What does a California accent sound like?
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- I'm a British polyglot and phonetician living in Southern California. Here, I went out looking for people at the beach willing to reveal their accents to me. I was quite nervous to ask ar first but met some lovely people. I tested out the California Vowel Shift and looked at other features of California English.
Looks like this might need to be the first of several videos about California accents before I branch out into the rest of the country.
Thanks to everyone who pointed out my mistake about The I5 in NorCal. Turns out they just say I5 or just 5.
Sorry to those few people who thought I was judging Californians for having an accent or saying things wrong. Everyone has an accent - it literally means a way of pronouncing a language. And there is no right or wrong. I’m fascinated by language and how it changes.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages just be a bit more careful. I’m sure if you mixed up Merseyside accents with Manchester ones, you’d catch all kinds of hell… mixing up SoCal and NorCal is similar except the centers of population are much farther apart, so it can be more glaring of a mistake.
@@fandyllic1975 But if I did a video about English in the north of England there’s a lot I could say that would be true of both Merseyside and Manchester. And those differences are well known and recognised by the people who live there.
What’s happening here is more subtle and most people are unaware. I don’t have the resources to travel the whole state and interview thousands of people. I started local and am learning from what people say in the comments.
I moved to Calif from Indiana and this girl followed me into the bathroom to make me keep saying ocean. She had never heard anyone say it like me before. It was all about how I said the o. In Indians, some say dish and fish like deesh and feesh.
@@fandyllic1975A good number of Californians have never travelled to other parts of the state and some have never even travelled out of state either.
Gosh, no apology is necessary for California sensibilities. Differences in accent here mean nothing.
As a californian I know this video is accurate because I could detect absolutely nothing in the phonetics
Yep, it sounded “normal” to me!
It blows me away when someone says I have a California accent, I don't hear an accent 😂
Ah! I thought I was the only one!
i was like wdym this isnt normal ?????????
Yep, couldn't hear an accent at all!
As a So Cal native I can assure you that SNL has the wrong accent but correct conversation 😆
Ditto.
EXACTLY!
I always loved how they suggested the Actual Best Routes based on time of day for what traffic was like
Wwwhat ‘r you dooowin here?
I’ve heard people talk like that, but it’s definitely not common.
@@devongratrix4921 I showed The Californians to a friend who’s visiting from UK. We then met some friends for dinner and he was amazed when we actually started talking about routes.
If you are in Northern California, you get on 101 and if you are in Southern California, you get on the 101.
So which way is correct? They both sound normal to me
Northern california is off its rocker... The is used in english to refer to specific nouns, a is used for non specific nouns. A perfect example of this is that the 5 freeway is a freeway. A freeway does however become the freeway if it is the freeway you are currently on, just unspecified as to what freeway it is.
It feels like northern californians arent properly identifying their nouns.
Lets say you're on the phone with the wife, she asks you where you are, you just say 5. Is that your on channel 5? Or the 5 freeway? 5 miles out? 5 feet away? 5 minutes? Or did you just tell your buddy how much he owed you? Notice how only one of those is the 5, because only the 5 is a noun.
@@brandonhoffman4712Use your brain and figure it out. That's what that is.
@@exalented directions are about conveying information, not telling someone to figure it out. Thats what that is.
But dont worry, because my brain does not need you for directions. My phone can do a better job than you can. Thats also what that is...
I would say I'm on "Interstate" 5 and would never say I'm on 5. @brandonhoffman4712
Native Angeleno here: I took a linguistics class at USC back in the 1990s and was marked wrong for transcribing the word “caught”the same as “cot.” The professor tried to tell me that I was pronouncing the words differently. I stuck to my guns that I pronounced them identically. I feel vindicated now!
I was raised in Southern California. My Kiwi mother would criticize my 'accent', on words such as this. I specifically remember her saying that when I said 'dawn', it sounded like 'don'. I asked her to pronounce the difference, but I couldn't hear it.
I'm a Socal native and I can't even hear what's weird or different about half of his examples lol. I also wasn't aware that the cot/caught shift was only a western American thing.
Same... lol
😂 I said the same in another comment,... You said it perfectly.... I'm a San Diegan.
I heard no wrong in the people reading the words. Bag sounded like bag to me not bug
I am so confused watching this video because I am
Not hearing anything he is speaking about. Hahaha. Born and raised here
@@lisapurzak722 Me too!
Ask almost any native Californian and they'll tell you we don't have an accent 😅 It's so weird hearing our accent broken down like this
I have talked to various Southerners, Midwesterners, and Europeans and some Asians. They all say we have an accent. I just don’t hear it. THEY all have an accent. But it certainly isn’t us! 🤣🤣
Only if you never left your home town or county.. North vs South sound way different. And Central Cali sounds more like Texas than anywhere else. I moved to LA and people to this day think I'm from out of state because of the accent. Born and raised Central Valley.
Californian here, the last time I went to New Zealand I was complimented on my accent. We can't hear it but others sure can
Been in NorCal most of my life - people from Oakland definitely have their own accent!
Ask anyone who knows about linguistics... Everyone has an accent.
The utterly irritated part is thst this all sounds "normal" to me, a Californian. I cannot hear the accent! 😂
When I was in England years ago, someone actually mimicked my 'accent' and I have ever since always wondered what my Californian accent sounded like and wished I could hear it.
Same. It's baffling
I know, I'm literally sitting here frustrated af. He needs a side by side with other accents or something lol
I could only tell the ing and n sound and that big kinda sounds like beg. Bag definitely didnt sound like bug. I can hear the ae sound.
Yeah, I never realize my accent until I hear a neutral American accent. I'm like, "oh. I really talk that weird?"
Southern California Native, I can detect 4 coastal accents, 6 urban accents, and 3 desert accents among SoCal natives. There are more when you include people whose parents/grandparents were born in other areas. I would love someone to do a vlog showcasing different accents throughout California.
please do!
Yes That would be great
I’d love to see it if you do!!
Urban accents 😂 I noticed all the urban kids put a “t” at the end of hundred.
Brilliant! Can you tell me which accent says But-uhn (button) And "supper" for dinner? Another video said that was a SoCal accent, but I (in NorCal) have never heard this. I'm thinking this person is a transplant from Colorado or somewhere in the midwest.
I'm native to northern California. This video is mostly about southern California accents. This is a massive state with about 900 miles between the northern and southern borders. So we end up with a lot of variation in accents and slang. In the case of black Americans, the differences between SoCal and NorCal accents and slang become even greater, especially Sacramento, SF Bay area, and L.A. I'm just rambling now. Awesome video😂
True. Plus there are countless rural pockets with distinct dialects.
Glad you like it. I really want to explore more.
