpreter. Good times.
Now that really says a lot about our melting pot of a nation. I love this story!😊
Appalachia covers a long territory!
I had friend who had similar experience. She's from the Intermountain West. She was at a party in another part of the country. Someone heard her talking, and said something to the room along the line of oh everybody listen to so-and-so.
This happened to me trying to buy beer around the red river gorge.
I have a super thick Chicago accent. The man speaking to me had a super thick Appalachian accent.
I couldn’t understand half of what he said and he I suspected couldn’t understand half of whats I said.. It was kinda hilarious. A lot of smile and nodding was had.
A super thick chicago accent is like a boston accent with an R. But the vowels are different.
I had to laugh when you said “warshinton”. Coming from the Inland Empire (Washington and Idaho) I had to unlearn “warsh”, “squarsh”, “Ta” (to), and “fer” (for) when I moved. Only to later move to the Deep South and hear ta and fer everywhere.
As a PA Native, there are far more than 2 accents. My personal favorite is from the NW part of the state where you get something that sounds like an unholy amalgamation of Upper Midwest, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania Dutch. It has the hard 'A' (warsh instead of wash) but also has that 'doncha know' fargo sound to the the 'O'. The best description I ever saw was 'this accent is what happens when a bunch of German immigrants learn English 2nd hand from the Scots Irish'.
You crack me up. I like this explanation.
we in upstate new york have a really nasally spread 'a'...waaaaater...maaary...my mom's family came from northern pa ;)
One of the most ... ummm ... interesting accents I ever heard was a woman who worked for one of our southern branch offices. She was born and raised in China, learned English when her family moved to the southern U.S. OMG, the poor woman had to repeat herself 2 or 3 times just so you could understand 50% of what she said.
It’s hilarious to me (from Philly) how different one side of PA sounds to the other! I never noticed how ‘Philly/Jersey’ I sounded until I moved to Texas and people all the time ask me where I’m from when I say ‘wooder’ (water) or other particular words. 😂
Bahahaha I just got to the Philly segment with wooder! 😂😂😂😂
West Virginia English is sort of "southern" you could say, but it falls more into Appalachian English. We have a rich history and, in my opinion, a unique accent that we all share no matter the state (I'm from Kentucky and Eastern KY natives sound more similar to WVians than folks from Louisville KY). We even still have slang and hints in our accent that is still Irish and Scottish.
Appalachian English is derived from Elizabethan English even as far as sentence structure and grammar. Example: Elizabethans made a distinction between the plural phrase “you were” and the singular “you was.” Today many think Appalachian people sound undereducated when the say “you was,” but it’s culturally/historically accurate.
I’m from WV! I don’t have the accent at all but all my family does. It’s fascinating how it is linguistically. West Virginian children are especially cute with the accent.
yeah, my family was all Scottish. Lot's of Celts in the WV hills.
I'm from central West Virginia, right on the Kanawha river, and to me our accent is a milder version of the "southern" accent. Oddly, I never heard "y'all" growing up, it was "you-all" for the plural and "you" for the singular. To get slightly technical we have the "cot-caught merger" and the "pin-pen merger". Perhaps due to the latter we say "set" for "sit".
I'm from the WV/KY/OH tri-state at the confluence of the Kanawha and Ohio,, but my mom's family is from Mingo County. So I have the River Rat twang, but I have a lot of the idioms from the coal camps and I understand the whole-hog Appalachian lingo.
This is a great video. He actually avoided all of the best known accents (besides Bostonian) and brought up some accents a lot of people don't know about. Appalachian (what he called Southern WV) is a good one that isn't quite the same as a Southern accent and was heavily influenced by Scots-Irish immigrants. And what he called a "Pittsburgh accent" which actually is common in eastern Ohio, Western PA and the panhandle of WV (heavily influenced by German migrants). I've lived all over the US, and this is really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to accents in this country. I spent my childhood moving from place to place as a military kid and it was very apparent to me how the way people talked changed from place to place. And you had to learn really quickly to adopt the same accent as the kids at school to avoid...problems.
I was stupidly pleased when he brought up the Philly accent. A lot of accent content will overlook it or disregard it because of Philly's association with crime and poverty. Which, yeah, Philly's a rough city depending on your location... but it's also a very unique city with a very diverse population and a rich history that contributed to it's accent and phrases.
I really wish he would have mentioned the use of "Reese - EEZ" for Reese's Cup candies instead of "Reese - ess." It's sparked a lot of controversy in PA but I think Philly people tend to own the incorrect pronunciation with the most pride.
Who says Reese-ess? I've never heard that. I grew up in the northern NYC metro area with Reese-ez..@@clueless_cutie
@@EmmaWhitaker-gf3uc I've always used both. Reese-ess was the brand but the actual cup we referred to as Reese-eez. Such as:
"Reese-ess pieces are tasty but I love Reese-eez cups the most."
@@clueless_cutie Its so weird that's a controversy, here on my side of the rockies I grew up calling it 'Rees-iss' not 'ess' and very shortened, almost 'Rissis'
Thanks for noticing our nice, friendly "Wusgonsin" accent. I grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan, taught up North and settled in Central Wisconsin, and there are even differences in all of those accents. I was an English teacher in the Middle East, and I taught all of my students over three years to speak like me. Awesome.
We moved from a Milwaukee suburb to a Detroit suburb when I was six, and the Michigan kids pronounced Wisconsin like West Consin or something.
@@ScottKnitter I'm from West Michigan and we definitely pronounced it West Consin in elementary school.
There are definitely other aspects of the Wisconsin accent’s vowels that weren’t covered here. Like the tendency to turn short O vowels into short A. Wiscansin. Hackey. And the exchange of short I for short E. Melk.
@@emilysmith2965 Let’s go by Auntie’s for a sawda.
I love the thought of a bunch of middle eastern children with wiscansin accents. Adds some spice to the world
This might be my favorite video so far; I'm pretty sure I laughed so hard I snorted at one point. And your American accents are way better than any British ones I could attempt. Hilarious.
I mean its probably a bit easier for him because he lives here now lol
Wisconsinite here, I think you broke down our accent beautifully. My first cross country trip, I was in a McDonalds and asked for a bag at the counter. After he asked me to repeat myself several times, the worker didn't know what I was saying until I started to spell the word b-a-g. We were both equally confused by each other.
