A lot of those Gen Am examples were just softer versions of regional accents, but I could tell them all apart (as an American). One even seemed like a fake American accent (there was a vowell in there I've never heard from an American). Jen Anniston is the only one I think can pass as actually Gen Am from those . To my American ear those were NOT all general... they were regional, just not heavy. When you live in it you can still hear an accent in people who 'have a little bit of an accent".... honestly, living here, most of the regional accent examples are definitely representative of people with strong or heavy regional accents, but most Americans with regional accents have much more subtle ones (that apparently, people from overseas cannot differentiate from Gen Am.... oh, but Americans can tell, we can tell).
the accents were way easier to understand than this messy video. are you listing accents? states? cities? this video is so hard to follow and hard to tell when you're switching from one accent to the next one. the editing needs some serious improvements.
Right? Because each state in the South has a distinct sound....hello, Tennessee, anyone? No one would mistake Georgia for Louisiana, and that Mississippi drawl is unique, honey!
The stupidest acssent is the woke acssent . They make statements in the form of questions ... Don't get me started on the word " axe" . My little yellow guitar is more like an axe then a question .
I’m from the Southern US. My son married a girl from Boston. Her mother was riding in the car with me when I asked Siri a question. Siri couldn’t understand me, so she tried. Siri couldn’t understand her either, so we pulled over and googled. 😂😂😂
I'm from Northern California & my husband is Cajun. After 17 years together, I can understand him, but when he gets around his family, I'll look at him and say "WHAT???"
I got sort of lost in Lafayette, and stopped to ask a guy for directions. I could not understand a single word he said, so I just went in the direction he pointed.
I speak Californian English, but the hardest to understand is Irish or Scottish from smaller towns and deep down south in US... Ozzy bogans are a close 3rd
Wait that’s crazy I’m Creole and from NorCal! My grandpa was from Louisiana, and his son/my father from Detroit. Definitely had issues understanding both of them as well 😭💗
As an American the most difficult accent I’ve ever heard came from rural Louisiana. The accents you labeled as Minnesota and Upper Peninsula Michigan are heard all over the upper Midwest including Wisconsin. In fact one of the clips you used for Minnesota actually was a clip of someone from Wisconsin.
Yeah this was kinda a destined pick because Cajun/Creole/Bayou isn't even English. It's the only accent on the list where half the actual words aren't English. No wonder it is hard to understand, because it is pulling from a bunch of non-english vocabulary. The way I explain American accents is that the majority of Americans (especially now because of the internet) are beginning to be standard American English. This is, like the video says, is the accent we hear constantly on TV. It shares vocabulary, cadence, and emphasis. Then you have regional accents which all still pull from commonly understood vocabulary, but some sounds are altered, cadence can vary, and emphasis differs. This is for places like west coast (SoCal) and East Coast too (NYC). It's essentially the same vocab just sounding differently. Then you got the southern accent. Which still shares the majority of its vocab with the rest of the country but southerns speak in colloquial phrases (idioms) to convey meaning. The words on their own dont carry intelligble meaning, but put them together and you've got a profound phrase that only southerners get. And then you got Cajun, which doesn't share its vocab with the rest of the country, and therefore the hardest to understand, because honestly it isn't English. It's an amalgamation of multiple languages where no particularly one dominates the vocabulary. So Cajun is like 30% English. 30% French, 20% Canadian emphasis, and 20% local colloquial phrases. That's why Southern/Appalachian and Cajun are the hardest to understand. Southererns share the same vocab, but we speak in idioms. Cajuns speak a different language altogether. And the rest of the country essentially retains the same vocab but their vowels and cadences and emphasis' are different. As a southerner, I feel it is honestly the best all-around accent. I can understand SoCal, Brooklyn, Boston, Minnesota, Midwest, Texas, southern states, and even Appalachia. I understood every word from the Appalachia segment. I understood every single accent in the video except for the Cajun and NC outer banks. I stand out if I'm in a crowd of northerners or west coasters, but I understand them all quite easily. Now if I take them to rural South or Appalachia, they'd be so lost, but I'd be right at home with my southern speakers.
Went to pickup a load about a half hour north of New Orleans back in '01. Two super nice 23ish young men working there. First one explains the way I needed to go and under what rack I was to load at. After he finished his directions, I asked the second one to please repeat what the first one said. Unfortunately he said the exact same thing in the exact gibberish. I put my forehead on the counter at that point.
Grew up in NY hearing accents from all over the world but a MS delta taxi driver could have been speaking another language completely for all I could tell. To this day nothing has come close.
I’m only first accent in on video but my first thought as hardest was it had to be Cajun lol. Think the waterboy guy. Thats legit how they sound deep on the bayou. lol it’s wild.
Texan here: I was in Germany this month, and heard an American accent from across the restaurant, and I knew they were from Texas and was pretty confident they were from Dallas. I introduced myself, and they confirmed they were from Dallas - absolutely can tell by accent where folks are from inside the state of Texas 😄
That's too funny! I only lived in Texas for 5 years and was able to pick up on where in Texas someone was from! lol I lived in Granbury, Fort Worth, and Dallas.
I wish I could be you. Full-on American. No influences from the scary nations of Eastern and Southern Europe (Shitaly, Romania, Poland, Macedonia, Serbia).
@@nicedoppy2077 Basic Boomer/Gen X Californian accent. That's average, i.e. newscasters, etc. I speak with that accent, but it really changes when you get into Californian Millennial/Gen Z vocal fry, upspeak, and slang. And the difference between northern and southern California accents pretty much started in the early 1990s.
My Dad was from Georgia, my Mom was from Long Island NY, I was born in Texas, raised in Texas, Kentucky, FL, Panama and California. I speak with a slight Texas drawl with some NY thrown in. I can recognize a Long Island accent over a Brooklyn or other east coast accents. The accent I like most is the Cajun accent.
I was born in California, but grew up in south Louisiana. When I was 9 years old, my parents divorced, and my dad moved back to California. I spent summers in California (San Francisco bay area) and the school year in Louisiana, near the Texas border and on the edge of Cajun country. When I was in college, I had a professor who was a connoisseur of accents and prided himself on being able to guess the place of origin by listening them. I was the only one in the classroom who stumped him.