You could look at the Southern accents that came into Riverside and Bakersfield (both in California) during the Dust Bowl migration. Accents and grammatical constructions persist among some folks in those areas even today.
I know somebody is from Oakland or beyond when I can't for the life of me understand them. Lol.
@@gingeralice3858just keep honking sweets
*THANK YOU SO MUCH* for representing California the way it really is, and not representing it in that phony valley girl talk like they do in the SNL skit. The fact that you went to places like Lancaster and Riverside that would normally be ignored tells me you actually know the region. You're a real Californian, despite your British roots. Welcome, and instant sub.
True, but Valley has crept into the California accent whether we want to admit it or not.
@@guerralg63"Valley Girls" were a thing back in the 80s. They're ubiquitous now. They're everywhere.
@@therealking6202 Absolutely! Everywhere!!
When he went to Watts and Crenshaw, I was expecting people THERE to be the examples of speech and I was SO confused with what was to come. 🤣
Another facet of our accent in Californa is the presence of caló, or Chicano slang. This predates "Spanglish" and its a historical inflection within working-class neighborhoods. When people hear me talk over the phone they think I'm Mexican. When they see me in person they realize I'm Filipino American, I just grew up in a predominantly Mexican area amongst some "Chicanos" who have indigenius Chumash roots.
So Very True ❣️❣️❣️ Chicano : a Mexican-American who has had some college education or formal education.
Pocho: the Mexican-American who, for whatever reason, didn't or couldn't get any form of an education.
Both 1st or 2nd generation born or at least raised here in the USA.
I grew up in National City (S. of DT San Diego) during the 70's and 80's, which was a predominantly Mexican-American area, with the SoCal Chicano accent as well. I knew I had a SoCal accent, but it wasn't until my family moved to the Midwest for a cpl of yrs when I was 14 (1983), that I discovered I had a bit of that Chicano accent. A lot of people in the Midwest could hear it and would point it out. They'd ask how I sounded Mexican, when I looked like the typical portrait of an California girl... Blonde hair & blue eyes. It was mostly in the inflection of the way I spoke. Though I'm back in San Diego now, I've lived in regions with various strong accents throughout my adult life, like the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which has a very Canadian accent, Boston and Mobile AL. I seemed to pick up a bit from everywhere I lived over the years and lost what I grew up with. Now I can't be placed by accent anymore. Which I suppose is a good thing... I don't think the mix of 80's valley with a hint of Chicano would be cute anymore @ 55.
@@crybebebunny Can you link where you got those definitions from?
@Y20XTongvaLand That is what I learned growing up in East Los Angeles, CA. A Professor in Chicanos Studies at ELAC. This was back in the 90's. I also read this in a School book back when I was in High school. Of course I don't remember exactly which book. I am a human with some Dementia and I never memorized every source I was learning from/ reading. Do you?
@@crybebebunny I wanted to chime in. Nowdays, people associate the word Chicano referring to people that are of Mexican descent but grew up in LA. Also, the word 'pocho' implies that you are 1st/2nd generation that barely knows Spanish or is not as fluent in Spanish as their parents/ancestors. I call myself pocha all the time even though I speak Spanish at work, translate, and transcribe, etc. I just don't feel as fluent as my other family members, even though it's the only language spoken in my household. But this mostly has to do with the 'not good enough' mindset of being born in the USA but not having respect from my family in Mexico. They call me fresa, which usually implies I'm white and will never be Mexican to them. I do identify as Mex-Am though and have a PhD.
The Los Angeles River can run dangerously fast and high in the winter, but in the summer we use it for motorcycle chases and airplane landings in action movies.
I’m always reminded of the scene in Repo Man, when Bud and Otto are having a car race with the Rodriguez brothers when I’m near the LA River.🤪😂
Don't forget the Greasers having a car race.
Don't forget the Terminator 2 motorcycle chase scene. Wasn't a portion of Them (1954) filmed in the flood channel? Not sure about that one.
@@alzorama2876 Yep! For a 9 year old it resulted in my ridiculous hatred of ants forever.
@@irmafoster3933 Ha ha! Gotta love those old sci-fi movies. "The Beginning of the End" with giant grasshoppers didn't help either. I absolutely hate those insects.
As a Californian interested in linguistics, I've looked into this proposed vowel shift before, and I have never been convinced it is accurate. The way you present it here, it is very clear to hear. Excellent video.
EDIT: You even did one of the better explanations of the "the" thing.
The goose shift is one type of the great fowl shift.
🤩
We won't discuss the shift that happens after you get too many cherries at the height of the season when they are super sweet and ripe.
@@marymactavish The Northern S*ities Bowel Shift?
@@marymactavish Been there. It's worth every moment in the bathroom.
Great video, recognized all the spots you were at. I'm from Torrance, north of San Pedro and South of Inglewood near the beach. Right off the 405 or 110!
I'm glad you mentioned the king-keeng thing, I almost thought you'd miss it! I notice Southern Californians under the age of 50ish saying "peenk," "LA Keengs," "where are you goeeng," etc. The oldest person in which I've noticed this is currently 60ish, but he comes from the surf subculture which may have been ahead of the curve with it
My completely unstudied hypothesis is that it comes from Spanish language influence due to SoCal bordering Mexico. Great video, thank you!
I agree. I'm white, only speak English, but grew up in a very Latino area. They would always say "where you go-een" instead of "where are you going." The accent always sounded different to me than the Mexican accents of the people who had just gotten here---maybe the accent I am used to is from Calo?
This is one of the ones where I couldn't really tell what he was talking about. Like what is the difference between "king" and "keeng?" Is it more nasal?
Exactly what I was thinkeeng! I’m a SoCal native of Mexican descent. I do notice that non-Latinos sometimes use this pronunciation, when they’re SoCal natives who grew up around us. Lol
@@arkroogs90If you can say the word “it,” and isolate the way you’re pronouncing the “i” and apply it to “king,” it might help with hearing the difference. I just tried saying it both ways, and I think“keeng “ does sound a little more nasal to me. Good observation!
@@maidenthe80sla I remember in the late 90s-early 2000s the people I knew with Valley Girl accents were younger generation white girls from Thousand Oaks. People I knew in south oxnard had a completely different accent---maybe Calo?
Great video! Quick correction: In NorCal (Northern California), we /never/ say “the” with freeway numbers. In most cases, we just say the number (e.g., “You can take 280 or 101 to get to 80). The only exceptions are the single-digit routes: Instead of “1,” we say either “Highway 1” or “the PCH; and while I have heard/said just “5,” I’ve also heard local people say “I-5.” I think might be something about the monosyllabic names that would happen with the single-digit routes?
