What accounts for the relative low varieties of American accents?

[Fountain79]

Having met many people from Britain I am struck by how such a small area geographically can vary so greatly in terms of accents. Sometimes it seems each town has its own accent. The U.S. really doesn't seem to have a great variety of accents when one thinks about it. I am from Missouri and you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell the difference between my manner of speech and someone from say...Seattle. Any thoughts?

[Rambis]

1. I have no trouble

discerning most southern accents Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, New Orleans etc etc etc are relatively easy for me. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Chicago, Indiana are very different- East coasters are really easy. Boston, Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts. I would have trouble with AZ, WA, OR, UT or Nevada since they don't seem to have an accent to me since few people I have met in those states are actually from there originally.

[datasuspect]

2. how much of america have you seen?

get away from the population centers.

there's still many regional dialects along the open roads.

[insanity]

3. There is a difference in Pacific Northwest accents

I could tell the difference between someone from Seattle and someone from Tillman. The most regionally nondescript accent is found in Omaha, Nebraska.

Also, it is nowhere near as diverse as the British Isles. The difference, say, between an Edinburgh accent and a Glaswegian accent is night and day.

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. Low varieties? Have you not traveled much in this insanely huge land?

[TZ]

5. Wrong

Just between here (DC) and Maine are the following DiSTINCT accents..southern, Baltimore, NJ/Philly NJ/NY Long Island, queens, brooklynBoston,Maine...and that's not even getting into the upper Midwest region which has VERY noticeable...Minnesota Wisconsin ND/SD. I think you need to travel more

[Mutley]

18. I love you for pointing out the Bawlmer accent.

How 'bout dem Oh's, hon! :D

[KamaAina]

26. You rollin' or strollin'?

:hi:

[cwydro]

6. I have to disagree.

I'm from NC and just in that state alone there are many different accents. The mountains differ from the coast tremendously. The Piedmont has its own variety of accents as well.

I can pick out midwestern accents and people from upstate NY have a different accent than those in the city. Georgia, Alabama, SC, Mississippi, Texas all have accents that are different from each other. Don't even get me started on Louisiana!

[Fountain79]

7. I stand corrected....

I guess in retrospect...while I have traveled fairly well internationally I am still behind on domestic travel. In hindsight I am/was basing my observation on urban areas.

[datasuspect]

8. urban areas tend to equalize dialects GENERALLY

however, you'll always find the variants/local color in poverty-stricken/working class areas.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. If you think that Seattle and Missouri have the same accent

you haven't been listening carefully. Missouri has a Southern tinge to it, while Seattle sounds more like a Canadian accent than anywhere else in the U.S.

But I agree that there are clearer accent distinctions in the British Isles. The reason is long settlement. A region where a given language has been spoken a long time is going to have more dialects than one in which it has been spoken only a short time. This is especially true if the area is densely populated (as the British Isles are) and the language has been spoken there since before the days of modern transportation and communications (which is true, since we're talking about the birthplace of English).

For example, there is greater dialect variation in the Northeast (English spoken since the 17th century--Boston and New York are quite different) than there is in all of Minnesota (English spoken since the mid-19th century).

When I was growing up, we were told that the Upper Midwest (Minnesota and Dakotas) accent was the preferred one for radio and TV announcers, and after all, didn't we sound just like the people on TV?

Well, no. When I moved to the East Coast for grad school, people kept giving me funny looks and asking where the hell I was from. (This was long before Fargo popularized my native accent.) After I'd lived in the East for a few years, I began to "hear" the Minnesota accent and learned to imitate it consciously.

When I moved back to Minnesota after graduate school, people again asked me where I was from, because I no longer spoke pure Minnesotan.

I then moved to the Pacific Northwest and stayed for 19 years. By the time I moved back to Minnesota again, the state had acquired a lot of new residents from everywhere, so most people didn't remark on my accent, but a few native Minnesotans asked if I was from England. :wtf:

I decided that this was because the Pacific Northwest accent has more lightly articulated consonants and less extreme vowels. To people who haven't been around much, this evidently sounds "English."

By the way, American accents are evolving. The habit of pronouncing "dawn" and "Don" the same ("dahn") is spreading through the country. I'm in my fifties, and I pronounce them differently, but a lot of younger speakers pronounce them the same.

Accents and dialects are great fun.

LL
(graduate degree in linguistics)

[Fountain79]

12. One of the more peculiar word trends is the prounciation

of "aunt". It seems that most people in this area say aunt like "ant". If you talk to an Black person, regardless of education level, they will pronounce it more in the traditional manner.

dawn and Don are the same in my world btw....

[fizzgig]

29. very interesting post

i've lived my entire life in northern colorado and, although i'm pretty good at pegging accents from the northeast, south and midwest, i've never noticed any in the pacific northwest. i'll have to listen more closely when i'm out there next :)

as far as i can tell, i have no accent, but i guess that's a subjective observation. my dad grew up in nyc but has been out here for more than 30 years, has no discernible accent either.

