50 people from 50 US states speak in their local accents

The Louisiana example was terrible. Its a state full of really distinctive accents, from cajun to yat to traditional southern, and she gave one generic “y’all”

An older doc on NOLA accents:

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Notice they left New Jersey alone, like less than 5 seconds, good call.

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Trying to pin accents to a particular state is pointless. Regions make more sense especially when looking at a long narrow geographic space. Tennessee, California, Florida or even Illinois vary from one end to the other. A native Chicago speaker is very different than someone in the southern tip of the state.

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Me neither, bruh.

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I’m from Connecticut, and I’ve never heard an American pronounce the T in the middle hard. The main thing I hear in CT is glottal stops instead of T’s on the interior of certain words. New Britain becomes “new brih-enn”. Mountain becomes “moun-inn”. In addition, T’s on the ends of words (most noticeable at ends of sentences) also get glottal stops. Wait becomes “wai-”. About becomes “abou-”.

Now I live in CO. I would agree that there’s not a strong accent, and it’s getting muddled more every year with the huge influx of people. As long as you say, “Colo-rad-o” and not “Colo-rod-o”. They’ll kick you out for the latter.

Way back in the 1990s, I came across fiddler Natalie McMaster performing to passers-by at the Barbian Centre in London. She remarked to the audience that people kept asking her which part of Ireland or Scotland she was from, when in fact she was from Nova Scotia.

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Every speaker of every language has some kind of accent. Some accents are simply more pronounced or identifiable than others.

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I don’t know about a general Pennsylvania accent I think there may be one for most of the distance between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia but it just sounds generally country Southern neutral to me.

Im a Pittsburgh guy, born here, but since learning Japanese I was told in Japan many times my English sounded very accent neutral to many Japanese who asked me to speak English with them. I don’t have the typical pittsburgher accent but then most people who even live in Pittsburgh don’t have that.

I don’t know if anyone else has an equivalent but we actually have a guy who celebrates the traditional Pittsburgh accent- the hilarious personality, Pittsburgh Dad-

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50 states and a 5.5 minute video (6.6 seconds per) one accepts next to zero coverage when one finally gets to ritually forgotten Washington state, but having lived in Washington for about 103 years now, I have never heard a native Washingtonian (aka “true Scotsman”), pronounce it “Warsh-ington” except in dire jest of how it may be pronounced by someone from outside of Washington. So… good day Sir! [fading foot falls -slam-]

He said Giant Eagle surprisingly normally; it should have been more G’nt Iggle.

I say Gian’niggle. I never really thought about it, but theres my Pittsburgh accent, lol

Fixed that for you :slight_smile:

Here’s the thing there’s pittsburghese and then there’s how people here really speak-

n’at is used but not by most of us. Its not mandatory, I think only yinz is? I do use yinz all the time.

Downtown I do say as dahntahn. I just don’t use the oft cited “n’at”. I do actually use yoi when surprised sometimes instinctively.

Accents obviously depend on age, ethnicity, and the remoteness of your community. That last item makes me think of this accent I heard years ago on a PBS show (this clip seems old so maybe this accent is not nearly so strong these days?):

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As someone who grew up in Colorado, and moved away when I was 15, there’s definitely a Colorado accent. It’s a western accent in common with the western great plains and Wyoming.

Lived in Florida too, which has a lot of transplants, but you sometimes hear a native (white) accent- I knew a guy in rural central fla with a kind of soft smooth southern drawl. Great voice. Seminole and Cuban people have their own accents.

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N’at is the only one that I hear regularly. (As in: the ending of every sentence that my mother’s boyfriend says.) Nary a yinz in sight.

Personally, I’ve almost completely lost my Pittsburgh accent. A bit of arn and still here and there, but that’s about it.

I spent enough time in Houston to notice the one character in Lone Star who was supposed to be from Houston was doing the accent correctly, and different from all the West Texans in the story.

California also has a significant number, from the “Okie” drawl out in the boonies to the various species of urban speech, including the hyper-perfect TV anchorman sound and also the “surfer” lilt we all remember from Bill and Ted and “Valley Girl.”

Way back when, I learned the that the front range Colorado dialect is missing a Standard American English vowel. We tend to substitute the back open vowel ɑ for the back open-mid vowel ɔ. So, a Colorado native from Denver will likely say that a crow says “caw” (rhymes with “grandpa” to the rest of you). Crows from most of the rest of the country say “caw” to rhyme with “awe”.

Dialect roughly runs from north Cheyenne, WY to south Pueblo, CO, west continental divide to east at the Kansas border.

Not mentioned in this video, the Native American “reservation accent”:

And of course the representation New York gets is the ‘New Yorkers are loud’ stereotype. Which is probably more true of NYC than the state in general but even then I imagine it’s less true than most people imagine it to be.