I have a certain drawl where I’ll say baaag and warsh…had been saying Id dee ology but currently almost always eye dee ology for ideology
.
I was born and spent the first 8 years of my life in a southern Pittsburgh suburb, the following ten years in north western Pennsylvania. My first career was as a radio DJ during which, as you can imagine, I had to read a LOT of copy and critically listen my recorded voice. I discovered I had a very difficult time properly enunciating the L sound, especially when it fell in the middle of words. I really struggled with it and have always thought it was a minor speech impediment. However your observations on the "Pittsburgh accent" puts what I've always thought to be a personal problem into a whole new light. Thanks!
Quite a good take on Pittsburghese. I agree that we tend to lose the Ls within words. It's fair to say they come off close to a W sound, with the tongue failing to touch the roof of the mouth and the lips rounding. Also . . . love that you noted the WV "worshington" pronunciation. I've always worshed my clothes in the worshin' machine up here 'round Picksburgh 😊
Polish Ł pronounced like a W, I think.
It's probably because of the immigrants that settled there originally, Germans. 😊
I say my name Shril as does my mom and most Pittsburghers.
@@NotSoHeartBrokensome German, it was a lot more other Eastern Europeans who came to work in the mills. Hence our regional love affair with pierogies and the like!!
I love when folks say “Yinz”
Impressed with your southern accent. You also nailed Wisconsin and Philly !!
Yup Wisconsin sounds very German in Madison WI
Enjoyed your cover of the Philly accent, as that was my accent through age 10. I moved to Michigan, where my cousin laughed at my speech. Within two weeks my accent was gone. When I went back east. I would roll right back into Philly speech again. Just picked it back up without even trying.
I agree with him. He doesn't have the WI O down yet.
@@Lorrainecats Grew up in Philly. Move to the Dallas area some years ago and hoped I'd lose that Philly speak, but no luck. Still sound like I just finish a Philly Steak sandwich at the corner store.
YES!! I was going to comment the same thing!!
The best accents are definitely Eastern and Southern states. I’m from Georgia and when I hear myself on a recording, i’m like, whoa is that me. I don’t even think of chicagoans having a distinct accent. TN, WVA, MA, NY, GA, AL, KY, LA, MS, TX, MN, WI all have unique accents. Enjoy your channel and your accent.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, but now I live in NE TN. One should not dare confuse accents from Middle Tennessee or West Tennessee with NE TN accents or even SE TN accents. They are definitely not the same.
A lady I knew who grew up in North Carolina moved to NE TN and the locals immediately knew she was "not from around here" simply by her accent.
I can detect the Chicago accent a mile away; even more so since I've lived in the South. One time there was this lady at the pharmacy in front of me. I could tell from hearing her speak that she was from Chicago. As she finished her business and turned around, I said, "So, you're from Chicago?" and she said, "How'd ya know that?" with the Chicago flat "A" and I did not laugh though I was tempted to.
How can you deny a Chicago accent when you hear them rooting for "da Bearssss"?
Don't forget SC the Low Country (several variations, Pee Dee, Old English District, divided North South and East West, Piedmont, and several Up State accents. You can do the same with every State you mentioned.
@@BTinSF Don't for get about da bulls. I hear they're going on to a minimum of a sixteenpete championship.
I am from the Upper Midwest and happy to be on your list! We can’t help that whole world says “bag” wrong 😂😝.
It's a bayg!!! They need ta get used to it!
I get so much shit for saying “bayg” as a person from Wisconsin I never knew that other people pronounce the word different
I’m from California but pronounce it the same since my grandma was from Wisconsin and my mom inherited the word from her. My sister hates it lol
How Wisconsinites say Milwaukee also gives you away.
I agree from Washington State - bag, leg, egg, and plague all rhyme for me.
I'm from Boston & I say Bag like that too 👌🏻 rhymes with hag, lag, tag
@theresamnsota3925 True! I'm from Milwaukee, and like most Milwaukeeans, when I say the word, it comes out sounding like Miwaukee (no l). May dad was the only native Milwaukeean I knew who pronounced it properly and clearly kept the l in the word.
Good choice in specifying the region in the South instead of simply saying "southern". There are many many different dialects within that genre and vast differences in pronunciation can be observed from one county to the next. My dad is from Mount Airy, NC (aka Mayberry) and he has exactly the same dialect as Andy Griffith. while my mom from neighboring Stokes County has a dialect that I would place in Northern Georgia if forced to generalize.
Not to mention the Carolinian accents? And the secret Ocracoke accent that only like 100 people have
When you did the southern accent asking people to subscribe now, I just howled. You really captured it so well. We Canadians don't think we have an accent, but I can hear many eastern & western types, not to mention French Canadian .
I don't know which Canadians you have been talking to but we Canadians speak with many accents.
Ever hear a fellow Canadian when you're not expecting one? Like in an American podcast or news program? It's like, "Oh! So that's what we sound like!" 😂
Multi-accented American here and I can pick out a Canadian accent when I hear it.
I think my Canadian relatives (Ontario) have kind of a clipped accent.
I hear it in the rounded Os: oooouuuutt.
Love this video... I'm from Pittsburgh... I try to stray away from Pittsburghese, but being a lifetime Yinzer it slips out from time to time...🤣
As an international student who delights in learning about American culture, I find your experiences interesting and highly relatable. Take care!
I live in Orlando, FL. A common accent here is New YoRican. It's mostly Spanish structure and verbs with some English nouns and a Bronx accent, so sometimes the last few letters get chopped off and some Spanish words become non-gendered. Also, after a few years in Florida it becomes less staccato. It comes from people who moved from Puerto Rico to New York and found out they don't like snow.
Sounds like the East Coast version of Spanglish!
I live in Texas, grew up here, but my mom is from Massachusetts. To my ears she does not have a Yankee accent, but apparently other people from Massachusetts recognize it (it’s not that Bostonian accent). To my own years I don’t have much of a Texas accent unless I exaggerate it & then it’s just lazy talk. But my family back in Massachusetts certainly can hear it. I’ve watched quite a few videos about all the different American and English accents and it blows my mind sometimes.
