http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents

The Grapes of Wrath "Ever'body says words different," said Ivy. "Arkansas folks says 'em different from Oklahomy folks says 'em different. And we seen a lady from Massachusetts, an' she said 'em differentest of all."

As anyone who knows even the basics about America can tell you, there is no such thing as a single "American accent." There are a whole load of different American accents, each with its own distinct stereotypes.

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There are a lot more distinct accents in the eastern US than in the west. Dialect maps of the United States have lots of clusters of different colors in the east, which then merge into one generic mass out west. This is because many immigrants arrived in the east, brought their own languages (e.g. Dutch in New York and Rhenish German and Welsh in Pennsylvania) and accents (e.g. Norfolk and Suffolk in New England, South-Eastern in Virginia, Midlands and Welsh in Pennsylvania), and established them, but as Europeans migrated west, the accents all blended together as fewer people of the same dialect were living in the same place.

Speaking of Europe, much has been written on how regional dialects there are dying out since they're not taught in schools and people relocate across regions, causing the "generic" mode of speech to dominate. The US is no different. Americans born in the 70's and later are less likely to have as strong a local accent as their parents and grandparents. This is because the younger generations tend to relocate more often, watch more television, and have friends from other regions, causing American accents to average out. As a result, the Standard Midwestern-Los Angeles "Flat" accent has become the most common by far. Many people don't even know that Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have their own distinct accents unless they're from there.

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See also American Accent Influences for more technical details. Compare Australian Accent, British Accents, Canadian Accents, German Dialects, Kansai Regional Accent, Tohoku Regional Accent. For those more interested in vocabulary than articulation, there's the handy American English page.

The most often attempted (and most frequently horribly failed) regional accent is the "Dixie" accent.

Accents and examples

Southeast and Dixie

Most famous of the accents found in the American Southeast (south of the Mason-Dixon line , hence the name Dixie). Specifically, south of the Potomac river. "Y'all" and "all y'all" as second-person plural pronouns, pronouncing the "i" in "mine" like "ah," and phrases such as "I do declare" (three syllables on that last word), "be sweet" (four syllables) and the mild expletive "sheeeeooooo!". Think Gone with the Wind

In truth, only really found in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and West Tennessee anymore, as the Florida version of the accent has flattened out due to the influx of northerners; Virginia has Tidewater and the Carolinas have their own regional accents distinct from Dixie; the distinct Appalachian dialect is spoken in East Tennessee and eastern Kentucky; and the equally distinct Southern Midland dialect is heard in Middle Tennessee and most of Kentucky. Anyone who lives in the South can tell you there are dozens of highly-distinct different Southern accents (for instance, a native of Augusta, Jar-ja won't be mistaken for somebody from Savannah, Joe-ja or some other part Jaw-ja or Jurja), but most of the rest of the country really doesn't care. The way it's usually depicted in fiction is a bit of a Dead Unicorn Trope — almost no one speaks like Scarlett O'Hara anywhere in the South. In general, the closer you get to the Mississippi River, the slower-paced and more treacly (and lower-class) the accent becomes. People in Memphis and northern Mississippi often have the accent bahyud. People in the Atlanta area have a very neutral take on this accent. Further confusing matters is that even in the same area, members of different social classes can speak with decidedly different, but all local, accents.

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Stereotype: the polite and courteous Southern Gentleman, or Southern Belle. Or Senator Beauregard Claghorn (inspiration for Foghorn Leghorn). Or, in modern contexts, a lady wearing "Daisy-Dukes", cut-off denim shorts that border on the illegal. (It's over 70 degrees there for most of the year...). Played to the other extreme, Sweet Home Alabama. The Southern-Fried Private and Southern-Fried Genius will most likely have this accent as well. The slower "Delta" version of the accent is more commonly associated with redneck trailer trash from "MAYUMfeeis Tennussay" (if urban) or some boggy, mosquito-ridden country hellhole (if rural), shotguns ("shaawt-goouns") and racism optional, education almost non-existent.

Examples:

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Comic Books

Rogue from X-Men, so much it gets to look kinda like a caricature sometimes.

Veronica from Archie Comics was given a southern accent in adaptations until The New Archies.

Film

Live-Action TV

Music

Video Games

StarCraft has the Terrans. Almost all of the units have strong accents, the strongest include Duke, the Civilian and the Wraith, though it often crosses into Texas Drawl as well.

Web Original

Western Animation

Perfect example of how the nuances of the Dixie accents don't get across to non-Americans: the character Mouse from ReBoot has an inexplicable "Southern-ish" accent that doesn't quite sound like it's from anywhere in particular, but is probably closer to Texan than anything else. Not surprising, given that the show was produced in Canada.

Lola Bunny spoke in a supposedly sultry variation of this when Kath Soucie originally voiced her for her debut in Space Jam.

Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM): Bunnie Rabbot, which carried over into the Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog series.

The Tex Avery shorts feature a recurring wolf who speaks with both the Dixie accent and the accompanying colorful vernacular "Well, ain't that right purrty?"

Real Life

Georgia native Jeff Foxworthy often jokes about his own accent, in keeping with his trademark Deep South humor.