I speak mostly Italian and spent my young life in Edmonton, Alberta. When I stayed with my father who is spaniard/ French. So I have an accent that is expressive but smooth even when I am angry and it doesn't matter which language I use. That is what I have been told.
My favorite accent story was told by my geography professor. She's a black woman from suburban Texas. Maybe a slight accent, otherwise very standard. She married an Irish-American as pale and red-haired as can be, from downtown Milwaukee. So when people talk to them on the phone and meet in person later, they're very confused. They completely assume that the husband was black and she was white. She had a great sense of humor about it.
Someone in a music class I took in college easily could've passed for Gabriel Iglesias from a distance, but hearing him talk you'd hear mostly Yooper. Half Mexican, half Brazilian, but no accent from either.
My father-in-law was raised in So. Texas but didn't have a Texas accent. The rest of his family - almost unintelligible. Then throw in the grandparents from the Old Country and a war bride from Wales and you had a real mash-up.
There is a boxing champion from Memphis, Tennessee named Caleb Plant. For starters most American boxers aren't white. Memphis is also mostly African American. Also the name Caleb Plant? Caleb is married to a very attractive black woman,. Caleb is white. If you gave me all the info, except his race I would have lost a lot of money on that.
I'm from Ohio and you can I can attest that the Midwest accent from my state and Indiana, our neighbor to the West, is pretty different. But the difference between Buckeyes and our Southern neighbors in Kentucky is even greater. Even in Ohio you'll hear differences depending on what part of the state the speaker is from.
@@RodericSpode I'm from Indiana (Indy) and I agree with you. I have friends who grew up in Ohio (Cleveland) and they really do pronounce some vowels consistently differently.
@@encycl07pedia- Yeah Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, North/South Florida- each distinct dialects. Locals can tell where in the south others are from.
Wonderful video !! Thanks for uploading this. I am an Asian Indian, and live in a Non-English speaking country in Europe. Though, I have been to the US and have lived there for an year. I not only loved being there meeting new people...but also found out that it is the American version of the English that I do like (read: love) the most...above all other accents from any other English speaking countries in the entire world. Hope to visit the US again someday. 😄😍 ...Great country, great people, great accent ! PEACE!
that's a new thing calling it mid atlantic or transatlantic. Someone made that up in recent years. What is a transatlantic Hollywood accent? Transatlantic referred to east coast to europe. Old Western films was whatever the actor was, and their own accent. THere wasn't any focus on accent.
@@morriganinoregon Reginald Gardiner? The English actor? Anyway, that label mid atlantic is new in the last couple decades. From movie viewers not grasping the accents. Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis,etc were not taught Mid Atlantic, there was no such thing in those days. There was no such thing when I went to acting conservatory in the 70's. It mainly was their own New England accents. Hepburn from upper class Connecticut family. Davis from Massachuetts. But added to that, there was what was called 'Standard Stage' English. Standard English is same as General English, just contemporary. Standard Stage was American actors doing the classics, like Shakespeare, without doing an English accent. So it was more proper..a bit. But it also was that in those days the majority of hollywood actors came from stage in New York,where they performed everything from the classics, contemporary dramas/comedies, Shakespeare,etc. So you got a majority who has that type of sound to their speaking, both from being from the East Coast, and from standard stage English. But it wasn't all. Spencer Tracy was originally from Wisconsin, and he just kept whatever accent he had from there. I forget where Clark Gable was from, but it was general. He didn't have a stage background first to get standard stage english.
There was actually one guy who taught all the actors how to speak like a Texan. Bob Hinkle. He thought he couldn't be in movies cause of how he sounded but they wanted him as a dialect coach 😂 He tought all the Hollywood stars in the 50s
Years ago an old fellow in the U.K. thought I was Canadian. When I told him I lived in N.Y., he said I must live right on the border of Canada. He nailed it, Buffalo!
Upstate New York and Northern PA have some strange accents people don’t discuss much. Rochester, Syracuse, it’s a strange mix of Northern/almost Midwestern and….New England? NYC? I don’t even know. Same for people in rural northern PA, one thing they say a lot is “out” pronounced like “oat”, sort of Canadian but different. The Northeast has quite a few unsung heroes of the accent world lol
@@paestum70 fair assessment. My family are all new Englanders, I actually partially grew up there too. To clarify my original comment, I think you’re accurate about upstate NY, I think what I was thinking of more with the New England (and honestly probably more accurately New York) is the Scranton PA accent. There’s a good example here on YT, it’s a clip from some kind of town meeting or something lol. Some chunks of Northern PA were originally populated by people from New England, so there could be something to it
I'm from North Carolina. We have 4 of the accents you mentioned! African American vernacular english, Appalachian, Southern, and Outer Banks. We're a very diverse state.
My mother grew up in Brooklyn New York. She moved cross country to Washington state for work when she was 30. She has spent half of her life in Brooklyn and the other half in the Seattle/Tacoma area. Her accent has become a lot softer as the years have gone by. When she talks with our family back East her accent comes back in full.
@@perceivedvelocity9914 same here. I have lost my Bronx accent over the 30 something years since I left. But get me around family and friends from the Bronx and it’s back like I never left 😂❤️
My dad trained himself to get rid of his Brooklyn accent to have a fulfilling radio career up north, but same as your mom, when he goes back there for stuff like high school reunions, he goes back to being "Bawby." 😂
Same here with our particular version of Appalachian accent! Years of traveling and associating with people from all sorts of places have moderated it somewhat, but it tends to come back when we're around people who speak it.
I've never heard someone from southern California say supper unless they were transplants from somewhere else in the country. Mid-West usually. We say dinner.
Midwestern rural only. They use Supper and Dinner separately in the northeast. But supper is used widely there. If you live in suburban or Urban Midwest we don't typically say supper.
I'm from Massachusetts and when I was a kid my parents, all parents, said supper but you almost never hear it now and if you do it's an older person using it. We say dinner now too.
You just think you don’t have a recognizable accent. Listen to the way Oregonians say Oregon and Portland and many other words. Easy to understand, yes but distinctive.