I'm a Massachusetts resident. Many people think I should have a classic Boston accent, or sound like someone from the Sopranos, but I don't. It might be because I was an ELA teacher, and worked hard to speak my words clearly when instructing students or reading aloud.
@@Carolmaizy I grew up in Western MA, around Springfield, and we naturally have no New England accent at all. I think it's because our communities began in the mid 1700s and the major trading route was up & down the Connecticut River to New York's harbor, rather than over land to Boston. I've lived in DC for 30+ years and still get asked how I lost my accent.
@@CPTDoom thanks for the response and the insights. I live in S.E. Mass. I love visiting central and western Mass. It always feels like another world when I'm there. Even in our smallish state there's a lot of diversity, which I love.
I love this! Regional accents have always been so interesting to me! I was born and raised in southern California but my dad grew up in Pittsburgh and I remember thinking it was so funny that he pronounded "tile" and "towel" exactly the same to my ear! 😃
10:19 YES!!!! It’s incredibly (and ironically) surprising how the USA’s generic “deep southern” accent, for example, while widely considered its most “distant from classical British”, can actually border Shakespearean English given certain vernaculars - full circle!
Not Deep South. It's an Appalachian accent. We're not Southern nor Northern. We are the closest to our UK dialects due to rurality.
As a life long Rhode Islander, I didn't think I even had a New England type accent until I joined the Army. There are so few Rhode Islanders in the Army relative to other states, our accent is rare. So its nice to see it mentioned here, even if it is after mentioning Boston, which I get mistaken for anywhere I travel to.
I am from the Merrimack Valley in MA. I used to have a platoon leader from R.I. Trust me. You guys have an accent.
Met a guy from RI once. I had to ask where he was from, because it wasn’t quite like other New England accents I’d heard.
i grew up in bristol county so my accent is like a mix of massachusetts and rhode island, its so weird lol
Peter Griffin would like a word.
@@cakecwkecake7479Massachusetts has a lot of accents. You start getting out to the western hill towns and we have a nice lilt. Just across the border to VT or NH the rural folk have a similar way of speaking but with different inflections and local words even just barely across state lines. Like poplar becomes pop-el.
I lived in Pittsburgh from birth to retirement. downtown is pronounced dahn tath. Yinzer is a rather famous Pitts. accent. Yinz has the same meaning as all of you. I know many people who aren't Pittsburgers don't find our accent very attractive but I am proud of my heritage. My ancestors have been in Pittsburgh since before the revolutionary war. Our church records can actually trace them since 1752. When people talk about their family being from Germany, Italy, Ireland etc I proudly say I'm an American - my ancestors fought in the revolutionary war and helped start this country.
I can go anywhere in the world and as soon as I open my mouth, they say "You're from Pittsburgh!" Yunz guyz goin' dahn da Point tahnight, n'at?
I love the southern accents that make one-syllable words into two-syllable words, like bed ("bay-ed"), friend ("fray-end"), and town ("tay-own").
I love the study of American accents and take great joy in hearing you stumble over our various regional dialects. I am originally from the Chicago area, am married to a lady from Milwaukee (or "M'Waukee" as the natives pronounce it) and now live in Orange County, California. When I (infrequently) return to visit the Windy City, I can DEFINITELY hear an accent that, as a youth, I was completely oblivious to. Accents are fun!
I went the other way. Originally from Southern Indiana, which actually has a more southern accent than the rest of the state. Didn't really hear it until I'd lived in Chicago for a while.
A true Chi-CAW-goan can easily tell a North Sider from a
South Sider simply by looking at their baseball caps.
Being a born and raised Bostonian the best not exaggerated example of a true Boston accent that I can recommend is to listen to either Matt Damon or Ben Affleck in the movie Good Will Hunting both being from Boston. Mark Wahlberg in The Departed who's accent is more what locals would call a Southie accent has a more Irish influence. Nothing is funnier than seeing an actor not from Boston attempting and butchering our accent
What are your thoughts on Seth Meyers’ baaaahston accent???
British actors say the Boston/New England accent is the hardest for them to do. Very odd considering it originated in the East Anglia region of England.
Benedict Cumberbatch in Black Mass was such an embarrassing attempt at a Boston accent.
@@privatelyprivate3285 it's not "Baaaahston", and never was. I don't get why people say this all the time - it isn't even close. It's "BAW-stin", "Bawb", "Gawn, baby, gawn", etc.
@@singlesideman I have a friend named Carl who lived in Boston for a few years. He said that everyone there sounded like crows when they said his name.
Mitch Jayne, bass player for the bluegrass band, the Dillards, often told a story about his 1-year term teaching a class of student in a one-room schoolhouse in the Ozarks in the 50's. These were mountain folks who were isolated from the 'big city' and therefore had retained their version of English for hundreds of years. Their vocabulary was rooted deep in Old English from Shakespearean days. Most of the early settlers were Scotch Irish, so they had that component in their dialect as well. Jayne ended up writing a book about the many phrases the children used in contrast to what was more widely spoken in the US-phrases like "my daddy is duller than a widow woman's ax." Or instead of using the word 'face' they would use the word 'countenance'
After a year, one family moved to town, taking half the students with them. The school board did not feel that so few students were worthy of the cost of a private schoolmaster, so Jayne was let go and the remaining children were sent to the town school.
A couple years later, Jayne resisted some of the families and found an astonishing difference in the speech patterns of the children. The kids had been bullied at the town school and so over the course of only a few years, they shed their mountains words, phrases, and accents and adopted the more homogenated language of their town peers. Their parents still retained the old ways, but it was then a matter of shame for the children. Those kids grew up and raised their own kids who no longer shared in the regions dialect, and the grandchildren found it hard to understand what their grandparents were saying.
I have seen this in my own family, where the offspring of Mexican or Asian parents, correct their parents constantly and roll their eyes at their parents "wrong" pronunciations. So, I guess we can hold kids responsible for changing the language patterns of our history. Growing up it seemed everyone in my world had a thick Italian or Irish accents-now it's been at least 20 years since I've encountered in my neighborhood. The grandchildren of the adults I once knew speak "perfect" Americanized English.
