Things Michiganders Say | Michigan Accent And Slang 

Wow! I've been loving all of these comments from my fellow Michiganders. If you're newly watching this video, shoutout in the comments where you are from, let me and everyone know your thoughts on this video and let us know how strong your Michigan accent is. 😆

us michiganders speak hella fast. WE HAVE SUM TO DO AND PLACES TO BE. not actually, we’re just severely impatient.

You pointed out the way we pronounce things, I just thought everyone did that😂

Honestly, I love how we call it 'Meijers'. Meijer just doesn't sound right to me

I went to California and had 2 people say, “are you from Michigan?” And I was like, “uh, yeah... how did you know?” And they said it was my accent.

No wonder why Eminem can rap so fast

As a foreign language teacher, I find these nuances about languages very fascinating. It’s true, as a Michigander, I also say “Krogers” and “Meijers”. And I never noticed that I don’t pronounce the hard “t”.

Everyone I meet asked me about my accent and now I’ve come to realize that I have a HARD MICHIGAN ACCENT. 😂😂😭 everything is spot on!!

......When he said Ponniac, that's when i noticed..... We do that for sure

My favorite story about our accent is the fact that my highschool choir teacher had to re-teach us our vowels so we could learn to sing properly.

Grand Rapids girl here. This made me laugh, it’s so spot on!!

Fun fact in Michigan we have both Native American and French roots, so a lot of our words are a mix of both those histories: Detroit, Grand Blanc, Mackinac, Tittabawasse, etc. Due to our history with both we incorporate both pronunciations in our talking. We use French liaisons such as: Je aime = J’aime. Ours are lazy liaisons or lazyasons which cause a lot of our spoken words to run together: Secretary of State = Secretariastate, or , did you eat + d’jeet or just jeet. That is thanks to our French history

Oh my goodness! I had no idea that the letter “T” was basically not existent to us😂 Wow, no wonder people always say I have an accent! I’ve learned so much in this video. Lol!

I'm talking to myself as you're sayin' all of this and it's kind of blowing my mind.

As a Michigander named Charlotte, I didn't realize I didn't pronounce my name "correctly" (i.e., with a "t" sound at the end) until someone in college thought my name was Charla.

I heard This Accent In Detroit MI When I Visited

This is so funny.... and true 😭 only Michigan people would understand😂!!

You forgot one thing, oh wait I need to get a can of ‘pop’ : )

"Fir a few reasons" there it is lol

the fact that you clarified that when we add an s to company names it's possessive and not plural makes me SO HAPPY

your teeth are distractingly perfect

Im from Detroit and all these are spot on 😂

strangely the Michigan accent makes our pronunciation of Pontiac closer to the original Ottawa dialects pronunciation

I was born in West Michigan and moved all over the country during my childhood, but my accent always stuck with me since we always revisited the northern lower peninsula every summer. I have québécois cousins too. I always love bringing out the Yooper accent to mess with my neighbors down here in Georgia. The looks on their faces!

this is so true!! i never noticed that i don't pronounce the hard "t"s 😂

Oh, this made my day! I'm from Grand Rapids area but have been gone for about 6-7 years and people always ask me to slow down, repeat my self, or comment on my accent😂 I'm actually proud I still have it!

I'm from Ohio, I notice a lot of us (myself included) add an "S" to store names and I think we likewise tend to omit the "T' in certain words.

I didnt even know mejiers was supposed to be said mejier. Im from Michigan.

I agree that as Michiganders we do all these things, but most of the ones you mentioned are quite common in North American English accents all over the region, and not unique to Michigan. Although, “Meijers” *is* extremely Michigan 😆

Yep, definitely. I'm a Michigander and it's all true. I guess we are also unique in that we say Party Store lol. Great video, enjoyed it.

My grandparents are from Michigan. They moved here years ago when my dad was 5. Even now, they still have their Michigan accents. Whenever my family and I would visit Michigan relatives, I’d quickly emulate their accent. I wouldn’t realize it until I’d get back to California and my classmates would look at me like I grew a second head whenever I’d talk.

I didn't even notice the "T" thing it surprised me when I realized it.

Very northern michigan: "yous goin to walmarts, er no?"

Yo I was taking to someone that wasn’t from Michigan and then some how we were talking about Meijers and it was like a 15 minutes on I was saying it wrong. My face was like Girl no Meijers sounds better than Meijer.

Good points! I attended law school in Michigan and locals would say "which part of the south are you from?" I am from Cincinnati, Ohio and had no idea how "southern" we sound until I experienced that.