Yes, and not so much in the midwest. The midwest, for the most part, doesn't have a super heavy regional accent, but does have a number of distinct flavors. There's the grating, nasal a's of Chicaaago-land (especially as you travel south of the city) the swallowed vowels of WI, the Canadian-esque OUs of MN, etc. NorCal and PNW is definitely more the home of "General American," --at least, if you ignore NorCal's tendency to pronounce "eggs" and "legs" as "aygs" and "laygs." [Note: these are strictly personal observations over the years, having lived in SF, Chicago, Seattle, and Minneapolis.]
I grew up in northeastern Wisconsin not too far from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I left when I was 9. Forty-five years later I was in the wilds of Syria and ran into some American diplomats. They asked me where I was from. I said Colorado where I currently live. The wife looked perplexed and said, "Are you sure you aren't from Wisconsin?" That was just one of the many times strangers have pegged my accent even though I haven't lived there for many decades!
I moved away from Milwaukee as a kid to North of Eau Claire, and I was ordering something in a diner in Nebraska one day, and the guy at the table next to me asked me if I was from Southern or northern Wisconsin, because I sounded like both.
Even though these accents differ alot, Americans can still easily understand almost all of them, aside from a few isolated areas. I'm a Connecticut natives and don't have an accent at all. It's basically the language of the standard television news presenter, very "correct" yet there only a couple of people in this video I had a hard time understanding
i wish they used locals speaking normally uniformly instead of all the people doing impressions. southern californian english is often mostly standard and way less exaggerated than shown here. the accent these guys had was gnarly lol jk
@@Marky-Mark1337 yah we do for all of them actually. the 605 to the 5 to the 405… etc edit: that’s local tho for the most part but we’ll say pch for example or rout 66 or the name of any well known route etc
@@Marky-Mark1337 This is indeed a thing we do! People where I live now sometimes look at me funny when I use the definite article before an interstate number.
I'd say from SoCal we mostly speak General American. The surfer accent is more in the beach cities and valley accent more in the hills or upper middle/middle class. SoCal has a lot of ethnic accents, especially Chicano/Hispanic. Black American English is heavy in certain neighborhoods. Plus all the transplant, so we probably get all the accents.
So. Cal is definitely predominantly the general accent. The fry voice is everywhere, even here in the South and is more of an affectation than an accent.
I'm from the valley, and I have heard only maybe a couple people in my life have that Hollywood surfer accent. Seems to it's practically a fake stereotype.
@@KyleReeseCel2029 Same, actually up to a few years ago I thought that accent was a myth, but I have surprisingly met a few people who genuinely have the accent. It's so rare though when I do hear one it seems like a prank
I'm from Florida. Here, you can hear so many different accents... and even a few dialects. There's Standard American, New York, Bosten, New Jersey, Michigander, Ohio, Central Florida Cracker, Northern Florida Cracker, Texas, Georgia, North & South Carolina, California, Hatian, Chinese, Jamaican, Mexican, Colombian, Brazilian, Venezuelan, Cuban, Trinidadian/Tobagan, Bahamian, English Canadian, French Canadian and then we have various Spanglish dialects. I've also heard German, English, Australian, Estonian, Parisian French, Castilian Spanish, Israeli, India Indian, Thai, Filipines, Korean and Japanese accents in the English that was being spoken. One couple was from New Zealand, too. This wide variety comes from the fact that Florida is where everyone wants to live, or vacation.
@@sweetsubversion Absolutely, the first two people were mimicking. The first guy sounded stereotypically Canadian or something, lol. The third girl’s accent is genuine!
I was a radio operator in the Coast Guard. I was born and raised in southern Virginia. As it happened, my first duty station was located in the Eastern Shore region of Virginia. I was 100% certain I knew the hardest American accents on your list. Tangier Island's (Chesapeake Bay) fishing boat fleet was in our area of responsibility. We had a 24/7 on-call interpreter that we could patch into our radio communications when assisting these fishing boats. I worked several search-and-rescue cases with fishing boats from Tangiers, and the interpreters were invaluable.
#13 "Hoi Toid'rs" I heard also on Harker's Island, NC, below the Outer Banks. aka - Downeasters region. The accent - dialect was even stronger before a bridge was built to the isand. Isolation.
I thought of Smith Island, MD when I heard that accent! Didn't realized OBX was like that, also as I always think of upper middle class having vacation home there.
You're thinking of Upper Midwest, which I would argue is a separate accent altogether from generic Midwestern, especially as it more closely resembles some of the Plains states (like the Dakotas) than the rest of the Midwest.
Regardless if you think you have an accent or not, that's an accent. Anyone that speaks differently than another has an accent, If you ask anyone with a distinct accent if they thought they had an accent, 9 of 10 will say no. I've done it.
I was in Glasgow and the cabbie made like he couldn't understand my "I watched a lot of TV" American accent. So, I leaned forward and said, "I know everyone in Europe watches 'Star Trek' and "Seinfeld', so don't even TRY to pretend you don't understand me." He very sheepishly took my friend and myself to the destination I requested.
As a German native speaker, Scotland was almost one of the worst regions for understanding (together with some regions of Australia). I've been working for US companies for a decade now and no issues there anymore but Scotland? Oh my ;). (Besides, I never really watched Star Trek, only a bit of Seinfeld but never in English ;))
@@KiKi-tf8rv lol oh actually this is not too dissimilar from here in Austria where I struggled quite a bit with the dialects of my wife's family for a few years. We now moved into this region and my kids... after two years my daughter I think finally starts to understand everything the teacher says
@@met0xff00 It really is difficult getting used to some dialects when it feels like it’s almost an entirely different language! I once lived in an area of the USA where I understood the Spanish speaking people better than the English speakers. I don’t speak Spanish.😂
You need to hear a Hawaiian Pidgin accent, specifically from someone on one of the smaller islands of Hawaii. Their accent is so thick, sometimes even other people from Hawaii doesn’t understand them.
I dated a guy whose father was from Hawaii. I thought his accent was charming and asked what it was. My boyfriend looked at me like I was being critical and said, "Pidjn English."
