Does the PNW have an accent? 

😂

Funny, I've been told that all my life!

I hear that in the midwest and south.

never heard anyone say it like that anywhere

@@KeizerHedorahLook up Loretta Lynn singing ‘Coalminer’s Daughter’ and you’ll hear her say ‘warshboard’.

Yep! I live here and I say wash but my grandma says Warsh and is the only one I know who says it like that. And she's from Nevada...

or some tennessee hillbilly

Lol, I'm Canadian and think we sound the same, basically. Western Canada.

I have an Australian friend who said I sounded more Canadian than American" to him lol

Go east and they sound closer to Canadians to me. Minnesota etc.

@@eliteteamkiller319 that's a whole different accent and the great lakes area is a world of bonkers accents unto itself!

@@gaywizard2000 I agree. I'm a West Coast Canadian, and I think the description of the Pacific Northwest accent definitely sounds like the way I speak!

well i'm from nebraska and i would pronounce borrow and sorry the same way. so it doesn't seem specific to washington in your example. I think people get really hung up on trying to be offended by someone who claims they have no accent. like clearly, in the grand scheme of things, there's a standard, more widely-adopted way of speaking in america, that's why if you even read textbooks about english they will only point out something extreme like new york or the south.

I’m from Spokane too! I feel like a lot of people in eastern Washington do speak similarly to Canadians :) You are totally right about the “bag” and BEG LOL 😂

Yes all of WA State does the "eh" sound almost for, a, e, and i.

From Seattle. Have always said bag.

Im from Alaska, we got the flattest accent, the most neutral.

​@@lordfrostdraken Except in Wassilla where everyone sounds like they're from Minnesota. Before I learned that, I had thought that Sarah Palin was faking one, lol

@@edwardmiessner6502 yeah fair enough heh. Alaska is a big state after all, so the accent fluctuates even across the state itself

I think it mostly comes from people who move here from the midwest, especially Irish descendants. My great-grandmother and grandfather both did this, but that linguistic tradition ended with my father.

In Western Washington since 1977. "Cot" and "caught" are different for me, as well. I've heard "Warshington" but not from anyone under seventy.

​@@rylian21you're wrong. My grandparents are all native to the Pacific Northwest and say 'warsh'. And I say "caught" and "cot" the same, as does every one of my family members. The 'warsh' thing is a bit old fashioned, but it's from here.

You from Bellingham?.

Like bag?? Yessss!!

Yes, I came from the east coast and lived in Portland from '90-96. Some differences I noticed: ori-gin or ory-gun for Oregon, leg, layg, egg, ayg or byg bag and also gut for got and furgut for forgot

Also already sometimes pronounced “ardy” or “aridy”

Where have you been? Never heard one person pronounce those words like that in the PNW and I’ve lived hear my whole life and am good at picking up accents

@@orangeflaws8088 interesting. I didn’t feel like going into depth to make the annunciation clear… I just hoped someone would get what I mean. I hear these pronunciations a lot. Some of it is fast, or lazy annunciation no doubt, but if it’s widespread I think that’s considered an accent. I think some of it is generational too “warshington” especially. I’ve lived in the Midwest a while, which helps me hear the differences. I’d have to be talking to you to describe what I’m hearing.

@@myk_islive6471 yeah it’s probably an older Washington thing. I live in Oregon and the older people I’ve met don’t do that. But there are studies that show Oregon has the least intelligible amount of an accent (ie no accent in comparison to everywhere else) so it would make sense why I haven’t noticed that much if at all

@@orangeflaws8088do you say Oregon like “ore a gone” or something then? Because Orihgin is exactly like how every other PNWer would say it…

i feel like that's not an accent though that's more like...someone picked up a bad habit of pronouncing that word lol. so do they also say "slip" instead of "sleep"? no. lol

@@brianbiga4649 you people from the city wouldn't understand colloquial dialect.

I think Wahkiakum County is pretty funny for some reason

as to why our place names are so weird is because the vast majority of them are named after native american tribes in the area, take it for example the spokane tribe just north of spokane

Yeah, Sequim and Puyallup will catch out non-locals, for sure.

dont forget Pysht , which almost sound dirty

Chelan, Steheiken…2 of my favorite places

see this is an accent. this is why there are levels of strong accent versus a more flat one because certain accents are so strong it affects most everything that comes out of their mouth.

Dathhhss raicssssthhsssss

LMAO

i feel like that's not an accent lol. random words like this don't constitute an accent. if it were an accent then they would also say "boss" as "bosst" and "toss" as "tosst".