My Canadian friends always laugh at my accent! They're only a couple hours North East of Detroit and we speak entirely different! lol. Ann Arbor girl here :)

Everytime you explained something I said it out loud and was dying laughing. Spot on, didn’t even know we had an accent!😂

"igotih" killed me. this video is so funny and called me the hell out.

When you have to keep rewinding to hear it because it sounded normal the first time😂

Originally from California and I'm currently chilling in Michigan, I love it here, you do you Michigan

I live in Muskegon, MI, and I never realized hat this was an actual accent 😂

Never even noticed until this video that I don't pronounce the letter " t" when speaking.😂Plymouth Michigan here

I’ve always had a problem pronouncing certain words the way they’re meant to be pronounced. Both my parents are from Michigan and I’ve never even been there. Ive been asked more than once by strangers if I’m from the Midwest…..I’ve lived on the west coast my entire life. I was curious and looked up Michigan accents and now my whole life makes sense 😂

Haha that's so funny. I didn't realize ANY of this. But I definitely talk like all of this.

We do a lot of these in Ontario too! Good to know voicing a character from Michigan wont be as hard as I thought! :D Thanks for the vid!

I didn't realize that we had accents. I thought that it was more of a vernacular or a dialect. These videos have been so fun to watch including this one. I had no idea how many T's I don't pronounce 😆

Hi Ryan! Great accent tag video, really informative and entertaining. Watching from London UK.

Really great video. This is so true. I grew up in Michigan and lived in Orange County, CA, the Middle East and NYC for 10 years. When I came back, I picked my accent right back up again. My boyfriend who lives in NYC and is from California said to me on the phone, "OH MY GOSH, your accent!" HAHAHA

Meijers! I Dunno, ciddy. Lol love you Ryan. This was informative!

I'm originally from Michigan and now live in Tennessee. I've lived several places in the years since I left. I was in the Navy so I traveled a lot. I don't get to hear myself often so I don't know how much Michigan accent I have left. I'm sure if I went back to visit that I'd pick it up quickly.

I actually hate how accurate this is 😂😂

I moved from TN to MI and the accent is wild to me! Instead of bag as in “back,” about half the people here say bag with a long a as in “bake.” I don’t even know if that’s accent, it’s really just wrong pronunciation. And the most noticeable one is how they have transformed the short o into a shot a sound. Instead of mop, it sounds like maaap. Instead of mom, it’s maaam. Instead of copy, it’s caaapy. It’s wild! I actually read an article about it from a professor who moved from Boston to MI and he explained how it all happened and the accent shifted around the 1950-60’s.

I grew up in Cleveland, OH and I speak the same exact way as Michiganders apparently 🤣🤣🤣

You just confirmed that I do have a Michigan accent, even though I have always said I don't...haha. I'm from the suburbs of Detroit originally, Warren/Center Line area.

This was awesome!! I'm from Mich originally and I've spent 30 years trying to correct my pronunciation...but it still seeps out. I remember I moved away to Texas for 3rd grade and when I came back, they put me in remedial speech lessons. 😂

This is great, I was born and raised in Lansing, and man it makes me miss Michigan even more lmao

Saginaw boy here this is sooo true

Hey there! Born and raised in Ann Arbor but sadly moved to the south when I was 11. But I still consider myself a Michigander! I still say Pop and add S's to everything, while speaking quite fast and slurring my words. Please help me...!!

OMG I'm a Michigander living in Kentucky and everything your talking about is a big YESSSSS! What's even worse is when my northern and southern accent clash lol! I have to stop myself and be like, what the heck was that lol! Want to know what irks Kentuckians nerves, being a northern and pronouncing Louisville, Ky LMAO!!!! I still don't say it right lol! I LOVED your video

Holy man, describes us in every way and I love it

That was great, metro Detroit here

At one point (I think it was in the 1970s), they (the Michigan government or some cultural committee) wanted to starting calling us "Michiganians". We put a stop to that really fast. We are loyal to the duck!

I love this!! I never realized we did half of these until just now haha

I grew up in northern Michigan and Colorado. My family goes back generations in Michigan. I now live in Alabama and I've had people interrupt me to ask me where I'm from. Annoying. But I've determined I have a mix of Michigan, Colorado, and Canada in my accent. Occasionally I will start veering off into Scottish and I have no idea where that comes from. No wonder I confuse people. I confuse myself. 😂

Thank you Ryan! Could you explain this to SNL so they get it right when doing Governor Whitmer's accent? I could be wrong, but they've pegged her with the Minnesota- Dakota accent of Sarah Palin..