A small correction. the Cajun people were never French Canadian. They were Acadians from Acadia which is today's Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. At the time of the expulsion of 1755-63 the Nova Scotia colony was an independent colony, (New Brunswick was part of Nova Scotia until 1784). The Canada's (Upper and Lower) were separate colonies at that time and were not connected at all to Nova Scotia. So the Acadians from Acadia that ended up in Louisiana were never Canadians.
@@rooseveltnut I always think of the song by the Band "Acadian Driftwood ", which tells the story and migration to the southern US of the Acadian people. Great song.
A lot of American's wouldn't be able to decode some of the accents truly. We are a HUGE COUNTRY..so...I understood most but as you got to the end it did indeed become a challenge. ALSO some of those TikTok folks my sense is they are EXAGGERATING SPEECH for effect/humor.
There is a neighborhood in New Orleans Louisiana called Algiers, where the natives talk exactly like New Yorkers. I actually knew one of those people when I lived in Texas. Her last name was Watts, and she pronounced it "Warts".
New Orleans far and away has the hardest dialects for other English speakers to understand. (and the city does have more than one dialect) I was watching a second-line parade from the porch of where I was staying, and a lady standing next to the porch asked me a question. I was just lost and asked her to repeat it a few times. Fortunately my husband finally got it, and came out with the paper towel she was asking if she could get. I was lost on what puhpuhtuh meant.
Did you ever eat at GULF PIZZA (which actually gets its name from being an old Gulf gas station building!) in the Algiers area? And where in Texas did you meet this "Watts" lady? I'm especially curious because I actually had an elementary school teacher in Texas (right outside Houston) who was originally from Kenner (Louisiana) and was a perfect example of the famous "Yat accent" found in and around New Orleans!
That’s where does Sicilian immigrants settled when they got off the boat in New Orleans? That’s why it has a very similar accent to New York and other areas that a lot of Italians immigrated to. That’s where half my family grew up.
@@lancerelle9280 Do you suppose the "Algiers Italians" would have trouble communicating with a New Yorker (such as a "Brooklyn Italian" for example) despite the similar accents? And would they have trouble communicating with a person with the "plantation" Southern accent, found especially in Georgia and South Carolina?
Most Southern Californians don’t sound like that. It’s kind of like a fashion accessory of an accent down there for some of their subcultures. As for the general American accent, I sorta associate it with the Pacific Northwest. Where virtually all accents stick out like a sore thumb! If I recall correctly, the University of Washington did a study of the PNW accent… to determine if we have one… and the results were “kinda? If you really look for one…” Love this analysis from the other side of the pond, mate!
@@zacharyduval1 that totally threw me too! “Supper” is soooo much an easy of the Mississippi word me! Never heard it from my home in Western Washington to New Mexico… it’s always dinner here in the west. I love the English language though lament it’s the only language I speak. So out of curiosity, years ago, I tried using vocabulary uncommon to the Pacific Northwest to see how people would react. I had a pretty good idea haha… supper was one of those words. I got so many “dude… really?” looks as well of a few “dude… really?” spoken inquiries to assess if I “really” went there. So that word was dropped from the lineup pretty quick! However, I really love the word “mate” in place of “friend,” and use it to this day. Those who know me have a fun nickname for me! “Pretentious!” …come to think of it, that’s kinda just an adjective… maybe they’re just being funny… But seriously, I’ve had more than a couple of friends and coworkers express they sometimes need to look up vocabulary in my text messages… so. Thank goodness it’s easy to highlight the words and search on most phones…
True. But we definitely like out vocal fry down here. I don't have that 'surfer' talk or even the valley accent, but I still get some vocal fry going. And some people down here do say supper! I was born and raised just 60 miles east of LA, and there are people around who say supper.
Most Southern California residents grew up elsewhere in the US, so mostly average out to General American dialects. The stereotypical SoCal accent is almost entirely associated with 80s valley girls and surfer dudes, and even for them is an ironic affectation they can turn on or off.
One of the most popular/mocked accents currently in the USA is from the "Delaware Valley" area. Delco (south east PA) + North Delaware + Philadelphia + West NJ.
It's also one of the most studied, thanks to linguist William Labov at Penn, who loves it. He called it one of the richest and most complex accents in the world.
From West Philly and my dad's 2nd wife was from Germantown.. man you definitely could hear the difference. She would say "I coaled you" instead of I called you.. It cracked me up..
A lot of Americans who don’t live in cities tend to have “country” accents. Like go three hours inland from cities like Los Angeles or San Diego and there’s a lot of folks with country accents
Lol that's because they ain't from here I'm in sandeigo now but grew up in Washington DC. Everybody I meet with a slang to their accent is from a different state
You completely forgot a few, but one of the ones is the upstate NY, Central Pennsylvania, and central New Jersey. The 3 are basically the same accent with slight NYC pronounciation on certain words but other than that its a mix of the Pittsburgh, Classic, and New York City accents.
@@dazebird3929 More of a north jersey accent but i was thinking more central / southern jersey and central / southern pennsylvania, and upstate new york cuz they all kinda blend into 1 accent
Texan here, the “Piney Woods” or East Texas accent is much different from the West Texas accent. I’m from Houston and I speak in a much toned down east Texas accent.
Funny. I've lived in North Texas, a time in West Texas, a long time in Houston and now East Texas. I vacationed in Paris and people would intentionally stop talking to hear my accent. When I finished, they asked, "where in England are you from?"
Yep, I lived in the Piney Woods of Texas (tiny town called Grapeland) for my high school years and it's a very different accent than the rest of Texas. Bit of a country twang. Sorta reminds me of some of the rural accents in SC, but a touch less Southern.
I'm glad you do! You're carrying on your region's history AND breaking down some classist bs about which accents are "professional" enough to be used in the workplace. High five from a random internet stranger!
I'm biased but Appalachian is easy to understand without colloquisims. I have what I'd consider a Mid-Atlanic accent but it is very easy for me to slip into Appalachian. If you've some super specific term for something up in your holler i might not know the word, but I'll understand everything else. It doesn't help two out of three guys he used as examples were missing a good part of their teeth. As long as we're all using the same terms we're good.
