I think we need to properly distinguish the New York and Jersey/Bronx accents and list the differences. We also need to clarify what makes the Jewish accent actually distinct, because a New York accent with Yiddish phrases and word order thrown in is not an accent. The differences in pronunciation need to be described. For example, I do not think howards mother in the big bang theory speaks any differently to how many non-Jewish new yorkers speak, excluding the yiddish phrases. Same with Bernie Sanders, who without the speech impediment he has, really doesn't sound different to Irish and Italian N Yers (such as Anthony Fauci).
I would like to add that Virginia is not really Mid Atlantic in culture or speech, but distinctly Southern. I do see they include it in both the Mid Atlantic and Southern areas. The true "Mid Atlantic" speech patterns are in a small corridor between Philadelphia and Baltimore and over towards upper Delaware. Maryland can be a mixed bag- depending. Northern Virginia is transient, but ambiguously Southern- especially further west of DC.
The Virginia Tidwater accent is not a "north meets South". It is a Southern dialect- and it is usually the one imitated in "Moonlight and Magnolia" movies such as Gone With The Wind (even though the story takes place in Georgia). It is used because it is considered the most "Aristocratic" of Southern accents, even though it varies, and even though you only hear it in a line from East Virginia through the Carolinas.
Calling Virginia the Mid Atlantic is kind of a misnomer. The characterization of Mid Atlantic Virginians is way off too. Virginia ranges from DC urban transient government to very very Southern characters in the piedmont and central regions. Many say the real South starts at Fredericksburg- but only because the area around DC is very transient without many real local flavors. This makes it difficult to really pin point it regionally. But Mid Atlantic doesn't work because that is more like the North. Even Northern Virginia has a slightly Southern feel-even if washed away with time. Alexandria, for example is a world away from Philly, Baltimore, or Wilmington.
The Speech of Fredericksburg, Richmond, Lynchburg, Danville, Charlottesville and all those areas are part of the upper South region. Hampton Roads and Virginia Beach are more transient as Northern Virginia (including Colonial Williamsburg). This area is kind of "Florida North" Many northern reitrees, military, etc come down to this part of Virginia. I might add one can look up "Richmond phone call" on You Tube to hear a true Central/Tidewater Virginian accent.
Edited by RichmondBread Hide / Show Replies
This Is a Wiki. If you have more information to add or corrections to make, you're free to make the changes yourself.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I expanded the part about North Midland vocabulary a bit with traits I'm familiar with due to being from southeastern Illinois (though Wikipedia is unclear as to whether it's on the northern edge of southern Illinois or the southern edge of central Illinois, but I'm used to it being referred to as southern Illinois regardless).
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
The entire Dixie section is so poorly researched, dismissive, and contains just outright absurdities ("I do declare" ? Really ? REALLY ?). First of all, "Dixie" is NOT all those states that are listed - Dixie is MS, AL, GA, LA, sometimes just MS and AL, sometimes just MS. TN and KY are NOT "Dixie." "Whatever," I hear you say. And here's some more fun cultural chauvanism: "Anyone who lives in the South can tell you there are dozens of highly-distinct different Southern accents, but most of the rest of the country really doesn't care." ... and neither does the page authors/editors, nor should any actors or students of dialect. Fine, let it be a mystery to every one else. But I can tell Savannah from Atlanta, Virginia from North Carolina, East Tennessee from Middle Tennessee, etc. I could go on: the vowel sounds, the cadence, there are dead giveaways. But the rest of the counry doesn't care, so, hey... Just drawl out your I's to Ah's and say "y'all" even in the singular, and bingo, you've got a part in True Blood. Meanwhile, I care how "geoduck" is pronounced by a real Pacific Northwesterner. I care a lot.
Hide / Show Replies
No use getting worked up about Pac NW. They didn't get us right, either. Nobody goes hunting for "ilk", it's clear if someone is saying full or fool, and those homophones that he listed are homophones everywhere!
They did, however, get me dead to rights with the "eggs-it" pronunciation.
I would like to add some qualms I have about characterizing Virginia and Tidewater speech as "Mid Atlantic". While VA and (sometimes NC) can be classified as Mid Atlantic, the native speech of Virginia is distinctly Southern, and doesn't have the "hybrid" of Maryland or Delaware speech. It describes the stereotypes for Tidewater Mid Atlantic as men in power suits or disgruntled Government employees. This is a total mischaracterization. Furthermore the Tidwater accent is not a "north meets south" accent- it is one of the Southern dialects. The accent in Richmond, Virginia actually sounds more like Charleston, South Carolina, than it does Baltimore, Philadelphia, or even D.C. Yes, there is some cross over region. Northern Virginia, in particular. They do that with certain movies/shows in the DC are. We are in Virginia: Should we be northern or Southern? Northern Virginia is a transient area with many dialects prevalent, but the rest of Virginia (Stafford County, Southward) does not.
Virginia can be ambiguous - especially in the DC Metro, but by and large is part of the Upper South Region (not like the Deep South)- but it has more associations with the South, in general. The Mid Atlantic is a total misnomer and Virginia does not belong there, and certainly does not Andy Griffith. Mid Atlantic speech is more in line with a small corridor between Philadelphia and Baltimore and over towards Delaware. These are things people might not pick up on, but I do.
A lot of this page matches neither depictions in media nor actual linguistic dialects. Should i fix this?
They or she. Not a minor.
I was trying to add Spanish Accents And Dialects to the compare section of this trope’s description because of how Mexican Spanish and American Spanish (like Puerto Rican Spanish) influence American English.