We still have a unique accent in the ozarks, but that process has continued. My accent, while distinctive, is so much less strong than my grandparents. I've never had trouble understanding them but I expect if I had been able to interact more with my great grandparents I would have noticed things that I didn't understand or hadn't heard before
Note that I did not grow up way out in a holler somewhere, I was a town kid. But even the more rural kids in school talked the same as the rest of us as far as I know. I've gotten good at code switching for "sounding smart" so maybe they did too. But I think it's more that the real isolated mountain dialects are almost truly gone.
@@ThePopopotatoes Yes, that is what Mitch Jayne was trying to convey that the more isolated regions got diluted and even the town dialects became more and more standardized.
I wish people would stop talking about accents and dialects like "we/they just don't say 'O' properly," or "we're lazy so we drop letters," etc. It's not true or correct. Every dialect of English is correct and proper English
@@ThePopopotatoes my dad's dad was from Picher, Oklahoma. His family had super strong accents and used lots of unique phrases but it's all gone now. Even Picher is basically gone
I grew up in Missouri. There are three ways to say the states name. If you live in a city like St. Louis, Kansas City or Jefferson City, its Missouri. I'm from Hannibal in the northeast corner of the state. We pronounce it Mizzurah. And if you're from the Ozarks in the south like the Ozarks, it's Mizzurer. That's a basic example of the three accents in the state.
My father is from Minnesota and my mother grew up in both ohio and Boston. My mom is *very* particular about how she says things, on top of that I listened to a lot of books on tape read by British folks. As you can imagine my personal accent is strange, upper midwest meets "proper" English. I've had people ask which country I'm from (sometimes I say "the old country" and they nod knowingly like they know what I mean 😂). That being said I'd never heard the way some Midwesterners say bag, milk, and sorry until I met my SO. Every time he and his family say "bayge" "malk", and "sooorry" I'm caugh of guard and laugh. I have a fondness for Ohio and Minnesotan accents, but West Virginian and Kentucky accents are beautiful and soothing
I watch a UA-cam channel about a dog. This lady who's the owner is in england. I'm sure that she didn't realize it but she pronounced the words bowl and ball exactly the same way. She wanted the dog to bring his ball, and he brought the bowl. Seriously exactly the same. She was taken aback and repeated to bring the ball. I found it kinda cute that the dog heard no difference, nor did I, but the lady heard a significant difference.
Being from western Pennsylvania myself, I absolutely love that "Pittsburghese" made the top 5
Have recently subscribed to your channel. I'm American, (born and reared in Ohio) and your humor is cracking me up! I'm laughing out loud and the jokes you are cracking between the commentary. Thanks for the laugh, man..! I'm enjoying these videos!
Grew up north of Boston, lived in RI for years then raised my kids outside of Philadelphia. Now I'm back to living in my childhood home now.
I have an ear that picks up accents, so few people ever guess where I'm from!!!
😂 I love local accents
Damn Lawrence, you have a mighty nice southern accent there and it fits you.
I was raised by southern parents (Alabama) in the Chicago area...I have more Chicago than southern accent, but switch depending on if I'm talking to my family or other people. I was working in Brussels for a few months and my co-workers there said I had one of the hardest American accents to follow because I switched/blended the two. They also assumed everyone talked like a New Yorker or someone from the movie Deliverance.
😂
I'm a southern girl who spent 8 of my growing up years in eastern PA (suburb of Philly). I regularly mix up things, without even thinking about it. LOL!
My mother was a Mobile debutante born and raised, and watching her accent evolve as she moved to Utah to be a Mormon, then to Seattle, then to Alaska Panhandle, then to rural Colorado Rockies, to Texas Panhandle to Far Northern MInnesota.. By the time she died a year agao it was a truly crazy thing to hear
I’m from California but lived in Alabama during college. At first I couldn’t make sense of much, but after a couple of years I got good at hearing the different southern accents.
Even here in California, you used to be able to hear the difference between NorCal and SoCal but that was mostly in word choice. But at the end, I generally can tell when people aren’t from California because of nuances in mannerisms, phrasing, and accent.
Regional accents are fun to listen to.
Californian (and those on the American West Coast) accents are very interesting because there aren't as many regional differences compared to the east coast but there are new accents slowly forming.
For example there is apparently an emerging West Coast Asian American accent. This is amongst native English speakers of East Asian descent
There the Chicano accent as well, which you can hear in many Latinos in LA. Again generally among native English speakers of Mexican and other Latin American descent. The Chicano accent is not confined to LA, but there are apparently regional differences to the Chicano accent in LA as opposed to Texas or Chicago etc
Anyway, accents are fascinating!
@@Boooo_39 Id agreed but I feel the “Asian accent” is mostly first gen who didn’t have native English speakers for English. So more than an accent I hear incorrect grammar that is a cross over. An example is a lot of East Asian languages don’t make use for articles and plurals, so you hear that cross over to English.
For Mexicans, ya there is definitely that chicano-esque accent.
I’m mixed so I tend to code switch more than anything. But there are some distinct California ways of speaking that cue me as to whether someone is from here or pretending to be from here.
Hella.
@@Boooo_39 I really think there are far, far more than people tend to let on, but they keep getting disrupted by influxes of new migrants, mostly from California. I.E. Seattle has a number of sub-accents you can pick out, but it was super disrupted by the huge influx of tech-boom people. Similarly you can find very, very different accents in Oregon along the 101 than you do in Portland, but even in my childhood before Portland became the mass-migrant spot, Portland was real different sounding than my native Bremerton-greater area and different still from Seattle, but right now its harder to pick out.
I'm from Tacoma, and I can verify that "Canadian surfer dude" is an accurate description of our regional accent. But on the other side of the mountains, the accent changes dramatically.
Yeah, well they might as well be in Idaho.
I’d never noticed as hilariously accurate that is! Lol
As a Washingtonian born in the Midwest, I think we lack an accent up here in the PNW, but we throw a bunch of vernacular into everything, which is like totally surfer dude 😂.
I'm also from Tacoma but I'm not sure about this description. I'll have to hear it first. My family came here from Sweden so I'm probably more used to the Upper Midwestern accent. But I had a teacher ask if I was from the South. And my mother's side is mostly Welsh. I'm a mut.