I'm a Northern California native with a General American accent. For the past decade, I've lived in Southern California, and my accent fits right in. I can only tell which half of the state people are from by their freeway terminology.
I like the term "General American accent", just because it is so hard to give it a single location. I think of it as the Midwestern city accent, but if you go to a place like Pinkneyville, IL (half-way between Carbondale and St. Louis), you'll find the true regional accent for that region, and it's pretty far from a general American accent. (If you're curious, it's very similar to a western Tennessee accent) __Every__ U.S. city has people with the General American accent, because travel between U.S. cities is easy and no one feels pressured to drop it after moving. Places like Columbus, Indianapolis, and Peoria have the highest percentage, but coastal cities with lots of transplants from the midwest (Seattle, LA, and even Boston) are not far behind. Even people raised for generations in those coastal cities have settled on this accent because their neighbors speak it and it's what's heard on TV. The "So. Cal" accent is an actual regional accent. In college (midwest), I knew a few people with it, but within a year of moving to the midwest, they had lost it. Like many regional accents, it is dying also. It became a cultural phenomenon in the 90s, and that was probably its peak. A few decades from now, it will probably be completely gone (if it isn't already). When a regional accent goes away, the General American accent usually fills its place.
I'm a northern Californian and was in college in the 1970s and was amazed at the cultural differences. Men from northern California would not be wearing shorts and sandals much at any time of the year, but those SoCal guys wore both at all times of the year. I think there's still a bit of difference on that.
@@smallmeadow1 It is much warmer, you can't even swim in the ocean. As a Michigander growing up with the cold Great Lakes we swam in San Diego in the ocean year-round. The water temp was 65-68...warm enough for us but I must say the locals did think we were a bit crazy to be swimming in that temp. But those I know who live near san Fransisco say it is always too cold for ocean swimming. San Diego just had this large beach town vibe I loved.
Not much with the accent, but more about the slang. For instance, how do you refer to the lot sitting diagonally across the street? If you say kitty corner, that's Socal. If you say catty corner, you're in the Bay Area. More regional terms: janky, the city, and hella--all NorCal words you'd never hear in SoCal. And in SoCal: dude, sigalert with its companion term traffic break, and "the" before any freeway number.
I’ve heard from a lot of older people (some first hand experience) that before tv country/mountain accents were extremely hard to understand. Even for people that lived an hour or two away from them. Tv and the internet keeps the accents from getting too different now.
As someone from the edge of the Appalachian Mountains in upper Alabama, my great grandfather DEFINITELY had the thickest accent in my fam. When he was still alive, I remember constantly lookin' at my mom and going "what he just say??" I was still real young at the time 🤣 Managed to still get some accent from my Pops and Nana tho!!
I was the same when my mum and I visited the village in Germany where she was born. I didn't understand a word what people were saying. After a couple of days there wasn't any problem. I just love all accents in German up to even Dutch which is considered to be a different language but as a German you'll pickit up in a couple of weeks. I also love all the British Isle accents.
At the risk of being that guy, the General American Accent is more specific than just "Midwest". It's specifically the Ohio Valley accent. The Upper Midwest has far more nasal qualities to it.
To be fair he did mention the Minnesota and UP Michigan accents which would both be upper-Midwest, but I do agree that it’d be good to have some of the more specific information regarding the “general American accent” since, like most supposedly “neutral” accents, it’s not quite as general as it’s name might suggest
Nah. Maybe around Columbus. Dayton suburbs. We got a bit of a twang in Cincinnati. I only hear it when it's compared to someone else. Or when I lived in Colorado. Go to the extreme eastern end of the Metro area (Adams and Brown counties) and you get the most hideous, flat, nasal, twangy accent I've ever heard.
Actually, General American is a class-based accent. It's the accent of the educated upper middle class pretty much everywhere outside the South (though members of this class in the South may have this accent and generally have an accent somewhere on a continuum between this accent and their regional accent). The General American accent is based on pronunciations recorded in American dictionaries in the late century, and it reflected the pronunciation of an area stretching from western New England (specifically Springfield, Mass) to northern Ohio where most American dictionaries were compiled. These pronunciations were a model for radio announcers when radio took off in the 1920s. Since that time, regional accents in western New England and, even more so, western New York and northern Ohio, have diverged sharply from General American. The accents in the Ohio valley remain closer to General American than the accents of northern Ohio where it originated, but the accents of people from lower middle or working-class backgrounds in the Ohio valley have regional features that are distinct from General American.
@@lydia3460 almost, but not entirely. The primary affected accent in the 1920s, through to the 1950s, was the Mid Atlantic, an entirely synthetic accent taught to movie stars and radio personalities in the first half of the century, characterized by non-rhotic Rs, a more nasal delivery, and a rounding of front vowels. One leading theory about its demise is the post WW2 rejection of elitism specifically. So while that does appeal to the upper middle class element of your argument, you ignore the importance of the media training of the second half of the century. And in particular the importance of Walter Cronkite. And while he's a topic entirely to himself, his importance to the shaping of how reporters talk, and in turn how that affected the rest of the country would be difficult to understate. Admittedly, he was from Missouri, but he also worked at eliminating Missouri specific markers from his speech. If you listen to reports from him from WW2, versus those from later in his career, there's a notable difference. But again, that may be getting into the weeds a little bit. However, my broader point remains. The reason media personalities were trained to speak that way was because it had the fewest linguistics markers, and so could be unappealing to the fewest people. It just so happens that the Ohio Valley accent has the fewest natural markers. There certainly are those that say that those two facts are coincidental, as so they may be, but it's also reasonable to think that, in an effort to turn away the fewest listeners/watchers in total, vocal coaches would seek out the most "neutral" accent, and in so doing find the OVA. So, yes, there is in a way a class element to it. But I'm afraid it's reductive to insist that it's entirely about class.