Some people say the, I say the 101
I think it’s a holdover from when SoCal freeways had names (usually a terminus), I.e., “the Santa Ana Freeway,” (5) or “the Pomona Freeway” (60) or “the Riverside Freeway” (91).
@@SkipperJane I think technically they still do have those names, like how the 101 is "The Hollywood Freeway", now thats something that truly no one says
It could be a transfer of spanish...as when referring to road directions "el" and its equivalents to "the".
So interesting- but, as a (Northern )California native, I would say that you are not talking about a "California accent" but rather a Southern California accent. Also, I live on the coast just a few blocks from Hwy 1. Not THE Hwy 1. It says Cabrillo Highway on the signs and on the map but I have never heard anyone (except tow truck drivers) call it that. THE PCH? Never heard that name.
I'm a Southern California native (Long Beach/Huntington Beach) who has lived in the Bay Area for 30+ years. Northern Californians don't say "The I-5", but just "I5", "580", or "Highway 101". I've only heard the definite article used here by Southern California transplants.
Also, when I visit Southern California, my dialect slides into exactly the accent you're describing. I love seeing its features transcribed onto a vowel chart and into IPA notation (I took a course in phonetics in college.) Well done!
Heh, I was going to say something about that; it's usually how I know someone is from Southern California. We move from Los Angeles to Santa Cruz when I was around 8 years old, so I don't think I have many Southern California affectations.
I’m from Washington state, and I’ve heard both “I-5” and “the I-5” equally as much.
@@artugert Yes, maybe if you are closer to I-5 physically it gets the definite article.
We say "The 215" or "The I-95" here in Vegas, I wonder if the accent extends into Southern Nevada.
I'm curious how this is treated throughout the country. In New England it's just the number. "Head down 91." or "There's a ton of traffic on 95."
Although, for single digit state highways (because all our federal highways are double digits) we often preface it with "route".
As a CA native, you might also notice some Spanish inflections into the pronunciation considering how close the border is to SoCal and the fact that CA was once Mexico before it was US territory.
CA native here. True about the Spanish inflections. Somewhat interesting California trivia...Though it had only been a part of the United States for less than two years, California becomes the 31st state in the union (without ever even having been a territory) on September 9, 1850. The United States acquired the area of California from Mexico in 1848. Due to rapid population growth during the Gold Rush, as well as a thorny congressional debate over the question of slavery in the new territories, Congress allowed California to jump straight to full statehood without ever passing through the formal territorial stage. It was a wild place.
In northern California we have San Rafael ("san rafell") and Vallejo ("vuh-lay-hoe").
Also, I never heard "the" before freeways. It was "take 101 to 37", and "take I-5 south". 🤷♂️
@@billkendrick1 Same here. Sacramento area. Take I-5 south, East on 50, south on 99. Exit Elk Grove. Love that it's very culturally diverse. Many accents, points of view, histories, traditions, and experiences.
@@billkendrick1I’m from Marin originally then Sonoma County. Drives me nuts when I hear people say San Roff-I-el. As for Vallejo, we’ve always said Vul-ah-o, no H.
Kinda funny! 😁
Have you heard of Miami English? It's a dialect heavily influenced by Spanish considering the number of native Spanish speakers in Miami. I think it's interesting when a prevalent second language has an effect on the dominant language
Wonderful analysis of the vowel shift! As a Bay Area native, I think this applies more to Southern California than Northern, though we do say "keeng", "theeng", "reeng". The first time I heard someone from down south say "the 5", I thought they were nuts.
In San Diego, we used to say 5 and 15, but now I hear the 5 and the 15 almost all the time. I use them both.
Bay Area native as well. Agreed this is pretty much all SoCal talk. And the use of “the” before a freeway or interstate roadway irks me. It’s just “101”, “880” or “280.” The other one that grates on me is the out of towners who say ”the BART”. It’s just BART, as in you take BART to your destination. 😂
As a Southern California native, that was fun.
My wife was born and raised in New York City. I grew up in Southern California. She finds it incredible that I can't discern between "cot" and "caught". They sound the same to me. The same with "Mary", "marry" and "merry": I have no clue.
Although I could hear the difference between "cot" and "caught" (which, as a fellow southern Californian, I pronounce identically), I too failed to hear the difference between many of the consonants Dave mentioned.
I grew up in the Bay Area. “Cot” rhymes with “got” and “caught” rhymes with “fraught.” The other vowels:
Mary/fairy
Merry/ferry
Marry/Harry
3 distinct vowel sounds to me.
@@Pesto2 I've lived most of my long life in southern California. Down here, “cot” rhymes with “got” and “caught” and “fraught” (not that were proud of it).
I have no trouble hearing the distinction between "cot" and "caught" when spoken by others, and I say them differently. "Mary," "marry," and "merry" are identical. I'm a so. Calif. native, born in L.A., now 79. My late wife was born in Joplin, MO, came to San Diego as an infant (1944). One day in 1986, as a bit of extraordinary luck, I heard her on the radio when she called a talk show. She spoke with a distinct Missouri accent identical to that of her grandmother (b. 1899, Warrensburg, MO), that I'd never noticed before. I was amazed that it was so noticeable on the radio, but not at home.
Socal native here. I can hear the difference in his cot/caught examples, but I can't pronounce them with a difference lol
This is so fascinating! I never thought I had an accent. I’m from San Diego and am always amazed that when I’m out of state or country that people know I’m a Californian. Thanks for this, now I understand what makes the SoCal accent unique.
So glad you found it useful.
If you want to hear the accent from “The Californians”, ask some CA surfers to tell you about their adventures in Hawaii.
HA HA! TOO TRUE!!!
This is by far the best video I’ve seen on the Cali dialect. So many cite studies but no samples from average citizens
This video perfectly shows our accents and if you travel here, this what you will hear. But what you will NEVER hear is any of us over the age of 11 or those of us not part of the gang culture ever use the term cali. That term is only used by those from east of the Rockies.
@@pakhyeoncheol thank you!
@@ec1628 very true about Cali. I’ve never heard anyone in Orange County call it The OC either.
It's California, not "Cali". Noone calls it that other than tourists and recent transplants.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages 🎶 California!... California!... here we come!... 🎶 🎹🎹🎹
Yes there is a definite west coast difference in AAVE it is very pronounced between NY and LA and the south
Omg please do a video on this. There are definitely plenty of videos of dudes from NYC trying to talk like they from Compton. Also a whole video on the Baltimore hood accent can be done off the AARON IRON URN meme video
Yesss that "R" sound is distinctive in every region of the AAVE speaking US 🤌🏾 😅
as somebody from the bay area, this is so weird to watch. everybody thinks they have no accent in their native language, but when you tell people "oh, it's different here here and here" it's like getting to stare at your own ugly mug in a mirror lol
Great video. I'm a California native born and raised in Orange County Anaheim. I have a California accent.
