regional US accents

[Sava]

Anyone have a good ear for them?
Aside from the obvious ones (valley girl CA, jewish NY), I'm pretty good at telling Midwest accents apart. I'm from Chicago, so there's southside vs everywhere else... western pennsylvania bugs me sometimes... i get it confused with Chicago because, well... Ditka and Doug Buffone are from that area but are big Chicago guys now.

Jon Gruden's got that distinctive Ohio valley accent. Move north and you get the Detroit and Michigan accents. UP (upper peninsula) is different from normal Michigan... well, relatively speaking... normal

Minnesota and Dakotas... the Fargo oh doncha know

Buffalo NY is interesting. I watched some local TV from there once and got a taste of that.

I'm not the best at west coast. I couldn't guess a Seattle. I'm hearing something close to the standard newscaster American accent.

The south is interesting... Savannah has a particular accent different from stereotypical drawl

Mississippi definitely has the whole racist southern sheriff thing going on. Even when I meet black people from Mississippi, I think they are white racist southern sheriffs.

Texas is different from other southern accents. Though, I probably wouldn't be great at picking OK from a TX. Arkansas is... well, I grew up in Springfield, IL and a lot of the southern IL hayseeds sound like arkansas... if texas an southern IL had a hayseed kid, it would be arkansas.

Regional accents fascinate me. One day I hope to be arsed into learning the regional differences in German maybe. And French... do Parisians sound different than Marseilles?

Describe the regional differences of your native tongue PLEASE
kthx

[Dinner]

Isn't Iowa supposed to be mostly accent free?

[Sava]

Isn't Iowa supposed to be mostly accent free?

Iowa sometimes sounds like Wisconsin.
Michelle Bachman is originally from Iowa.
listen to her "ah" sound... that's probably the most distinctive Iowa sound I can think of

[Sava]

and I'm using celebrities as an example so ppl have a reference point

this is also by no means exact

so the more input from others, the better

[Dinner]

The Pacific Northwest has a pretty clean accent too.

[DaShi]

What is accent-free? I'm sure to thick-drawl southerns, they sound just fine to each other. But those damn Yankees be speaking gibberish.

[Dinner]

Accent free = standard American English.

[DaShi]

I knew this guy in college who claimed he was accent-free. I just thought he was a douche.

[Al B. Sure!]

No such god damn thing as accent-free. That makes no sense. Dan Rather's accent is strong.

If you talk about 'Standard American' then the Mid-Atlantic corridor would be REAL Standard American since that's REAL America and where people originated. New Jersey would be accent-free. Funny no one thinks those accents are 'professional' sounding but the accents of some farmers are.


I can differentiate between Philly, New York, Boston, and everything else is lumped together to me in broad groups. Southern is all the same to me no matter where they're from (except Atlanta and Florida), I can't tell the difference between Chicago, Detroit, and Wisconsin, etc.

[Tupac Shakur]

Dan Rather is from Texas, so of course he has an accent. This is the area of America with no accent...

[MikeH]

I knew this guy in college who claimed he was accent-free. I just thought he was a douche.

Anyone who says they haven't got an accent is a douche.

I haven't got an accent.

[MikeH]

Dan Rather is from Texas, so of course he has an accent. This is the area of America with no accent...

Further proof. and a picture of a blue ****.

[giblets]

General American (GA), also known as Standard American English (SAE), is a major accent of American English.

OMG.... it's an accent!

[Provost Harrison]

Yeah, we think you all have an accent. You think we all have accents. So we all have accents

[onodera]

I can recognise only the strongest English accents, like Scottish, Irish, Geordie, racist Southern sheriff and Black. I don't know what that English accent is that says boos instead of bus but is not Irish. Well, and the general British/American distinction.

Accents are much weaker here in Russia. Soviet Union had a policy of promoting standard Russian (which is Moscow Russian) and disregarding and regional accents. Moreover, because of social lifts of immense power people were separated from their homelands, married people from other regions and their children adopted a less accented speech. Whole new cities were built that worked like melting pots.
There are still some recognizable accents (everywhere where I use aeiou, use Spanish-like pronunciation, English one is too weird):
1. O-accents. Unstressed vowels in Russian are reduced, so o and a sound alike. This accent preserves this distinction. It is common NE of Moscow. An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDI0ftePCSg
2. Ya-accents. Due to the same reduction, e, i and ya sound alike. This accent preserves this distinction, which is especially audible where the ya-vowel is used. Uncommon SE of Moscow. Can't find an example
3. Gh-accent. Ukrainian influence, g sounds like aspirated kh. Common in South-Western Russia. An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL0JguwbpSE (listen to the cop)
4. Stavropol (or general Southern) accent. Really hard to describe, as it's intonations, not pronunciation that makes it distinctive. Can't find a good example on youtube.

Also, people from Siberia speak standard Russian, but insist that we Muscovites stretch the words unnecessarily.