Yep Spokane to Puget Sound is quite the humorous evolution
I lived in the Pacific Northwest most of my life and when I moved to Kentucky, everyone always said to me that they loved my accent. I was thinking I don’t have a accent. Then I started picking up a Western Kentucky accent then I realized I did have a accent. Your right though us PNWers do kinda sound like special southwestern Canadians.
As a PNW'er, i agree we sound like SW Canadians, cant quite hear the surfer thing... except from the surfers and potheads.
A lot of people from my area have almost a Minn accent because of all the Scandinavians that moved here in the late 19th-early 20rh century.
Heck, i work with someone who's born and bred here in Washington that sounds like he was raised on a Texas cattle ranch.
I live just north of Seattle. We got to talking with a Kiwi when we were in NZ who thought we were Canadian because we sounded like her daughter-in-law from Vancouver.
As someone who was raised by Oklahoma parents in Illinois, Kentucky, and Ohio, I can promise you that the mix of these four regions have been the subject of extreme confusion in my speech. Its a mix of the terms from Oklahoma, the Chicagoan inability to pronounce vowels correctly, and Ohioan accent which results in maximum midwestern insanity
I understand that in a way. Irish and German parents living in kentucky and Illinois.
Indiana and Ohio parents, West Virginia and Irish grandparents, grew up in Indiana, Georgia, Kentucky, NC, & Virginia.
Okinuckio accent? 🤔
Mine would be Inditex or something
Ha! I have a mix also. I was born in Michigan but raised in south Texas, northern and southern MinnesOta, and northern and central Indiana. I'm now back in northern Indiana, and I'm constantly questioning myself on how to pronounce different words because I'm not sure which side of me is going to come out.
people from the south and the midwest have a problem with vowels.
The Upper Midwest accent is actually really interesting because it is going through a vowel shift. That is why our vowels sound strange to other people. From Wikipedia: 'This change pattern is characterized by the longer and lower vowels moving forward and upward, while the shorter vowels move downward and backward.'
I don't know if upper Midwestern is the same as the great lakes accent. It's similar.
I had a wedding reception in South Carolina but some of the guests were from New England. The combination of the slow southern drawl and the fast New England was a bit like aural whiplash. 🤣
The great example of playing with accents/speech patterns was Moon Unit Zappa in Valley Girl. She was doing a parody of some of her friends at school for her father, Frank Zappa, who did a record around it.
What’s funny about that Valley Girl speak is when that record was a hit, I had friends say my brothers sounded like that for years & we lived in NJ!
Philly native here ("Norf" Philly). Just when I thought I had heard it all from people visiting Philly, you mentioned two I hadn't noticed before but are so accurate (jeet and the long o)! The "o" sound also changes a bit depending on the region in Philly. A lot of people are familiar with our term "jawn" nowadays, but few people pronounce it right - it's just like that long o in "on"!
Can confirm, as a native of Germantown. Jawn is not pronounced like lawn, but with the long o. I never realized we said on differently though! And yes, Norf and Souf are accurate as well.
As a West Virginia native who grew up near Pittsburgh but have more of the southern accent with some Pittsburgheseword influence because daddy grew up in that region (mom grew up down South and daddy's parents were from the same area as mom, so I had a lot more southern accent influence), I'm glad to doubly be on your list. 😂 The British people around me here in the UK usually take delight in my accent, as well, like the older man I spoke to this morning as I held a grounded bumblebee, trying to coax her onto a flower. He asked if it had stung me and I said, "that almost never happens. I've only been stung once in 20 years pickin 'em up." His eyes lit up and he asked if I'm from America (like my accent didn't completely give me away) and I said yes. The usual questions followed. 😂 The point being my accent seems to cause delight in many, for whatever reason. 😂
Years ago, like in the last millennium, the wife and I spent an extended weekend in Springfield. Ill visiting the Lincoln sites. I noticed as we interacted with the locals, some had a southern accent while others didn't. When questioned if they were indeed locals, they all said yes. So, it would appear that the Mason Dixon line runs through the middle of Springfield Illinois.
Springfield is a bit of an oddity, being the Capital of Illinois. Most of Central and Southern Illinois has a very strong southern accent, and the people who live in those little towns have been there a long time. Springfield has a lot more newcomers, due to politics, and therefore the accent was watered down.
I also like saying "...in the last millennium..." Just casually drop it in somewhere in a statement about the long long ago. Keeps people on their toes. Well at least keeps them thinking I'm odd....
I'm 20 miles south of Wisconsin. I stopped in Morris, they had the drawl that close. Was a bit surprised.
The original Mason-Dixon line actually ran through Indianapolis.
The Mason-Dixon line is the southern border of Pennsylvania. It's nowhere near Illinois.
I just have to say Laurence, I love your southern accent -- or I guess I should specify, southern West Virginia. I'll be enjoying your nice British accent and then you automatically switch into a perfect southern drawl. Cracks me up! 🤣 Thank you for the wonderful work you do with your videos. I really enjoy them.
Philly is as close as you got to the accents of Northeastern Maryland (Baltimore is at the southern end of that continuum), so I'm happy for that at least. :)
The Upper Midwest accent you describe might fall under the umbrella of the Great Lakes accent (or at least Great Lakes vowel-pronunciation pattern), which you can detect in western New York (but not eastern NY), the northern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois (but not the southern parts), then on west of the Great Lakes into Wisconsin, Minnesota, eastern ND and eastern SD. There is a theory that this pattern of pronunciation began with the construction of the Erie Canal, which involved a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic population of laborers, who did NOT have a common way of speaking English, but whose children forged this new American English accent and carried it with them throughout the Great Lakes region.
also not dissimilar to accents in the great lakes region of Canada, especially Windsor and the like
Oh good call! Listen, my mom is from Southern Ontario and there is a STRONG accent there. The whole side of the family sounds funny. Imagine mixing a Canadian and (what I now understand to be) a Great Lakes accent. I hear lots of endearing similarities when I see real or exaggerated Midwestern accents on TV. The Erie canal theory makes a lot of sense. Now I understand better why that linguistic pattern would appear on both sides of the Lakes. Very cool! I hope that I could help illuminate another piece of the puzzle!