@@mulattovanguard thank you!
I never thought we OC natives had an accent until this video pointed it out. 😳
@@TanyalakergurlThe only people without an accent are dead. If a person speaks, they have an accent. Doesn’t matter what language they speak or where in the world they are. 100% of humans who can speak any language have an accent.
My UK friend calls our accent a “movie star” accent. He always knows if a person is from CA.
@@awesomelife3710 I am aware, I was being facetious. 😄
Props to this Englishman for going all the way to 105th and Wilmington to talk about a Californian accent 😂😂😂
In northern California, we do drop Ts when we say the names of cities. Sacramento=Sacramenno. Santa Rosa=Sanna Rosa. Monterey=Monneray, etc.
I don't think this is all that uncommon in America as a whole, is it? Unless you're trying to enunciate every syllable, nt tends to elide out the t.
@@markb5249 I don't know. I never noticed it anywhere else. You could be right.
I also hear the t change to a glottal stop in words like mountain, kitten, rotten in the area (this may also be more generally American speech though, but travelling to Hawaii where the t is clearly pronounced is a big contrast)
@ericscavetta2311 then we have to distinguish what northern California really is. I live FarNorCal. We don't even consider Sacramento and The Bay Area northern California. We talk really different up here.
@@Deadlift14 I totally agree! Even the Sierra Nevada (Eastern CA) has a different sound to me.
I loved the guy at the beginning who said he was a native and was “born and raised 20 minutes up the I-5“. That is SO southern California! 😁 Up here in Northern California we never or rarely use “the” in front of a freeway name. I love the SNL Californians. 😂
Yes indeed.
I grew up in L.A. the second thing of note is that he referenced time not miles for distance. All time estimates are given under ideal conditions with modifiers for traffic if needed. "How far is it from point "a" to point "b?" "About 45 minutes." 🖖
As a 40+ year SoCal resident, all I can say is, “East on the 710?!?!?”
Native Californian and Angeleno here...I've never actually noticed vowels to be noticeable in the Californian accent - On the contrary, I thought it had to do with consonants - namely the muting or softening of the "T" consonant:
mountain = moun'in
water = wadder
theatre = thee'dur
often = offin
threatening = threh-uh-ning
Santa Monica = sanna monica
Also, Californians pronounce "R"s a tad bit more sharply than other Americans.
There's also the merging of certain syllables - "California" is pronounced with three syllables, not five (Cal-FOR-nya)
As for the "the" article before the freeway names, that originated from radio traffic reporters, who would fly in helicopters over the freeways and give status reports on freeway conditions during the morning and afternoon rush hours. Since everything on the radio is time-limited, to say "freeway" in a freeway traffic report would be redundant anyway, so "The 405 Freeway" became just "The 405."
LA folks might use "the" before freeway names, but SF folks use "the" when referring to their neighborhoods (The Mission, The Tenderloin, The Sunset).
Surprised you as a Brit didn't recognize the similarity between Southern Californians using "the" before freeway numbers and Londoners also using "the" before motorway numbers (The M1, The M20, The Orbital).
I know my CA accent really sticks out when I go to the East Coast. Once I was having a conversation with someone on a NY subway train and they said, "You have a drawl!"
Born and raised in Southern California but have not lived in the area for some years. I was thinking, I didn't have the CA accent but after reading your break down, I very much do.
Lolol the first two paragraphs are how Philly people speak and New Yorkers say the same about us.... meanwhile don't get me started on a NYer accent. Well that and our "o's" and "a's" are exaggerated and we cut "l's" in general.
@@jennygInspired native Southern California... I worked at a hotel in Santa Monica in my twenties. People from New York would ask what borough I was from and I basically as an adult had never been there. It made me curious why I sounded like a New Yorker. My dad was from New Jersey but he didn't have an accent at all. When he moved to California way before he ever got married, he refused to speak like a gumba wise guy day benny visiting the Jersey shore.
I pronounce it with four syllables “Cal-uh-foRn-ya” or “Cal-uh-phone-ya.”
I was reading out all your examples and laughing because I never realized I pronounced them that way
There is definitely a unique black accent in LA. Listen to an interview with rappers from LA like YG, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Nipsey Hussle or the podcast Figgmunity World.
I have lived in Northern California for just shy of 50 years. Personally, I don't hear anybody say "the I-5." Rather, it's just "I-5." We also don't put the definite article in front of freeways in general unlike in Southern California. Or we didn't used to. Now that aberration seems to be spreading north, like armadillos moving into Oklahoma and Missouri, where they never used to be. Also, most people I know don't refer to the Pacific Coast HIghway as either "PCH" or "the PCH." It's plain old "HIghway 1" or sometimes "1," depending on the context. Wonderful video, though!
It's interesting to hear that the "the" is moving north! I grew up in the Bay, and moved to socal last year for college. Growing up, I and all of my peers would say "the 680" rather than just "680". So maybe as a young person I'm living proof of that transition
I’m from OR and went to college there. We had a lot of students from CA and the ones from the Bay and NorCal said interstate and highway names the same as Oregonians (I-5, Highway 22 or just 22) but only the SoCal students said “the 5”
Never thought much on it but realize I always prefixed the number with "that." That 99 is bad today or take that 5 at the Grapevine. Even regular roads I apply this to without ever thinking about it. "That" is for roads and highways and "the" is for places or landmarks.
Of course it's not "the I-5." It's just "the 5."
I simply call it "the 1." It differs depending on who you talk to.
As a 69 year old native Californian, I can assure you that we definitely have an accent that is unique to the rest of our country. It was apparent to me as a teenager while I was involved in the surfer culture, that we were adding new words into California’s vocabulary. I’ve recently noticed that when talking with friends and family, we say “Wacha think, or wha da ya think?” Instead of “What do you think?” It’s as if we don’t have the time to sound out words. You gave us natives a good explanation of why we have the accent we have. By the way, the 60s and 70s was a great time be a Californian living by the ocean. Hey there from Monterey!
Thank you!
Haven't even finished th vid but I appreciate the Surfliner cameo at 0:15 lol
Hell yeah I always get excited when that train comes through.
this is the first time the vowel shift has been explained to me in a way i understand so thanks for that!
born & raised in southern california, great video, love how all your videos balance being very informative and very entertaining :)
LA born and raised, while traveling in Spain someone told me my accent sounds like english from the movies haha.
Maybe you should audition.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages And be an actor? God no hahah
Informative and enjoyable as always. SoCal native now living in Sheffield UK and find it fascinating that my kid still has a SoCal accent even though they left the US at age 9 (and are now 14). Those vowel shifts are embedded something fierce.