On the Bostonian part, although some people may find it offensive, most of us find it funny. Whenever i travel (which is every often) people will ask me to talk so they can just here the accent. They always ask us to do the classic "I pahk my cah in Hahvahd (Technically Harvard is normally pronounced correctly) yahd. I make a lot of laughs and is fairly entertaining hearing others to try and do it right and fail miserably.
Truthfully, we find it funny. Some picky people will smash your face in or lecture you about the correct way to say it. The rest of us, meh, don’t care. We do have a sense of Humor and not afraid of taking shot at our accent.
I don't get this part about Appalachian accents: "many speakers sound vaguely European". What does that even mean?
Hide / Show Replies
Many of us in that region of the US have Europeean decent that we can trace. However, they are not close enough to count creating somthing on a simular level but not quite. it hard to understand unless you vist here. hope this helps
Tropers, I am sorry for offtop, but i dont know where else to ask. What type of accent do Wright Brothers spot in Epic Rap Battles Of History agains Mario Brothers
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_hKLfTKU5Y)
?
Doesn't Pennsylvania Dutch normally refer to the Pennsylvania Dutch (Deitsch) language, rather than the dialect of English spoken in Pennsylvania?
Hide / Show Replies
Link. Yes, but it is Pennsylvania German (another name for the people, not the language, redirects to that page). There is then, the Pennsylvania German language. Finally, the unique accent that comes from descendents of those who moved to Pennsylvania from Alsace (a French region that borders Germany and Switzerland, thus "Dutch") is called "Pennsylvania Dutch English" or "Pennsylvania Dutch" for short. That's easier than saying "English accent of Pennsylvanians that descended from Alsace immigrants which is a French region that borders Germany and Switzerland". Thanks wikipedia.
Which Pasadena? Is it Pasadena, CA? Pasadena, TX? Some other Pasadena I haven't heard of?
Is it worth noting in the Military Basic section that the accent all military pilots, and even all commercial pilots, seem to have is a result of them imitating,directly or indirectly, Chuck Yeager?
Hide / Show Replies
Most of the article and the examples are even referring to dialect rather than accent...
Accent: affects sounds and prosody.
Dialect: affects the whole package, in other words: also vocabulary and grammar.
Removed from the article description:
(Don't delete the following line about Dixie. It provides a nice segue into the bulleted portion of the article.) The most often attempted, and most frequently horribly failed regional accent is the "Dixie" accent.
The fact that someone needed to ask people not to delete it seems to indicate that something's wrong. I don't think it's providing a nice segue into the bulleted portion, as the note asserts. The sudden specificity about a single accent in the description of an article about all American accents makes it feel out of place. That, combined with the fact that it's been added only to complain about fake Dixie accents makes it look like a single troper soapboxing.
Edited by CaptainCrawdad Hide / Show Replies
Please do not delete admin notices. The line works fine.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
Would it be preferable to have the examples for a particular accent directly below the discription for said accent? I can immagine that it might save a lot of time scrolling up and down.
Edited by WillKeaton
Where am I?
Oh Lawd, I laughed my way through the entire Jello-Belt section. It's so true. (Think I may be the only native to say his T's properly throughout the whole state of Utah.) Might I add that the Jello-Belt accent is a mild version of the "Lay'un" (Layton) accent, where they probably don't know what the letter T means.
Oh snap.
did anyone even bother to read the wiki page? the non stereotype sections are unfactual half the time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_English_regional_phonology
You could edit the article yourself, you know. That said, much of what is written is pretty close. Care to point out some specific examples?
Wondering where anybody's heard "Oregon" pronounce "Ory-Gen" as it suggests in the article. As a native it seems to me to be pronounce closely to "Ore-Gun". The problem with most non-natives is that they try to add extra syllables where none are needed.
Hide / Show Replies
I'm also a native, and Oregon has three syllables. OR-eh-gun. It's just that it's supposed to be said smoothly and not all choppy. And it's not ORE-gun, like a gun that it used to shoot ore, unless maybe you have the Oregon cowboy accent, which is alive and well in many parts of the state.
The article keeps referring (in other sections) to the 'California accent' but California does not have its own section. Sure, 'Valley Girl' & 'Surfer' are sort of sub-accents, but I'm not seeing why California doesn't have its own section. It used to, didn't it?
Hide / Show Replies
california is gaining its own accent, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_English, but the article in whole is a bit off, unlike the wiki counterpart.
Why isn't there an Alaskan section here? Inquiring minds want to know. And Sarah Palin has Minnesota accent, by the way.
Hide / Show Replies
This Alaskan troper seconds that. Sarah Palin's accent is common in the Mat-Su valley region, by the way.
I kinda have a problem with the Minnesota accent on this page. I've lived in Minnesota my entire life and I have NEVER heard anyone talk like that (except maybe in the extreme North, but even then it's more like a central Canadian accent than anything). People in most areas of Minnesota talk more like a strange blend of Inland North, and Pacific Northwest. People near the larger city/cities add Urban and Latino influences (sometimes both at once), while those farther away are more influenced by German and Irish accents. I'm rather certain this 'Minnesotan' accent is entirely mythological.
I want to talk re-organization: While the size of this page is not a problem, the structure seems ridiculously unwieldy. In terms of the order of listings, I can't make out a clear alphabetical or geographical progression from one region of the country to the next. Also, there has to be a better way to recognize which entries are considered sub-divisions of more general patterns (which could set off a lot of debate, I admit, but sometimes the text itself makes this point). I've copied all the information into a word document and will attempt to play around with the structure to make it flow more easily, but I'm open to suggestions on how to make that happen.
J.H.B.