That vowel shift is now shifting a few vowels in St. Louis, MO.
How’d you list all those places and forget Michigan lol
@@FerrariTeddy Haha, I don't know, but you're right! Def Michigan
It's interesting to hear you talk about which language features stick out to your ears. You must have listened well because your Southern accent was pretty convincing!
I live in southern IL. Our accent is so much different than in Chicago. I've tried really hard to train the southern drawl out, but, sometimes, I can sound down right hick-afied! For those of you who aren't aware of the size of Illinois, it takes 5 1/2 to 6 hours for me to drive to Chicago, and I'm still about 1 1/2 hours from the southern tip. The closer you are to Kentucky, the thicker the drawl.
Same here in Indiana. Southern Indiana sounds Kentuckian. Northwestern Indiana sounds Chicagoan. The rest of the state sounds pretty much standard Midwest.
Me too, My British girlfriend noticed that when I go home to my mom’s, the southern drawl and slang comes out. I never noticed how southern I sounded until then! Suddenly all my “i”s are “ah”s
Grew up in southern Indiana, yet everyone guesses the Carolinas🤦🏼♀️🤣
You have no idea how happy it made me that number 5 was southern West Virginia. I'm from there and absolutely love it. It's beautiful and full of fantastic people.
Love this! I'm from Wisconsin and had a good laugh over what you've noticed about us. On the other hand my husband is originally from West Virginia! And he's got a few words that throw me for a loop. Crayon sounds like crowns. When he says, "I know" it sounds more like, "I knooww." Fixin was another word I learned, "yeah that door needs fixin..."
My in laws tho are a hoot and I just love to listen to them talk.
Rhode Island native here and and a Providence accent is definitely different than Boston. I used to be able to tell the difference between a East Side Providence and Warwick, but sadly I’ve been gone from there too long
I moved to Rhode Island when I was 11, after having lived in Southern California since birth. It was so hard for me at first to understand my native Rhode Island classmates who had classic thick (especially compared to California) Providence accents. As for me, having lived in California, Rhode Island, rural England, and DC, while being raised by Chicago-native parents, my accent and vocabulary are both all over the place.
I've been here 25 yrs. Still couldn't tell Warwick from Prov. Cranston sticks out like crazy, though. And no, I don't need to cheat by looking for the leopard or cheetah print!
The Philly accent is a combination of both New-York accent and a Baltimore accent. The AW vowel is pretty tight like a New York accent. The OH diphthong is southern or sounds a bit like a Baltimore accent. The Philly accent has a very strong rhotic R.
Baldimer thanks you, hon.
True about the Philly accent. Baltimore is an interesting one.
@@Lorrainecats I love the Baldermer accent.
As a person from Minneapolis, I can confirm we have a lot of people with Irish heritage! And I do say “bag” the Minnesotan way- I once tried to teach my Scottish supervisor to say it that (the right) way
In area, Pennsylvania is ~3x the size of The Netherlands. It should come as no surprise that we have multiple accents; at least we are speaking the same language. There's also several regional accents between Pittsburgh & Philadelphia. Where I grew up the accent where I lived varied quite noticeably from the accent in the northern part of our county. The number of accents in the USA is essentially countless.
Yes. I was going to comment on the third (I think) main dialect of PA, the one in the middle. What I’ve heard from Lancaster County to Chambersburg to Williamsport has two features I’ve noticed: 1. In contrast to NYC and Philly, where “leave” is used where either “leave” or “let” fits, in Central, “let” is used for both. 2. Instead of rising at the end, question rise on the penultimate and then drop.
One of my favorite things I've learned in being in a relationship with a Pennsylvanian is that there are different grammar structures alongside our accent differences. As a Californian, it would never occur to me to drop the word "with" in a sentence like "when I'm done with my homework, I'll go for a walk", whereas he routinely says things like "I'm done the dishes". Apparently this is indeed a thing in parts of the US and Canada, but I had never heard anyone say that before meeting him. When I visit Pennsylvania, I now notice the little grammar differences as well as the accent changes.
Additionally, the infinitive “to be” is often considered superfluous.
“The lawn needs mowed.”
“The car needs washed.”
Accents are fascinating - and there’s definitely a lot more to it all.
When I moved to Virginia from Minnesota, I was shamed into switching from “pop” to “soda.”
Oh, the oppression I had to endure! 😭
I live in Philly…id say im done DOING the dishes. And i have NEVER heard anyone say the sentences in the comment above mine. They must be from a different part of Pennsylvania? I’m not surprised though, PA is a huge state for the mid-atlantic/northeast region. My stepson goes to Penn State and its a 4 hour+ one way trip from Philly. They have a completely different accent just 4 short hours away, but even more fascinating, i grew up 10 min away from my home in Philly…in S. Jersey. The accent is completely different 10 min away! My mom is constantly saying i sound like I’m from philly now 😂
@@glitterspray OH to CA - Took me years to switch to soda. Now I'm back in OH and getting funny looks, but I'm too old to switch back to pop.
Another example of this: Minnesotans/upper midwesterners often drop the pronoun after 'with' to turn phrases like 'come with me', 'bring it with you', to 'come with', 'bring it with'.
@@glitterspray That's odd, as most Minnesotans say Pop instead of soda.
As someone who was born and raised in southern West Virginia (Beckley area), your accent was pretty much spot on. You could use it the next time you're visiting your in-laws and everybody would just assume you were a local.
I worked near Beckley for a summer and I love that accent. Really reminiscent of the GA and NC mountain accents that I'm more familiar with but with its own unique differences
Man I love that whole area, southern/central WV is awesome.
I grew up in Fayetteville, WV... loved your accent!! I'm in East Texas now, where the accent is pretty close to my WV accent... I was quite surprised. 😊
Boone county here! Now I'm a Buckeye but my dad was a coal miner at Westmoreland.
@@kristinagoforth2224 I used to live on Ames Heights Rd and Huse St. Kicked outta Charlie's years ago. Lol.