Truth. I left the East Coast USA to SoCal when I was 9yo, and still pronounce Marry, Merry, and Mary differently
You missed the important difference about freeways in Northern California: The "the" is dropped. So, lower California's "take the 5 North" is "Take 5 South"
That's bizarre. I just lost some respect for Northern California. 🤣
@@eslnoob191Why!?
Instead, No CA says "Hwy 101", "Hwy 5", "Hwy 17".
@@-vickyspit- Na, we don’t do that, only for interstates with I
@@CheshireCatz then things definitely changed. I lived there for 29 years, left in 97. Sounds like things changed since then, which makes sense because language always evolves over time.
Great video! I'm a native of LA, and even though I've been living elsewhere for more than 25 years, I tested it out and my accent still has every single one of these features you've identified. I suppose it helps that most American TV and film has been taken over by a version of my accent!
You’ll be able to blend in when you visit.
Southern Californian born and bred. When you were talking about how we use “the” before freeway numbers, I thought, “except PCH!” And then you mentioned that too! I’m very impressed. Well done. Fascinating video.
I aim to please!
I have been told by people from Southern California that they hear a southern drawl in my Central California accent (Fresno) that I don't detect. It would make sense considering the migration of poor white rural farm workers to the Central Valley from Oklahoma in the 1920s. I have heard elderly people in rural areas here in the valley have thick Southern/Midwestern accents that were born in California. One example of this I have observed is the pronunciation of the weekdays like Mondee Tuesdee and so forth.
Yes, those influences and traces from migrations are fascinating.
Interesting! My elderly social studies teacher in 2000s grew up in Arkansas, and said "Mondee, Choosdee" etc
To my knowledge, these shifts are quite limited to southern CA. The northern CA DRESS vowel has been moving towards the STRUT vowel for quite some time already. However, I will give it to ya, the supposedly "back" vowels for GOOSE and GOAT have been fronting (or partially fronting) for decades already, since the 80s and 90s. As a native Bay Area resident born in the early 80s, I have clearly centralized /u/ (as [ʉ]) and /oʊ/ (as [əʊ] or [əʉ]). The caught-cot merger is very well-established, but the wholesale raising of /æ/ before /ŋ/ seems odd for northern CA speech (I would pronounce the word "bang" more like [bæ(e)ŋ] than [beɪŋ]). I've also observed among my SoCal friends that /ɪ/ is often tensed before /ŋ(k)/, as in "pink", "sink", and "think" (pronounced [pʰiŋk], [siŋk], [θiŋk], rather than [pʰɪŋk], [sɪŋk], [θɪŋk]). In terms of highways, we traditionally don't use the article "the" before designated numbers of freeways or names of major regional rapid transportation systems in NorCal...
Thanks for that added info. I’m heading north later today, so I’ll keep my ears open.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I'd love to see you talk to people in Sacramento!
@@maidenthe80sla Agreed, but the Bay Area has also had an influx of people moving in from across the US and the world, so I wonder how that has affected the Bay Area accent.
As a southern CA kid who moved to Sac in middle school, this jumped out at me as incorrect! The 5 or I5, but never the I5. I recognize a lot of these sounds and I know I make some of them, but my east coast dad tried very hard to train any hint of valley girl out of my speech.
And thus my irritation with his misleading title, utter lack of clarifying he was exclusively going to roam parts of SoCal, and then a drive by insult the top 2/3 of our State.
It's like he is refusing to acknowledge there is a drastic difference across the board between his chosen region and the rest of the State, and "California" is significantly larger and more diverse than his video bit 😒🤦😑
N Californian here. The cot/caught was very interesting. For me, it is pronounced the same. I’m also African-American. I think there’s a lot of variation in our accents in California. Californians in general can have a bit of a southern twang, especially inland. Also, many of our parents come from the south. Then, musical/cultural influences. Ex valley girl to hip hop to Mexican culture, and more. My accent is different than my sister’s, who’s 11 years younger. In college, I was told I had a Northern Californian lack of accent, accent, by a friend from Connecticut. 🤷🏽♀️ When I’m in Europe, not in England or Ireland, I’m assumed to be British. People rarely assume I’m from the US, after they’ve heard me speak. So, interesting!
Most of all I want to thank you for your honesty when you said ppl in Northern California are weird. 👑🤣👑🤣👑
At 3:35 that's totally true! We Disneyland employees used to have to take a shuttle bus into work, and I would always hear conversations about which route people took from home to the parking lot that day. And there's a perfectly good reason: Greater Los Angeles has a "freeway grid" of numerous parallel east-west and north-sound freeways, meaning that there's an almost infinite number of ways of getting from Point A to Point B. If driving from my home in Tustin to Santa Clarita, I could take a different route every day for a month (look it up).
California is such a big state that our accent changes even within its borders. I'm originally from NorCal, way up on the Oregon border, but now live in Riverside. I've heard some distinct differences in my California accent from my native SoCal compatriots. And vice versa!
I’m originally from OC now in riverside and yeah there’s a slight difference. Mostly noticeable in Temecula area. And not so much in moval and riverside city area cuz everyone from LA is moving there. Idk riverside sucks now.
Wonderful video. It was really fun to see my California (Los Angeles) accent explained and described so well; enlightening, informative.and fun.
I agree although sometimes it was hard to understand his point since that’s my dialect !
I just clocked into my shift at the Hollywood Bowl and started watching this. Makes me wanna hop down on the 101 down to the 10 to take it all rhe way down to the 405 up back to the Getty and take a good long look at this place i call home
I love the place we both call home. Thanks for the smile.
Absolutely not! Who would deliberately want to be on the 101, 10 and 405 traffic back to back!!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
@@LosAngelesLaura it's either that or go northbound on the 101 and that's a hell I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy
Switch between the southern to CA versions of "fan" and "lamb" were spot on. The first time you said them I did not recognize them, after you swapped, you sounded absolutely native
I love your SNL reference! ❤
As a California native, wth did I just watch, I don’t understand. Lmao 🤣
Bravo. I grew up on a farm in Iowa but have lived most of my adult life in Los Angeles. Happy to see this video.
Hey, me too. I swear I've never noticed some of these things. I'm wondering how many people he interviewed to get these. But I could be wrong, because when I'm back in Eastern Iowa in Muscatine County, I'm wondering where everyone got an accent since I was a kid.
@@Shauma_llama Yes, I wonder that too. I grew up in NW Iowa. I always had the impression that the outer rim of a southern (type) accent was somewhere between Des Moines and the Missouri state line.
I worked with a man from Iowa. He sounded just like the rest of us. I live in western Oregon.