It's been said that people in the Pacific Northwest, specifically the Western Valleys of Oregon and Washington States, speak American English in its most phonetically pure form. As someone who grew up smack in the middle of that region (Portland area) I would have to agree. In fact, as a kid I remember when my best friend moved here from Northern California, and I immediately recognized that he spoke a handful of words (specifically vowel sounds, and more specifically some diphthongs) slightly differently, and we would playfully chide each other over the variance, but we both eventually concluded that the PNW way was technically more accurate to the rules of English Phonetics. This is why news anchors and reporters around the whole of the US, actors in Hollywood, etc... all emulate our (non) accent. Call it: Cascadian English. What's funny, when you cross the border into Southern BC, they sound exactly exactly the same with only one difference - the word "about" the pronounce "a-boat." The difference is immediate. Other than that, absolutely no difference. I have to say, I was a little disappointed we were left off your list, considering we're the de facto masters of American English! Though, we're often forgotten, especially Oregon. The farther East you go in the US, the more people you'll find who don't even know we exist over here, tucked away between the mountains and the Pacific Ocean, just quietly minding our own business and trying to keep a low profile. 😬
My dad's side are Finnish Yoopers and my mom's side are Scandinavian Minnesotans. I've never found either difficult to understand at all haha Perhaps it made people from Nordic countries easier for me to understand instead! I love my Lake Superior-surrounding family 💗
Fun fact about Ocracoke (yes you pronounced it correctly) is that it has a British war cemetary. During WW2 the bodies of the crew of a British ship sunk by the Germans washed ashore. Due to their isolation they just identified the bodies as best they could and buried them in Ocracoke, where they remain today. Officially it's British soil, but in practice it's maintained by the locals of Ocracoke and the US Coast Guard.
That's a touching story. And in Normandy, France there is a local group of French people who lay flowers at the graves of fallen American soldiers whose families can't afford to do the same. A similar thing happens at a Canadian cemetery near Juno Beach in Normandy, and as an interesting twist to the story, some of the locals put maple leaves on the graves in the Canadian cemetery.
As a non-native Saint Louisan I immediately recognized the AAVE. In fact, the word Ebonics was first coined in 1973 in St Louis by an African American social psychologist. However as someone who lived the majority of their life prior to St Louis in Florida, I was really shocked to hear how different the two accents are, yet both equally easy to follow to myself (these are very thickly cultural accents).
I grew up in Ontario, but then lived in upstate New York, southeast Virginia, and now central Florida. Because I've had a scientific education and career I've been constantly surrounded by people from all around the world and have unintentionally honed my accent to be as neutral as possible, to the point where people often tell me that they cannot figure out where I'm from. But if I'm sufficiently excited, or drunk, my Canadian accent comes screaming out.
I have a similar history, born in Central Florida, living in Upstate New York, spent some time in Shenandoah Virginia, and been to Ontario countless times
I am in Central Nebraska, and I can understand everything up until we got to the end of the video. And then, it might as well been from a whole different planet.
Haha, okay, you can perfectly understand thick Ocracoke Brogue? The vast majority of Americans will have trouble understanding at least a few of the clips played here. Why are you lying dude, lol.
i'm from Kentucky and understood every word of the people from the region, haha. one feller was talking about working in a coal mine and i think he said a pipe or something got backed up and exploded. the girl was talking about hanging out with people she thought was friends, but they were laughing and makin fun of her, on account of her strong accent. then my favorite, that's old Jim Tom! durned if he aint the most Kentuckiest man alive, haha. gosh i love this region of Appalachia so much! he was talking about the old buggy they used to ride into town, it'd take em a long time to get to town, and he'd be workin the brakes. we start to go up a hill, and i kindly push the brake on him. he told that old mule, he said, "Git up there!" me turnin the wheel, he looks back and says "Jim Tom! Turn the brakes loose!" he'd take three ears of corn to feed it at lunch. he'd start back home bout 4 o clock." lmao, i love it though. somethin about that twang, people in Tennessee and West Virginia have it too. like music to my ears! literally all the rest of the people i could understand, it was just the regional references and words like dight, lol never heard that one before. just about all the rest, i could understand if i listened hard. then the Tennnessee feller, he said "naw, we didn't have no electricity, didn't have no runnin water neither. we run it out of the, we got it out of the spring. but they eventually got electricity up through here." and i always said it as Apple-at-ya. but yes, to the rest of the country and internationally, we are unintelligible, lol and yes, we've done been isolated for literally forever. since day one. and its made us real particular
That girl who was talking about hanging out with so-called friends made me so sad. It's one thing to be enchanted by someone's accent and want to hear it, but that story sounded like mean people.
Clear to me, as well. I grew up in NJ but I spent every summer with grandparents from WV. I live here now. There were a few points early on when I has to translate for my wife but she's gotten past that, now.
Found that perfectly understandable. I'm from rural Scotland. Then again, I work with people from half of Europe, and a couple from the most remote place you could imagine in Ireland where they speak so fast you can hardly tell one word from another.
@@ALWhite-ub1ye yep, we all sound real similar in central Appalachia ... Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, three of my favorite states. beautiful country!
My friend spoke Creole. When he was drinking, there was no hope for even catching a drift of what he was saying. I only heard hmana he hmanah hahaha.... Wonderful man.
I am a fourth generation LA/SoCal native and nobody I know personally uses that "surfer-dude"/vocal fry beach-bum accent. That seems to mostly people living along the beach and/or transplants. Certainly no one inland talks like that.
I don't know if you are familiar with the 50th state but when I first moved to Hawai'i I found the local accent with its "pidgin" slang certainly the hardest American English accent to understand
A personal trainer approached me in the gym the other day and offered to show me some exercises, during which he asked, "Waddaya goes?" He was a young black man and at first I couldn't tell that he was asking "What are your goals?" because he couldn't pronounce the "L" in "goals." He also pronounced "shoulders" as "showdahs."