​@@brianbiga4649accent literally means how you pronounce words. saying across with a t is pronouncing it differently. thats accent. if a bunch of people in a city start pronouncing 1 word a certain way, their accent shows in a word now. it doesnt have to affect all the words that are similar. i bet if you heard someone talking normally and then say 'fah-rest' for forrest you dont expect them to say 'starry' for story, right?

Kalama is an awesome town!.

so how should it be pronounced? lol. how do the Maine people say "running"? you pronounce/emphasize the g? they only people i've heard do that are foreigners lol.

@@brianbiga4649it’s not that it should be pronounced anyway necessarily- it’s divergent from the typical General American English pronunciation which is with an “ih” sound like in “if.” And trust me, people in Maine do NOT pronounce things in any sort of standardized way.

Yea im from everett. Whenever i go to northern idaho and spokane i notice more southern inspired accents. Not southern, but almost a mix. How are you liking georgia? Do you miss washington? I love it here but am thinking of moving to nashville to learn how to farm. God bless Morgan

Yep I was about to say, I notice people enunciate words more when I go out of Washington. I think I am especially bad and Really slur my words

it really depends where you live probably. Raised near Vancouver and that was common

@@PersephoneDarling28 not Vancouver. closer to Long Beach. doesnt matter, THERE IS NO R IN WASHINGTON. full stop.

@@hapyharyhard0n581 Bruh, chill out and go enjoy some Warshington Sammin

@@PersephoneDarling28 Salmon dumbass...

i like all these fun unique words people say, but i also DON'T THINK THAT IS AN ACCENT!!! it's just a goofy one-off example. to me, a strong accent affects most things coming out of someone's mouth lol if it were an accent they would also say "bool" instead of "bell" or "tool" instead of "tell"...but they prob don't... right?

Lived here my whole life and never heard it said that way.

@@melissajustice8338 same

Thank you! Been married to my wife for 26 years, and now I know why I have to ask her to repeat the word "bag". It's just not a short a sound to me😄

same here...

I've heard locals say "bag" like "beg"

​@@jontheroadagain I have lived in the PNW my whole life and no one I know says it like that. People keep reiterating this, but I never hear it.

@@Excalion88 lucky you

@@jontheroadagain *derpa derp, lucky you derrrp* It was just an observation. No need to get all bent out of shape.

Who's bent out of shape? I'm happy for you

our towns are indian words, Spokane is not "spokayne," its Spo- can. Wenatchee is ", wen-at-chee" then there is Puallup, its not "pully-up", ...we were in Texas and a waitress asked my dad where we were from, he told her Grand Coulee (as in the DAM), she wanted to know if that was close to Spo-kane, dad (dry sense of humor) told her Grand Coulee was between "Spo-kane" and "pully-up" She did not get the joke, but the rest of us roared. We love our indian history and learn these funny names as kids. Remember the witchdoctor song? the Walla Walla thing came from our town of Walla walla" we got some real doozies out here, just look at a map of washington.

Oh I’m from the towns and we don’t enunciate, we slur lol

Actually, second comment, this makes sense because I had a coworker from Seattle say that we enunciate words less than Seattle and thought we had an accent in our area of WA

Im from wa, but my sis and ma always sain "aig" and "steam arn" (for gettin the rinkels outta yer close), Ma and sis were from texas and came here in the 1930s, and they never liked our "snikes and bars", (snakes and bears)

how else can you pronounce it?

There's really not much of one, it's weird, everyone thinks they don't have an accent then they learn that they do but up north west we really don't have an accent, everything is pretty plain

T is replaced by a glottal stop.

@@stellarsjay1773 right. no one says "mounin" it's more nuanced and specific like what you said.

Warsh has fallen out of favor but it’s definitely a thing. My grandparents have lived in Washington for as long as they have been Americans and a couple of them they say warsh.

Speak for yourself, plenty of washington natives speak exactly like this lol, I've lived here my whole life and everyone I've known including myself pronounces cot/caught the same and I've heard "warsh" a lot from my grandpa growing up. "Warsh" is not as popular amongst younger generations but it's definitely a thing. You have to remember, accents are also dependent on your family and the English you grew up around/who taught you/what you heard. If you grew up as a baby hearing "caught/cot" pronounced without the merger, obviously you're not going to pronounce them the same 😂 Accents are usually pretty general but there's always going to be slight differences. I've been told I say a lot of things that sound really Canadian, some people from Washington don't get told that. It's dependent on the part of the state too. Accents are never a "you are from here so you speak exactly like this" thing. It's moreso "it's common for people from here to speak more like this". Just because it isn't accurate to you doesn't mean it isn't accurate at all.