You made me so happy when you called people from NorCal weird. They are!
@@TySoVm I think I may have upset some of them though.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I do believe.
Interesting Video! I've lived in So Cal all my life and didn't realize we have an accent. It was hard for me to understand what they were pronouncing wrong because that's how we pronounce it. lol. I hope you make more California videos. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it! I hope to be able to do some more field research.
It's not pronouncing "wrong". Just like any other accent, there isn't a "right" one.
@@celisewillis So true! Thank you.
Northern Californians don't say "the I5"; It's usually just "5" or "I5" or "Interstate 5." We typically refer to highways by their numbers "101," "880," "280," "85." We do, however, refer to El Camino Real as "the El Camino," wrong though that is. No "PCH" here either; it's just "1" or "highway 1" or "route 1" or "SR 1."
One thing you didn't mention is that -en and -in (and sometimes -an) endings run together, so there's no distinction between pen/pin, then/than, although we tend to preserve -un and -an as in fun/fan (but fen and fin are the same). Ditto with -em and -im, so hem/him/hymn are all indistinguishable.
i've only heard/said el camino or el camino real. i drop "the" (also from norcal). i wholly disagree on the second paragraph lol maybe it's cuz i'm from bay area.
@@easyteh4getperson I was born in San Francisco and raised in Berkeley which is about as Bay Area as it gets. Berkeley and Oakland do have their own culture and speech patterns, however, so perhaps that matters with the -en/-in blurring.
At 2:01 what some Californians do is pronounce "a" before "g" as "e" so bag > beg, magazine > megazine, flag > fleg, etc. What I haven't seen is a common background to the people who do this. They're white and California-born but their parents can come from other States or be California-born themselves.
Wow this was a really good video! Well produced and with a lot of facts I didn’t know about my native accent!
Nooooo I'm so sorry for your loss of camera footage! 😭Must've been devastating after working so hard. Aaaa as someone who's lived in Riverside I was really curious where you were filming, but it was nice to see the landmarks anyways! Great work on this video- language is so interesting! I absolutely have this accent haha
My most distinct regional idiosyncrasy I've discovered is the term I grew up with in South Orange County for the action one does to pour water into one's mouth from a borrowed water bottle, without touching your lips so as not to spread germs. Apparently many (most?) people call it a "waterfall" but I only ever knew it as a "birdie" (usually phrased like "can I have a birdie?" or "I let them have a birdie") because you crane your neck back and open your mouth wide like a little baby bird hehe~
Also weird tidbit- I often get asked where I'm from or what my accent is?? I'm always like "I was born and raised here in Southern California?" ._. I've had people say they thought I was French a bunch tho!! Maybe this is why??
Also lmaooo The Californians was so real 🤣 Talking about traffic and one's transit route is the real world CA equivalent of talking about the weather
@@revangerang I'm in riverside county too lol
This is a great video on the general Southern California accent. In coastal Northern California, we share some of these features (certainly the cot/caught merger, merry/marry/Mary merger) but the vowel shift is much less apparent to my ear, but may be diffusing northward.
•. I think the cot-caught merger is prevalent throughout most of the western US and has been for a very long time.
• The vowel shift in "-ang" words is also very old. I grew up in Dana Point and we were taught in school (early '80s) that it was a long A sound and people I know who were born in the 1920s all used it too.
• My mom (who grew up near Pasadena in the '50s) is one of those single-syllable "mirror" people but my dad (from San Juan Capistrano) pronounced it as two distinct syllables, as do my sister and I and most other people I know.
I'm from New York. Perhaps this varies locally, but in my experience, a baby's bed is usually called a crib.
The raised "trap" vowel varies in height. In an extreme variety, which I believe is restricted to New York and environs and not usual even there, "Ian" and "Ann" are pronounced alike! Lower varieties are generally not diphthongized or nasalized.
Goose fronting is of course not restricted to California. In the 1951 British version of "Scrooge," Tiny Tim says the word "goose" twice in rapid succession, fronting it only once!
@@angreagach I think you may be right about cribs. Interesting points about TRAP. And you’re right about GOOSE fronting. It’s increasingly common across the UK.
Born and raised in Monterey County. We Californians believe there's a difference between northern and Southern California. (NorCal, SoCal) It would be interesting to see if there's a difference speech wise.
Do you consider yourself to be part of Northern California or do you refuse to associate with either and instead belong to the Central Coast?
Most who grew up in the Monterey Bay zone are surprised others think they are from anywhere but Northern California.
And there is a definitive notable difference in both speaking patterns and many pronunciations- a handful are common, but even the surfer speech is strikingly different South to North.
Then we have our slang and micro accents, lol, like hella within SFBA mostly and East Bay sounding like a nasal East Coast dialect!
@@eslnoob191 I’m a Bay Area native in Northern California, but also lived part time in the Central Coast. In general, I would say it’s part of Northern California, but for people who know California, I would say “ Central Coast“. These specific designations usually mean nothing to anyone who isn’t born in the state.
I attended high school in Novato. I had always considered it as Northern California. Until I attended Oregon State, where I was laughed at for thinking that. Since then I’ve wondered where the division is.
My man! Vibed his way across LA with a big ol’ smile on his face - ya love to see it.
Also, thanks a lot for making me self-aware of my California accent, which like many, I had assumed was a “plain” way of speaking 😂
9:57 you _are_ a Californian
My pleasure
I lived in Southern CA until I was 14 and mainly lived in the Bay Area the rest (in my 40s now).
Qualifying an entire state like CA by only interviewing people in San Diego and Los Angeles is not going to portray all Californians. Not all brits sound like they are from Brighton, after all.
The features you're talking about seem to be a recent development in younger speakers in Southern CA.
There is also a Chicano California accent.
When I was a kid, the AAVE dialect of my area was very close to it's origins in Texas and Louisiana, at least in Southern CA. Read some Walter Mosley and you'll get the sound of it.
In the Central Valley a lot of people came from Oklahoma and Texas during the Dust Bowl, so particularly among older Euro-Americans you'll hear that accent.
There's definitely a tendency in most of the coastal urban areas toward vowels becoming less distinctive. "Mail" vs. "Mell" for example - I don't think many would differentiate.
But it's hard to generalize as People move around, adapt, and may speak differently depending on who they are with.
On the phone (so not seeing them) I can always tell when someone was born in SoCal but their parents were from a Spanish speaking country so they grew up bilingual. The way they pronounce the L is with the tongue behind the teeth instead of farther back in the mouth.
@@PoshPilgrim1776 interesting how that is a feature they keep.