I don't live in Chicago, but I do live pretty close. My accent is relatively similar, so it's actually really easy for me to understand what's being said. I didn't think my accent was hard to understand lol
I’m originally from an area considered to be Appalachia, and that’s very similar to an example that I share with people who ask about the accent. “Jeet yet?” “No, jew?” (Did you eat yet? No, did you?) Another: once, while on vacation, we stopped at a roadside farm stand. My mom asked the proprietor “Zher corn all?” She was asked to repeat it several times, before I stepped in and explained that she meant “Is your sweet corn all gone? (Sold out)
I grew up with that "non accented general American accent", my parents spoke it naturally, it's what I hear in everyday life from nearly everyone from every economic or educational strata, it's just normal and natural to speak clearly. It was reinforced in schools and if someone was lazy or incorrect in their ennunciation they were corrected and taught how to do it properly. There was a fair amount of focus put on grammar, pronunciation and spelling and we were even then informed that our natural way of speaking was considered "standard American English" and that's why so many actors in newscasters sounded very natural to us, we must have sounded almost foreign to someone from the northeast or the deep south. And many friends and relatives did go on to find jobs in radio work, movies, and other media. It is kind of funny, when I speak to people from other parts of the country or the world they often will say I sound like I have "a radio voice" or think that I'm putting a lot of effort into speaking clearly when it really is just the way I grew up. It's second nature and requires no thought or extra effort. I guess in that way I am lucky that I have one of the most easily understood accents, because being understood is such a crucial part of communication.
Same, I grew up that way too. When I moved to Kentucky, I'd constantly get, "You ain't from around here, are ya?" My family now claims that I sound southern when I visit them. I do hear some Kentucky creeping into my voice at times, so I guess they're right.
There are several towns in North Carolina's outer banks, particularly on Hatteras and Ocracoke island that were essentially isolated until around the 70s. "Hoi toid on the sound side" typifies it. You can still hear it with some of the older locals but it is getting harder to find. I am so glad you included it before it dies out.
I agree. I was a Chicagoan living in Boston for three years. I could hear quite a few distinct accents within only a few miles. People get hung up on the silly, park the car, thinking every Bostonian talks like that. I think that is true of every city.
Yep I just recently spent a few days in Boston and the only time I heard the "Boston accent" was the Southwest customer service rep at my terminal when leaving, lol. And Im from Joliet (live in Naperville now) hearing that Chicago accent really depends on where in the city people are from and from my experience it's mostly south siders that have that thick Chicago accent.
I'm a 3rd gen American living in the central valley of California, grandparents came from Mexico. I really don't speak a whole lot of Spanish, and I've always been told I "sound white". But funnily enough when I went to New Zealand, I was told a few times I have a "Mexican accent". Couldn't believe it lol, first time anyone had ever told me that.
I moved there in my 30s, lived there for nine years, and now live in New York and New Yorkers have told me on multiple occasions that I have the weirdest Puerto Rican accent. What??? I’m from Utah. I guess I was influenced by the Central Valley’s strong Mexican population more than I thought. That being said, I think I sound very white too.
Absolutely, 100%. I don't think it's always been this way. In older movies, the 's' is usually dropped. Even in downstate Illinois, I knew a couple of people that would always drop the 's', but frankly, they're just wrong. Actually, in each of those cases, it was someone that moved there from somewhere else. Once you get anywhere near St. Louis, you'll find that the 's' is pronounced 100% of the time today.
@@GingerBreadBeing Americans don't drop the S, but the man in the accent video does. I wanted to make a note so more British/Europeans don't make the same mistake.
I know I'm late to the party, but I wanted to say "Hello, from Redding, California." It was fun to see our accents being the easiest to understand. My Dad's grew up in California but his family had moved from Arkansas before he was born. I loved hearing the drawl at family reunions. LOL
Texas has states inside the state that people not from Texas don’t know about, we got east Texas, west Texas, Central Texas, North Texas, south Texas, the panhandle, and the coast. Each one is very different
In San Antonio area, if you want to see a fight start, ask people if they are in the south or the southwest. I think San Antonio/Austin is considered right on the geographic & climate border between S/SW.
@@Kid_Ellipsis except for the ones who anglicized the original name (for example Mäki to Hill). FUN FACT: Not a yooper, but if Pamela Anderson's great-grandfather didn't change his surname to Anderson, she woulda been Pamela Hyytiäinen. Altho, since celebrities often make stage names, I'm sure it woulda been changed to something else for her stage name.
I love that you honor and enjoy the diversity of language. Have you checked out Pidgin English in Hawaii? Most locals know how to turn it off or at least tone it down for outsiders but it can be quite different, A lot of it is vocabulary differences but there are also lots of tonal variations.
The Appalachia accent is the hardest for me to decipher. Once drove through West Virginia and when we had to stop to get gas it got to the point I had to have the guy write down what he was saying because I couldn't understand a thing he said even when he slowed down.
When I went to Penn State, most of my social circle was either from Pittsburgh or Philly. We developed a mashup language of each city's dialect. We could be having a conversation in public and people would wonder what we were saying!
Jeet jet ? = Did you eat yet,? Whatcha dune? = What are you doing? Wanna get go en? = Do you want to get going? Ca mere. = Come here. Ah dunno. / I don't know. Fa ged abowd eht. = Forget about it. Whooz zat? = Who is that? Noo Yawk cidee = New York City. What timezit? = What time is it? Ceya laydah = I will see you later. Wanna get zum peetza? = Do you want to get some pizza? I gotcha cavahd. = I've got you covered. THIS IS WHY THAT NYC ACCENT IS HARD TO UNDERSTAND -- and why NYC is the media capital of gotcha journalism. [Also include the borough of Queens] 😂 PS: The plural of you is not "you all", but youse, pronounced: yooze Some times said: "all a yooze" and translated as "all of you." 😅
I remember when I was twelve our neighbors grandkids came for the summer. The oldest boy Johnny said he had to get something out of the boot of the car in a British type accent. I barely understood what he said, but was coming up with a blank on the boot of the car. He was going to” You know the boot of the car.” “ You know the boot?” We finally went to the car and then I understood he meant the trunk and then I told him it was called a trunk here in Chicago. His older sister only took a couple of days, but he took about a week before he transitioned to how we spoke. I also remember going to Washington DC and there was a blind man that was astonishing everybody, because he could detect from your speech where you were from and he was dead accurate. Then when I was visiting Plymouth Rock, they had people who researched the parts of the different Pilgrims and spoke and acted like that part, including the time line. So, if he asked where you were from, Chicago, was not in existence in that time period, as well as other things and places. They played their part to the tee. I noticed one of these actors had an Irish accent and asked if he was Irish. Whereupon, he answered that he was English and explained that he was from the seaport that heavily traded with the Irish. Hence, the Irish accent, and they started using the Irish accent from constantly being around Irish speaking people. The hardest accent remember was a young boy who spoke with such a pronounced Southern drawl and it sounded like he was talking with marbles in his mouth. They luckily had people from the area on the television, that translated what he was saying.