Great video, and so excited that Pittsburgh made the list! I was born and raised in a small town bordering the city of Pittsburgh, then moved to Cleveland for college. My cousins who live about an hour east of the city have the stereotypical Pittsburgh accent, but most people I knew closer to the city did not. We definitely pronounced our L in words, but often drop the final G on -ing words, so that shopping becomes shoppin, living becomes livin, etc. My first time attending Mass in Cleveland, my Philly roommate and I were stunned to hear "Thanks be to Gad" instead of God (rhymes with cod, pod, mod).
I have always been really fascinated by the interpretation of non-americans to different regional accents. I watch a lot of non-english speaking media and have begun to notice different cadences in (for example) the Korean language between Seoul and somewhere like Busan. I just find this interesting from a linguistic standpoint because I didn't understand the language at all when I first noticed it, but I could tell by the cadence. I have really wondered since how others might perceive us in similar (or dissimilar) ways.
I'm starting to get like that with different regional Aussie dialects because I watch so much of their media, but my family can't hear the difference between AU or UK dialects of English which is so funny to me.
As a Pittsburgher I'm (pleasantly) surprised to hear our accent mentioned! Yup, "dahntahn" is what you'll hear around here. We're more than happy to make fun of ourselves for it, too:)
The dropping of "l" is interesting. It's not something I've noticed -- except maybe with kids. I'll have to keep an ear out.
You totally nailed the WV accent, BTW!
Listen to people say "Stillers" or Giant Eagle to hear the swallowed L. It almost turns into a W.
I'm not sure about neighborhood subtleties. I grew up in the northern suburbs, so I'm going based on subjective personal experience and what we were taught by our dialects professor at one of the performing arts universities in the city. In my own family those who have the accent more thickly almost change the L to a W and those with more of just regional speech patterns or a light accent just hit the L really lightly. I've found that the vowels in both yinz and worsh can vary from person to person. But I love hearing your input because I'm a dialect nerd.@Atheos B. Sapien (Ubi dubium ibi liberatas)
@@lane6866 I get accused of saying "warsh" all the time but I don't pronounce it that way--but neither do I pronounce it with a standard low back vowel. I use a lax high back vowel.
My dad, born and raised in rural Arkansas, had a permanent and pronounced corresponding accent… or so I was told by other people, because I couldn't hear any of his accent markers, since I'd been hearing him talk since I was a baby and to me it was just his voice.
That is, with one exception: he pronounced "wash" as "warsh," and I was always able to hear it. I don't know why it was the only accent marker I could hear from him.
Interesting, whereabouts in Arkansas? Don’t need a town or anything but just a general idea or n/s/e/w direction…I’d wager below Little Rock and either central or westerly areas…to really throw a dart blindfolded I’ll say somewhere between Murfreesboro and Bradley….
My grandfather was born & raised in rural SW Arkansas (Sparkman) & he had a few markers. Like you're saying, he always "worshed" his hands before dinner. Cooking said dinner was "worman's" work, which leads me to believe the added "r" sound was connected to the "w."
Wait. Now that I think about it, there were a lot of "r's" where "r's" were not: That "feller" who lives over yonder in the "holler" with the "yeller" hunt'n "dawoog" offered me a chaw of "tuhbacka" (you thought I was gonna say "tobaccer") but "ah toe-dim 'nahthankya, ah doen dip.' Mah deddy toad us kids that chewn tuhbacka wurnt good fur nuth'n but cyurrin wurms. I think that feller's a bit titched in the head anyhow. No tell'n what he's fix'nta do."
I miss my grandpa 😔
@@CometdownCat Northwest of Little Rock, as far as I can remember.
The upper midwest accent is really similar to a Canadian accent, in my experience. You hear it a lot in Michigan as well. I definitely picked it up while I lived there.
You can really hear it in the movie Fargo.
Da yoopers
mostly northen LP and all of UP
@@ZakhadWOW It was really prevalent in the Muskegon and Holland area.
Indeed, but Canadians have a distinct “a” sound. You will never hear an upper midwesterner use “oh yeah eyh” like a Canadian. The upper midwestern accent is Yoopernese.
I used to cover sports for the Crookston Times in northwestern Minnesota, and the head coach of the University of Minnesota-Crookston men's basketball team could be convinced to do a demo of all the accents he encountered scouting for players. I had no idea Minnesota had so many different accents. I would think that the smaller the town, the easier it would be to retain the accent too. I knew a woman whose mother lived in a Finnish town and in the 1980s still spoke only Finnish. The things you learn.
I come from a nearby county to Pittsburgh. It is interesting how much of an influence that city's accent affected me growing up. I say most things "correctly" however I still can't say iron "correctly" without thinking about it and saying it a few times in my head. Sometimes a downtown slips out of me. You forgot the most important word... YINZ! it is a form of you all. I pronounce it with a southern style accent "y'all".
Great video glad the Pittsburgh accent made this list! I hoped it would.
Ha ha, you can tell a hardcore born and bred Bostonian by their use of “yiz” as a form of you, plural.
The first time I visited my relatives in Pittsburgh, they made fun of my Okie y'all. And then I heard the word "yinz" for the first time.
Even just different parts of California have different accents. The Malibu accent is extremely different from the Bakersfield accent which, is extremely different from the rural mountainous coast accent, which is extremely different from a five cities accent, which is very different from a Compton accent.
The Bakersfield accent is derived from the Okies and the Arkies who came to California during the Great Depression looking for work. Many of them had lost farms to the dust, and they found the San Joaquin Valley farming life familiar.
Then there's the general Western accent that rural Northern Californians share with places like Utah and Colorado.
@pamelaroyce5285 yep, I'm from the valley and I'm a descendent of Oakies and Arkies (my dad's parents are actually one of each).
I was born & raised in Middle Tennessee. It’s strange that if you go anywhere else in the south, they’re confused about your accent. It’s not real southern but foreigners & yankees still hear the southern in us.
My husband is from Mississippi & I love his super southern delta accent. He says “ol” one syllable for the word “oil”. ❤
My friend from Georgia says ol and we were talking about it today even going back and forth between ol and oyl heh
my Dad was texan and he (and relatives) also said 'ol' for oil.
New Orleans area ... it's 'earl'.