9:11 I hate to be the nerd of the comments, but it would be much appreciated if you gave white text a black shadow/outline or vice versa (black text, white shadow) in the future! This creates text that is impossible to have low contrast with its background, like what happened to the timestamp I mentioned! :)
Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll make sure to do that next time.
Helping somebody make their videos better (kindly) is admirable.
@@flowerpt You're too kind! ☺
There was text? 🤔😄
This video makes me so happy as a native Southern Californian and current Northern Californian.
Odd, a lot of the things you pointed out that the interviewees were saying, I couldn't hear (esp. the Big/Bag/Bug changes). I'm from California, but have lived a lot of places and have studied French and German, and take great pains to pronounce every non-English word I hear correctly, so I like to think I've got a good ear. But I didn't hear much difference from what one would expect with Big/Bag/Bug (that is, I didn't hear much of the shift you mentioned; maybe it's extremely subtle in the people you interviewed?) I've spent many years living and traveling all around Europe, and folks there always tell me that I speak extremely clearly (in English) for an American ;-) I'm 60 years old, so that may affect my own pronunciation.
I also think I have a good ear and also couldn’t hear some of these.
I could hear the bug one in a couple of the clips, it kind of sounds like a couple of them were saying "burg" with a British accent lol, it isn't very obvious though so maybe you need to be wearing a pretty decent pair of headphones to hear it or something
@@jlewwis1995 Could be - I had it on a speaker. I may re-watch this with headphones on.
Same here. Socal native and I couldn't hear the difference in a lot of his examples. The Riverside example seemed most pronounced to me.
Sometimes recordings lose a little nuance with compression. I know someone who is easy to understand in person but very hard to understand over the phone even video phone because of the very slight compression difference.
Hey there, Northern California native (Santa Cruz) and we ARE weird and proud of it! Great video!
i would suggest looking at the wikipedia article of california english as some of these generalizations, especially lexical/grammatical things, dont hold state wide.
like 'the' freeway and words for pacific coast highway/highway 1 vary by county. in norther california for example, they dont use 'the' freeway in general. and in los angeles county its pch, not the pch, or the 1. but that does happen in other counties, which as a native angeleno was interesting to learn when visiting san diego and san francisco. also in ca what we call freeways are usually called highways or interstates elsewhere
also the one thing ive heard about aave in la/socal is that it is generally rhotic
As a Californian, it was fun to follow along by speaking the words aloud. I never thought I had much of an accent
Great video. I'm a Native Californian who grew up in LA but now lives in the Bay Area, plus I have a BA in linguistics from UCSC (albeit quite a few years at this point), First of all, I'm realy interested in the "short" vowels chain shift as it's, like, the exact opposite of what New Zealand English does. I also hadn't really noticed it before, even though like I said I have some background in linguistics. I guess we often don't notice the water we swim in.
For freeway names, you have it mostly right, but you over simplify some things. In LA, at least in the 90s, we would alternately use the name of the freeway or the route number. Confusingly, these wouldn't line up. The Ventura Freeway was the 101 for part of it's east-west run and the 134 for the other part, and the Hollywood Freeway was the 170 north of where it intersected the Ventura Freeway and the 101 south of it. Also, we'd never say "highway" for large multi-lane urban routes, e.g. the Santa Monica Highway, it was always freeway. A "highway" would be a road that was more rural with some cross traffic, albeit one that you could drive quickly between cities in. In NoCal, we don't necessarily say "the I-5," for freeways, it's still usually just "the 5" like down south. However, the burritos down south suck, don't let anyone tell you different :)
Thanks for the corrections.
I've spent most of my California existence in the Bay Area (though I was born in Los Angeles), and almost never hear anyone say "The 5" or "The I-5" - much more often I hear people say "5" or "Highway 5" or "I-5" (no "the"). Maybe you're meeting a lot of people who are more recently from Southern California? ;-)
Thank you demandroid, I came here to say exactly that!
I think we don't refer to the roads by their names so much anymore, because we mostly get our traffic updates and news from Google. Back when we always listened to the network TV or radio news, they would constantly say, "the ventura freeway," etc.
I reported your burritos comment as hate speech
@@nolanball9745 Aw man, maybe we need to have a peace conference at a taquería somewhere around San Luis Obispo.
Love this, Mr. Huxtable! You've got a new sub! Love that you smoked l schooled everyone on PCH! Also, San Pedro is called Pedro, for those who don't know. And, Wilmington, is Wilmas! Long Beach is usually called by what "side" of the city you're going to. Los Angeles is LA, unless you're saying it in another language lol
And this "Southern Cali" accent you speak of, I believe, is mostly in the white folk or those who mostly speak only English. If you come from a family who is of a different heritage and that heritage is still conserved, there could be an influence in the "accent" one has or pronunciation of certain words, maybe not all. We're a melting pot here, but, there are areas where certain folk are centralized. We have Little Armenia, Little Cambodia, Little This, Little That. So, those communities might have a completely different accent.
But, thank you, for bringing to light that the whole of Cali doesn't speak "surfer dude."
Look up the comedian Tracy Morgan for the NY variation of AAVE and Ice Cube for the West Coast Variant I think its fascinating the difference
Fantastic. Many thanks for the tip.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguagessnoop dogg too
@@DaveHuxtableLanguagesfor instance, car becomes more like core, get is git, R's pronounced like any Californian
@@bouzoukiman5000I've also noticed words like "brother" turning into "brether," not sure if it's SoCal or NorCal or both though
Ryan Coogler, the director, is another good example -- there are lots of interviews with him and you hear words like "time" becoming almost like "toime," or maybe "taime" -- idk, it's hard to spell it out phonetically. Same with rappers like Snoop and Ice Cube as someone else said. It's like the jaw opens wider and the tongue moves back a bit when pronouncing the long "i"
“But they’re weird.” 😂
Explanation of how “the” came to precede freeways is one of those things I never thought I wondered about and now my mind is blown.
This happens even between generations of Californians. I was born in SF in the 60s, and noticed in the 2000s that my daughter drank "melk", and slept on her "pellow". No idea why. Accents slide.
I think the shifts, as shown in this video, are more pronounced in younger adults.
I was raised in Orange County but have lived in the SF Bay Area since 1990.
You sort of covered SoCal - but there's a lot of variants: Beach Talk (Doood), Valley Speak. etc.
In SoCal we always preface hwy numbers with "the"; we never do in NorCal (it's not The I5 - it's just I5). There's quite a variety of accents in NorCal, as well: Santa Cruz, SF, Central Valley, etc.
You guys drop the "the" when naming freeways up there in Northern California? How uncivilized...