[Odin2005]

31. I'm 23, from Fargo, and am both Don-Dawn and Cot-Caught merged.

The vowel in all 4 words is the low central vowel /a/.

An interesting thing I noticed is that the R around here is pronounced farther back in the mouth then the standard English alveolar approximant R, it's more velar, or even uvular (like the French R), my L is always "dark" (velarized), and my B, D, and G tend to be de-voiced when not in between vowels, and thus are distinguished from P, T, and K mainly by lack of aspiration.

[Orrex]

10. You all talk funny

I, however, speak with accent-free eloquence.

[Fountain79]

11. As an Irishman once asked me....

"Do I have an accent?"

[Bunny]

21. "Yinzer" is the original English.

Don't let anyone tell you any different, either.

[Orrex]

24. "Yinz jags are lozzy."

I'm an import to the Pittsburgh area, but I can't help feeling a certain awe in the presence of such linguistic beauty.

[Odin2005]

13. The difference in accents here in the US is actually suprisingly large given how recently...

...most of the US was settled. And actually you would be able to tell who is from St. Louis and who is from Seattle. And, in fact, the accents are becoming MORE distinct, not less distinct as is commonly assumed.

For example, in the Great Lakes region stretching from Fargo, ND to Buffalo NY the short vowels are shifting, so "pop" is coming to sound like "pap", "cat" is coming to sound like "kay-uht", "bet" is coming to sound like "but", and "but" is coming to sound like "bought". Vowel shifts of this kind are also occurring on the West Coast ("Come ahnd gahg me weth a spee-oon") and the South-Easr (the "Southern Drawl").

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_English_regional_phonology

An interesting upper-midwest thing is that we "raise" the short A to a long A if it comes before G or NG, so "bag" sounds like "bayg"

[NJmaverick]

14. The popularity of national television

[bif]

15. Radio and TV

[Odin2005]

28. That has been proven to be a myth, mass media has no effect on American English dialects.

[raccoon]

37. Really? Seems to me I hear a lot of younger people who sound like

somebody on TV. This is in the South.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

16. Are you kidding me?

There's several distinct accents in NJ alone.

[Deep13]

17. People from the Midwest ah wickid hahd to undahstand.

Ahnd everybody talks with only one sqashed-flaht vowel. Ayuh, it's all wickid bizzah and I get peaked just listening to it.

[Rhythm]

22. That's more Maine than Missurah...

:hide:

[Deep13]

23. Ayuh, Maine used to be paht of Massachusetts...

...and a lot of folks still talk like that in the center-west paht of the state wheah Boston is not so culturally influential. I moved to this provincial shithole from Wisstah, Mass in 1991.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

33. Does youse pahk yah cah in Hahvahd Yahd???

Inquiring minds want to know.

Or do you sound like Norm the Carpenter on This Old House.

I think he's from somewhere North of Mass.

I live on another planet -- Texas.

[Deep13]

35. Cahn't get they-ah from hee-ah.

"Youse" is more like an NYC accent.

[Deep13]

19. Still, it's not like it is in England where regions developed distinct accents...

...over centuries of relative isolation. That country is as big as Florida and has as many distinct regional variations as the entire USA.

[no name no slogan]

20. Do You Speak American?

http://www.pbs.org/speak/

This special was on PBS a while back, and spawned a book of the same name. It's a great overview of American English and its speakers-- fairly easy to understand without getting too technical.

[csziggy]

25. Television has flattened the American accent variability

If you watch old movies or listen to old radio or tapes of people recorded in the early days of recording, there used to be a lot more variation in regional accents. Sometimes the old original ones can be heard if you go to backwater communities where pockets of people still retain their ancestors' accents but those are fading.

[Dogtown]

27. Mark Twain wrote a fascinating essay

on regional dialects. He paid particular variances amongst Missouri county dialects. I remember Pike County featured prominently.

[Dappleganger]

30. Easy--the people in the US move around often.

We move to where the jobs are located so that greatly affects our speech patterns.

[bamacrat]

32. Its more regional here.

People from Boston/New England sound very similar, my least favorite accent. Colorado to California sound similar, almost no accent. The midwest and the plains states sound a bit Canadian, my family in Minnesota comes to mind. And finally my region the southeast and Texas would have what sounds a bit drawlish, almost a slang Americanized bad british accent, we live on contractions, we will throw as many words together into one to conveigh our feelings. I would say anywhere on our coasts the accent is similar, too many different people move there to have an accent, but in the places people dont flock to and never leave its thick.

[RagAss]

34. The dialects change every 40 miles in Connecticut.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

36. You couldn't tell where I'm from.

I have a very flat, non-accented voice, despite living all over the country.

[Rambis]

38. "so yalike spautz?"

I said, yeah Ima saux fan- Interaction at the KC airport recently with a Boston Red Sox fan-