My favorite Boston accent phrase is “Star Market charge card” or “Staeh maehket chaege caehd”
I’m from western central MN and it is fascinating that to the west of my town people talk way down in their throat and in the southeastern side of Mn people talk up into their nose. I’m the Duluth area and up the north shore they sound quite Canadian. I love accents and the idea that even a state a small as MN we can have at least three unique accents. Love it!
I’ve been a fan for a while but I didn’t know you came to WV fairly regularly. There are a ton of regional dialects here and they vary quite a bit from one another. There are also a million different things to see for a world-renowned hiker/UA-cam sensation like yourself. It’s a beautiful state for the most part.
Loved this video! Here’s my best story: My family has lived in Oregon for 150yrs. I live in Eugene, where we speak BC/surfer/hippie. We were being seated by a waitress in a Cracker Barrel restaurant north of Nashville, Tennessee. She told us the dinner specials, and side vegetable dishes of the day, one of which left us bewildered. It was cornbread d’raisin. We asked her to repeat it, twice, perplexed about how a cornbread dish with raisins could be considered a vegetable. Flustered with us, she changed verbiage to “cornbread stuffing”. Aha! She had been saying “cornbread dressing”, we heard “cornbread d’raisin”. We still couldn’t understand how that was considered a veggie dish. 😂
Maybe she mentioned it because cornbread dressing has chopped up vegetables in it like onions, peppers and celery. 😂
Haha, Im two and a half hours southwest of you, down on the coast! We moved here when I was 1 and a half, so I was raised (and still live) here. There probably are some differences between the coast and the valley, but I cant say Ive heard them. We go to Eugene to go shopping mostly (and eat) so I havent heard too much from people raised in Eugene. Not a full conversation anyway. We use your airport too because its a lot cheaper. 😂 I would have also been wildly confused about the dressing. I kept reading it as raisin. Eventually realized what it must have actually sounded like. Never heard of "cornbread dressing" before though.
As an aside, when I see people from Oregon online theyre basically always from, or live in, Portland, which is so sad because we're a large state with a lot of cities. Adds a little to the "Oregon is just Portland" misconception. I know the rest of the state population is smaller but damn. Glad to see some rep from anywhere else hahaha.
Re Boston- Since living in the UK (England) people often ask if I am Irish... but just to mention about Boston- the r's in words don't get used until you get to the end of the sentence where we have to put them so they don't clutter up the next sentence..."Way-ah did we pahk tha cah? I have no i-deer..."
Again, applause to the channel, it's wikkid pissah. :)
You did so well with this! You have a good ear! Honored that you chose 2 accents from my home state. I'm from the Pittsburgh side and can tell you that you nailed it! No Ls! 😆 In fact, I think I was in high school or college when I realized that the word "riled" had an L in it. I had always said, "rowd." And you absolutely got the "dahn tahn" thing, too. Flower = flahr. And I agree with you that it sounds like cockney. :)
Pennsylvania has a couple of accents.....
Sure, everybody knows about the Pittsburgh, & Philadelphian accents. There's also the south central Pennsylvanian accent. There's the northeastern PA accent that combines NYC, Philly & south central Pennsylvanian accents.
If you get just a little bit outside of Pittsburgh, the Yinzer accent turns into the slightly more "rural" Yunz/ You'nz accent. Some old-school city dwellers really bristle at the idea that it's the same accent.
@@ericwshannon I'm a Yunzer, and I bristle at being called a Yinzer.
Lawrence, I have to say, well done for the algorithm. But also, well done.
You might read John Steinbeck's final book, _Travels With Charlie_. He drives across the US in a campervan with his dog Charlie, and talks about accents a bit, remembering his childhood and early years before television. My parents grew up in that world a bit as well.
Nailed Philly, but it was Pittsburgh where I heard: "jeet, no, jou, no, squeet"
"Did you eat, no did You, no, lets go eat"
Priceless ...
Southerners put an r in Wash and Washington. Makes me nuts.
I love the Chicago Accent, my original home town.
But I have a Tennessee Accent, but with, ... correct grammar and I don't put an "R" in Wash!
Boston Accent is #1 !
I am so happy that Pittsburghese was included here. It's such a unique dialect. The OW sound is pronounced as AH so it would be Dahn Tahn, or at a Stillers game, it's "That's another Pittsburgh Stillers, FIRST DAHN"
When I moved to Europe and told them proudly PGH. Was famous for still mills I realized for the first time no one knew what I was talking about!
I find it funny he picked on L’s. I grew up in Ohio and moved to New England when I was a teenager, so my accent’s all over the map… but my parents and grandparents are all from Pittsburgh. More than once I’ve been called out for “swallowing my L’s,” specifically when I say “pickle.” Wonder if it’s a holdover from my PGH language roots…
@@ScreaminEmu Sometimes you hear Pittsburghers pronouncing L as W; for example "cahw-widge" instead of "college."
Iowa native raised by German-American Iowans. As an adult I lived in Kansas City, Colorado, Albuquerque, NM, and now Kentucky for the past 25 years. KY has its own accents but mine is a Midwestern mishmash. Great video, Laurence. These are my favorite of yours. Always interesting.
Please do more accents, they are awesome!
Yay! I’m so glad WV made the list. ❤ I was born and raised in WV. I now live in South Central TX. My accent gets asked about a lot. My husband is from MI. Our kids have wack-cents, for sure.
Omg your southern accent smacks! Ohio has 3 regional accents. Lol😅 Ope!
As a native of the Bayg.... A friend from Rhode Island visited and lost his mind at a state park gift shop when they asked if he wanted one. A few work-trips to California made me very aware how not-normal it was just about anywhere else in the states. Among other phrases and words spoken...
Rhode Islander here, was friends with someone from Ontario in college. First time she dropped a “bayg” in conversation it definitely through me for a loop. 😂
@@trussell608 The Rhode Island accent is instantly recognizable to me. My grandparents were from there.
@trussell608 well I'll just say "how ah ya, naybuh?" 👋
Hey Lawrence, I gotta say, your content here is incredibly consistent in theme and quality, props to you man.
Laurence, please don't forget the vast area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Some call it 'fly-over country' but it is filled with a rich collection of cultures and accents.