It’s true, we say “Tah” instead of “To” and I hear the use of “Dhat” more often than “That” even the word “than” is pronounced like “Dhan” sometimes, also the Should’ah, Would’ah and Could’ah is very common too.
Yes, this is true. If I said, "I'm going to the store," it would sound like "I'm goin' ta the store." In cities like Chicago and Detroit the TH is often softened to a "d" so you get "We watched da' Bears!" (Chicago football team). Suburbanities tend NOT to do this though. It's very much a neighborhood by neighborhood thing. The biggest tell of a Michigan accent though is that the letter "T" isn't pronounced in the middle of words. It's either gone entirely and replaced with a glottal stop or it becomes a "d". So city is cidy, kitty is kiddie, butter is bu'er (buh-er there's an actual glotal stop). Then there's words like kitty-corner (a place on the diagonal corner from another place), anyways (not anyway), and local words. So Michigan has three Distinct accents - urban, like Detroit; the Upper Peninsula (Yooper accent hazzah!), and the rest of the state.
As a Texan from the Piney Woods, I can not only tell you where a Texan is from, I can also tell you that folks who try to imitate any Texas regional accent fail every time. Probably easier just to find a real Texan who can hit a mark and memorize the lines.
Have you ever come across a person from New Orleans (or its suburbs) with the famous "Yat accent" which is unusual for its "New York" sound, living in your part of Texas? My first-grade teacher in Texas (right outside Houston) was a "Yat transplant" originally from Kenner, and this was long before the Katrina disaster happened!
I'm texan born and raised. I didn't always appreciate accents till I moved away. Since then, I've made it a point to record family members talking. It's priceless to show people from the northern states what a west and north texas accent sounds like. I have some real king of the hill folks in the fam.
Texan too, I got legit laughed at by a couple little twats working a Wendy's drive through in South Dakota. Sorry I don't speak my vowels in fucking cursive
When I was driving taxi in Hawaii people from New Zealand would get ticked off when I guessed they were from Australia. You can’t hear the difference they would say. They were incensed
As a Troll, I heard #9 and instantly went “YOOPER!” Between relating to first guy that the snow really just cushions you, recognizing the second girl’s college hat (I’ve got a friend that went there), and recognizing the name of the town the third guy was from, there was really no doubt about it! 😂
I was expecting that one too! I'd probably put it second to hardest (right behind Cajun). I think both Gullah Geechee and Cajun are much harder to understand than Outer Banks.
I was expecting Gullah as well. I worked at a hospital in Beaufort, SC, several years ago. The cafeteria staff all spoke Gullah. I had to have them repeat several times to understand what food was available.
@@DaytonCash I'm having similar experiences at my current workplace with the Haitians there. It's probably mostly fine when you're both speaking the same language and there's no heavy machinery around (this is a car factory), but I can't understand them well at all when my ears are plugged and the machines are going.
Yeh the Outer Banks one was easy, but Cajun gets me every time. I'm a native South Carolinian and have no problem understanding our Gullah friends. I love the way they speak.
I'm on the other side of Pennsylvania in rural Northampton County. I always laughed when I was doing a lot of traveling for sports when my girls were young when we would be in Pittsburgh at the "Y'inz"😂. I always loved coming into Pittsburgh seeing the colored bridges. It is something so basic and seems silly, but it is a sight I always enjoyed. We have ALOT of subaccents in Pennsylvania. I am just happy that I don't have a Philly accent😂.
As a Pittsburgher, I can confirm that we DO have our own dictionary. Pittsburghese dictionaries and shirts with lists of Pittsburghese words are sold down in the Strip District.
I live a few hours south of Chicago and I sometimes have trouble understanding people from there. Years ago I lived in a college town and worked in a store. Parents from Chicago would come in to buy things for their kid's dorm rooms. On day a lady asked if we had any clacks. I had her repeat it several times, but never understood what she was asking for. She then explained that a clack was used to tell time.
It’s the toughest bc 99.999% of Americans have never heard it. Only us accent nerds are aware. I understood nearly all of this whole video (Connecticut) except most of that.
@williamhilinsky1327 I live on the Eastern Shore of MD and the news will occasionally do a news item about something on the Island usually either to do with watermen or the ferry. So I've heard it a lot to where I can understand it.
I once found myself at an oyster scald with a Tangier native who was half in the bag. Could not understand one word out of his mouth. Just smiled and nodded.
I am a black American man, with a mother from Louisiana, father from Texas, but I was born in Southern California in the suburbs. Both of my parents picked up a standard accent before I was born, and I ended up with the whole valley accent because it is all I heard growing up. Fast forward to me living in Japan for over a decade to teach English, and everyone, other non-Californian Americans as well, said I have an accent. I was shocked at first, but I mean, of course. People could tell I was from California immediately upon meeting me. Fast forward over a decade more of living there, having friends from all over, but mostly had British (English and Scottish to be exact) friends, and people said I sounded European... They didn't say British, just European... Now that I am back in Southern California, people say I don't sound American with some words, but that I mostly sound Californian. Language, accents, dialects, are a lot of fun, but so weird at the same thing.
I went to The Citadel, and heard that accent plenty of times in the King Street Market. It was called the "slave market" back when I went to college. Very creepy
I thought that was going to be the last one. In fact, the Outer Banks accents (really more than a dialect than accents) have the same basic cause - a very isolated cultural group.
It’s “apple-atcha” and it’s the best! Love that accent! I grew up in Ky and can confirm that western, central, and eastern parts of the state all have distinct accents.
Being from Louisiana what makes the Cajun English as you call it more difficult than you know is that the Cajun words often mean different things to different family bloodlines. While most often the words are pronounced the same they may have similar but different meanings. I spent 12 years working offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and other gulfs around the world listening to Cajuns sitting around quizzing each other about what a certain word means to them and then to the others sitting. Gotta love’em
