What are some lesser known regional accents that people speak in throughout the US? What makes these accents distinguishable?

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  3. I can always tell if someone is from Wisconsin or Minnesota. They have this distinct way of pronouncing ‘O’. There’s also what’s called “the Cleveland ‘A’”. People from northeast ohio will sometimes stretch out the letter ‘a’ when speaking.

  8. There’s actually two distinct versions of the Chicago accent, North and South side

    The best easily-accessible version of the North Side accent I can think of is John Mulaney.

    The South Side accent is more identifiable as the classic Chicago accent, as mocked by the Superfans skit

  12. The PNW, despite being very flat, has an accent on short ‘oo’ sounds (root, roof, etc) where it’s pronounced as a short U rather than long U

  13. I have a rural Oregon accent. Just… try and not move your lips and tongue when you talk and you’ve pretty much got it. Throw in lots of Rs and leave out a bunch of vowels.

  14. The “High Tider” (or Hoi Toider) is an interesting (to me, at least) accent native to the US east coast, namely MD, VA, and NC islanders.

    Some of these islands even have their very own defined dialects, like NC’s locally infamous Ocracoke Brogue, as well as MD’s Smith Island English. There’s even VA’s Tangier Island, which afaik isn’t specifically Hoi Toider, but more akin to a western coastal British accent/dialect.

  15. Northern New Englanders will add R’s to the end of some words and remove R’s from others. This is a departure from the traditional Boston accent where R’s are dead and buried.

    For instance, my mother always has really great “idears.”

    Or, “I bought a new cah, it’s a kiarr”

    Theres also an interesting tic in the Merrimack River Valley (lowell/Lawrence MA), where a mysterious “aw” will replace “o” for example, dog becomes dawg. Usually older folks.

  16. The “southern” accent is actually about 10 different accents. A person from Tennessee doesn’t sound anything like someone from Savannah, GA or someone from Texas but they are all called southern.

  18. I’m from Mississippi and i can tell the difference between northern and southern Mississippi. We sound like idiots from the north in everyone else’s opinion. The way we say “Lafayette” is the best example. Southern Mississippi sounds pretentious to me sometimes.

  19. The Utah drawl is most infamous for dropping Ts in words like “mountain” or “cotton” or “Layton”. We also love to drop the last letter of every action word, so “skiing on the mountain” sounds something like “skiin’ on the moun’uhn”.

    Older generations here have had trouble pronouncing diphthongs in ways that lengthen the last vowel, making words like “Friday” sound like “Frah-dee”. And in the southern parts of the state you might hear the much-derided swapping of A and O, which I hear is a carryover from Danish. It used to be joked that you knew a native Utahan if they pronounced the city Spanish Fork as Spanish Fark.

  20. western NY I’ve been told bleeds into a weird Canadian/Midwestern hybrid. Specifically in the Rochester area it can get very nasally, a lot of words that start with st sound like sht (think straw, straighten, to shtraw, shtraighten), words ending in tary get over pronounced like elemen-TARY, documen-TARY, probably some other stuff I’m forgetting.

    It’s a lot of subtle differences that some people are really good at picking out (shout out to the guy in the pasty shop in Michigan) so it’s a weird accent that seems very standard on the surface

  22. The “Yinzer” accent from the Pittsburgh area is unique. I have family members with a very thick Yinzer accent. My grandparents had it too.

  24. Utah has a distinct accent. it’s slightly western but they have some interesting quirks, like if a word ends in “T<vowel>N” they they drop the T and vowels and pronounce the end. Examples:
    Button = But’n or Buh’n

    Mountain = Mou’n

    Carton= Car’n

  25. Thanks to the river industry, my home town has a dialect that is a combination of Southern Illinois, Southern Missouri, and Western Kentucky. Linguist pointed it out to me a couple of years ago.

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