Dude I tried to force myself to use the t and it feels to weird

Here, because I've been told on more than one occasion that I have a Michigan accent 🤔... born and raised in Arkansas, as well as my parents. I'm literally blown away right now...

I am also from Michigan, but I've been living in the Louisville area for roughly 8 years now. I figured my accent was completely lost, but after talking with an older gentleman at Kroger(s) the other day he mentioned I had a very distinct accent. Watching this, made me realize it's true. It's really intriguing that our accent is very..... subtle. Other than the fast talk, it's overlooked frequently. I love it though, excellent video my man. (Monroe, Michigan if anyone was wondering)

Saginaw here✌🏻✌🏻

I thought the ts sounding like ds thing was everywhere lol

I'm from Metamora, but I grew up in Macomb County. I enjoyed this video. My cousin travels globally a lot and she said that others said her accent sounds nasally. When I text my friends and family I use our accent; e.g. gotta, gonna. I've always understood the reason for our use of 's for Ford's etc. Our street and city names confuse outsiders as many of them are french, native american, or pronounced differently. I've always found it strange that we pronounced Orion in Lake Orion differently. I googled it and this is what it said," It wasn't until around 1865 that village's first attorney decided to name the lake and community after the constellation Orion. “But they chose to pronounce it Or-ee-en and the reason for that is, it just had a beautiful sound to it,” Sweeney said."

“Michiganders love using a hard R” is crazy 😭😭☠️

...I feel attacked lol

I grew up in Michigan and the only part of my “accent” I’ve changed is I call pop soda, which is because it’s easier than explaining I’m from Michigan every day when I say pop lol

That ending took me OUT im laughing so hard at the “fudge” bit(also, as a fellow michigander, this was spot on)

What makes it confusing is a lot of company names do officially end with an 's'.

Portage girl here. I never even realize that I don't put emphasis on the T in my own city 😂😂 I never really knew I had an accent until I went to Tennessee on vacation and they were like where are you from 😂 Also I said Pop and they had absolutely no clue what that meant.

Mans got a nice set of teeth if I’m being real😂

Ryan you had me cracking up. These are so true! 🤣

Great video, thanks!

Kroger’s is true

Now that you mention it, I realize that I actually have an accent😂

The "T" is spot on. We also say "da'marrow" not TOmorrow.

Wow. Very eye opening. You nailed it. Leo from Flint. Edit: I godda run da Meijers.

It used to be officially Meijer’s.

Ah, Michigan, the place with some weird accents and things I never knew I did. This was really helpful. Never knew I did this. Wow. Saving this video forever. Thank you. 👍

An old newscaster calls our accent as “the Michigan mumble”

OMG as a former Michigander this is all so accurate. And I cackled over your mnemonic device!

It’s not that we speak faster. It’s that we tend to be more lazy by taking shortcuts and blending syllables together.

Lived in mi my whole life and it crazy I’ve never noticed any of this!!! Cool video man!!!

I live near Toledo, Ohio which is close to the Michigan line. We also pronounce words very similar to the way you Michiganders do😊

People tell me all the time “you have to be from Michigan” I moved to Florida last year and the guys at work ask me to slow down all the time lmao

Thanks for this video, very true and funny. I'm from Kalamazoo, and I've noticed the Michigan accent is subdivided as well, like a southwest Michigander speaks differently then northern Michigan residents. My mother grew up in Boyne city and her accent is a hybrid of yuper and the Michigan accent/slang you describe

Same. When i moved to NY then came back to MI and noticed the KrogerS or MeijerS and FordS lol. I stopped it but picked it back up. Yes we do use double DDs instead of Tts .

I know two people from Michigan and I noticed how their speech patterns were similar and I really adored it! Here I am, and this video is quite accurate. From time to time I just love to imitate their voices LOL

Wow, spot on! Great Video...

I somehow thought Meijer had an invisible “s” on the end growing up and never questioned it. But the small town I grew up in had tons of businesses named after the owner with a possessive, like Perch’s IGA and Jimmy’s Party Store that we would shorten to just Perch’s and Jimmy’s, so it just made sense. Also, I’ve noticed the “ope” changes regionally. Where I’m from, it sounds more like “up”. Our accent has accents. And don’t even get me started on the people who can’t tell a yooper accent from that of someone living an hour south of the bridge.

I’m a Michigander, one of my best friends name is Martin. I find myself calling him Mar-in with a stop instead of actually saying the T

I don’t like to waste time so I appreciate the blending of words together. It makes it easier to get out of conversations faster 😂

this was absolutely hilarious to watch! i didn’t know i dropped the hard “t” in words 😂