I wonder what marks the Santa Cruz/Bay Area accents...we just say "I was driving on 17" when talking about the freeways
@@rattyeelyIn the Bay Area in the 60s-70s, one would say: Hwy 101, Hwy 37, Hwy 50, and Interstate 80. When the 3 digit interstates were built, we called them: 580, 680, etc.
I learned to say i5 only after I moved north.
At 10:06 there's a subtle but noticeable difference in the use of "the" between LA County and Orange County (where I live). We call our malls "South Coast Plaza" etc and our canyons "Brea Canyon" etc but people from LA will say "the South Coast Plaza" and "the Brea Canyon" which announces that they're not locals. It's why it's obvious that the moniker "the OC" was invented by somebody from LA. I never heard anyone from Orange County use that.
I don't know much about accent features.. but as a socal native, I appreciate the appreciation you have for the Southern California area and culture. 😊
Awesome! Thank you!
Born and raised in Tennessee, lived there for 42 years. Just moved to SoCal and I feel like an alien 😂
Welcome to California!
I love the Tennessee accent and the Alabama accent. My sharp California accent had people wanting to know where I am from. I felt out of place and almost aquired the southern lilt. Embarrising to me.
Don't lose it! I got made fun of for having a Texas accent when I moved here, and tried to erase it from myself. Now, I don't care what other people think, but it's gone 😢
Every person that was speaking sounded exactly the same and perfectly normal
I never said they weren’t normal.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages i was making a statement. Not a critique. 🍺
@@drunvert Sure. We don’t tend to notice changes in our own speech, or what we hear every day.
This is conflating "California" with "Los Angeles"
Bingo. It's a big state, with many different language patterns.
Yep. There is a lot more to California than LA.
Yes, thank you (Sacramentan here)
I hear southern accents in people born and raised in the Bay Area, as a TN native, I find it confounding. As an aside there is no definite article used before freeway numbers in Northern California. Example: Take 80 to 580 then take 101 north.
@@faithharrison3755 the southern accents among local-born Californians come from the "Okies" (derived from Oklahoma) - Midwestern and southern westward migrants fleeing the dust bowl of the 1930s.
I’m not a native but after 5 years in the Bay Area and 20 years in SoCal: never say “the” in front of a freeway, highway, or interstate name in the Bay Area. Just I-80 or 101. In SoCal we add the “the” (LA, San Diego) but also in Las Vegas and Phoenix. And most people I know say “the PCH” at least in LA. Next time come to Long Beach and ask how to pronounce Junipero Ave. as there is no consensus!
One time when visiting England, I walked into a gift shop near the Brontë sisters home, and the shop owner said, “let me guess where you’re from in the world.” He nailed it as he informed me I was from Southern California! We never do think we have an accent until leave home! ❤
Interesting. If I don’t make it as a phonetician, maybe I should work in a gift shop.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages In England!! 🇬🇧
Great video! From SoCal and it was interesting seeing what makes my speak unique. I tend to call it “speaking cursive” because entire sentences can run together if I’m not careful. Loved seeing examples, hope you had a nice time exploring parts of California!
Love that! I actually live here.
Southern Californians tend to use "the + (number)" *alone* without distinguishing Interstates, US highways and state routes. (There are some that are all three with the same number on various stretches). "Street", "Avenue" etc are also dropped but that's general to large US cities. Another LA shibboleth is referring to the movie/TV business as "The Industry" since using "Hollywood" as a metonym like the rest of the country does would confuse it with the actual neighborhood ("What's the best way for a young actor to get into Hollywood?" "Take Fountain!")
Lmao so true on that last point
imo atp it’s also that we like to nickname and abbreviate things for funsies even ironically it’s like totes a vibe yknow on god no cap. between tv, film and rap our regional culture has a unique fluidity in playing with language. it’s actually very based, w rizz etc
As someone with this accent this is surreal to watch
thank you so much for this video. I am a 4th Generation Californian. When I travel through the UK, people are surprised for some reason.
@@pnguin2 what do you think surprises them.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I dont guess I am the first California to visit Cromer, but I think it is just because it is so far away. same for many small towns.
Your comment brought up a brief memory of the first time I visited London. The person I was conversing with had a bemused look on her face while I was yapping in my So Cal accent. Then she stopped me in mid sentence and asked, “Do you REALLY talk like that?” And I replied, “Like toddally, fer sure!”
As a native Southern Californian person, I always think that we are the mainstream US accent where most movies and media use our accent as the main.
As a kid i always wanted to have an accent. Now that I'm in an adult, each time i hear my voice on a recording I realize i have the worst California accent😂 And it's not just how we pronounce things, its also the cadence of our speech that's destinctive. Also just so you know here in nor cal we just say the highway number. Ex: you take 80, or you take 50. Or sometimes highway 5, highway 108 ect.
In NorCal Only numbers for hwys…1, 280, 101, 80, 5, 50, 395, 405, etc…we use “The” for locations like neighborhoods or regions…
The Central Coast
The Central Valley
The Sierras
The City (San Francisco including
The Marina, The Presidio, The Tenderloin, The Embarcadero, The Sunset, etc…)
The East Bay
The South Bay
The North Bay
The Silicon Valley or just “The Valley”
The Bay Area
The Wine Country
The Lost Coast (Humboldt County to Oregon)
The Beach (universal all over CA…no specific location on the Pacific Ocean ever given😂)
This vowel shift must apply mostly to young people. I was born in Colorado in 1955 and have lived there and in Utah, California, and West Texas. I pronounce your sample words the original, before-the-shift way except, oddly, "goose."
Fun video. Never occurred to me that "cot" and "caught" weren't homonyms.
I love the initial explanation on vowels and their place on the tongue
really excellent, I say as someone who arrived in the North (Stanford) in 1968 and in LA in 1975 and left in 2019.It got too expensive for a guy retiring
@@johnl5316 Very kind of you to say so. Sorry to hear that you left. It’s definitely not the cheapest place to live.
Great video. I'm from the South (not SoCal, bible belt) and most of these differences I could hear, but some I could not. You mentioned some overlap with our vowel shifts, would be interested to hear more! I have gotten used to the California accent from movies and TV so I was also surprised that some of these are the "shifted" pronunciation instead of the originating one.
Buffalo/Western New York also uses “the”+number for highways! I wonder if they’re related or emerged separately.
Also, you didn’t mention GOAT-fronting or the marry-merry-Mary merger, which are classic hallmarks of a California accent.
It's like Ontario.
Also, quite localized. Here in Ithaca we have "79", "13", and "366".
Born in Buffalo in 1958 , left when I was 8. Family moved west! Moved to Southern California ! Still have lots of family in Buffalo ( Depew, Lancaster areas). Love California! 😎🌴
I love this video. Excellent analysis. I’m from Venice California and this is very interesting to study. Totally excellent, dude