Larry the Cable Guy subverts this, being born in Nebraska (where he now resides) and attending high school in West Palm Beach, FL; he spent part of his college education at Baptist University of America in Decatur, GA before dropping out in his junior year to pursue a career in stand-up comedy, later concluding his college education at the University of Nebraska. According to Word of God, he affects the Southern accent when in-character because he finds it more comfortable and associates more with Southern life.

Fox News anchor Shepard "Shep" Smith (of Studio B and Shepard Smith Reporting) has a classic Mississippi twang.

Florida

Originally a form of Dixie, the main Florida accent has been neutralized due to migration from the Northern states and from Latin America. Dixie still persists, mainly among older natives and in the northern part of the state. The current accent resembles Midwestern or West Coast English, but Floridians are also just as likely to use the accent prevalent in the state in which they were born (Jewish, Noo Yawk, and Inland North are all heard — a local maxim is that the further south you go in the state, the more northern it becomes.) One way to distinguish a true Florida accent is to hear the pronunciation of Florida: A Floridian will say "FLOOR-ih-duh" where a Dixie accent would say "FLAR-duh." The state citrus fruit is also notably a monosyllabic "oarnj", rather than "ahr-unge". Florida accents can extend into the Gulf Coast areas of Mississippi and Alabama.

Stereotype: While the accent itself is fairly neutral and unstigmatized, Floridians have a reputation of being eccentric Cloudcuckoolanders, and will speak this accent in fiction, when not using Dixie.

Examples:

Miami

A subset of Florida, this accent is influenced by the large Spanish-speaking (mainly Cuban) population in Miami. Vowels are shortened and sometimes replaced with their Spanish equivalents. Miamians speak faster than most other Floridians, reflecting the influence of the fast pace of Cuban Spanish. Pitch and emphasis are also affected. This accent is fairly recent, only having appeared in the last 50 years. The Miami accent is distinct from Spanish-accented English, as even non-Cubanos may have it.

Stereotype: Used by Latin Lovers, tanned bikini-clad women at the beach, and Cuban-Americans.

Examples:

Live-Action TV

Constantly in Burn Notice with minor characters. Considering that the series is set and shot in Miami, with many bit players being locals, this shouldn't surprise anyone.

Miguel from Dexter has this accent. Angel Batista's accent is this combined with Elmuh Fudd Syndwome.

Appalachian

A subset and exaggeration of Southeast accents, laced with more archaic and/or idiosyncratic usages. Used for remote parts of Appalachia and other isolated southern locales, such as the Ozarks. Dixie accents are slow and sugary, like molasses; true mountain accents are more "musical", like a tightly wound banjo string. Chicago and Baltimore used to have urban Appalachian ghettoes (Baltimore's accent, listed below, still bears some similarities).

Due to the former isolation of some regions of the Appalachian South, the Appalachian accent may be difficult for some outsiders to understand. This dialect is also rhotic, meaning speakers pronounce "R"s wherever they appear in words, and sometimes when they do not (for example "woarsh" for "wash.") Because of the extensive length of the mountain chain, noticeable variation also exists within this subdialect.

The Appalachian dialect can be heard, as its name implies, in the Appalachian Mountain region of Northern Georgia, North Alabama, East and Middle Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Eastern Kentucky, Southwest Virginia, Western Maryland, Southeast Ohio, Southwest Pennsylvania, and all of West Virginia. The Ozark regions of Southern Missouri, Eastern Oklahoma, Northern and Western Arkansas have a slightly different variation of this.

A common saying about Appalachian English is that it preserves the "Shakespearian" English which has been lost in most other regions. Others point to a Scots-Irish origin for the dialect. The truth is that it is probably most accurately a "time portal" of sorts to Colonial American English, with several features of southern English origin that were common at the time (perhaps most notably, a-prefixing, such as "I'm a-going," etc). The Scots-Irish influence is mainly on vocabulary. In some parts of the mountains—specifically Pennsylvania—a German influence can also be detected. Appalachian English, unlike its lowland cousins which affected an "r-less" speech in imitation of the British upper classes, remains a strongly rhotic dialect.

Stereotype: Uneducated, dirt-poor, overall-clad rednecks with one or two close cousins in the genetic mix, and probably missing a few teeth. May be distilling moonshine or growing marijuana (be it in the fields or in a pot on their front porch). Sometimes stereotyped as being on/addicted to Methamphetamines and/or painkillers, but this is a very recent stereotype.

Examples:

Fan Fiction

Film

Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs not only has this accent, she tries to hide it; it's the topic of the original Hannibal Lecture. ("...not more than one generation from poor white trash...").

The best place to hear it is bluegrass music; see O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

Lt. Aldo Raine.

In Nell, part of the reason Nell's speech was misunderstood was her heavy North Carolina accent. A lot of Nell is about mistaken assumptions based on preconceived notions. Speech pathologists listening to tapes of Nell thought she was saying "me" when in fact she was addressing the spirit of her dead sister, May.

Tow Mater from Cars speaks with a pretty thick southern accent, including saying common southern phrases such as "dadgum" and "shoot".

Live-Action TV

Radio

Lum and Abner is a good example of the Ozark version of this accent.

Video Games

T.K. Baha and especially Scooter in Borderlands.

The sequel reveals that Scooter, Ellie and Moxxi were formerly part of the Hodunk clan, a family of rednecks who all have speak with this accent. Moxxi generally hides her accent, though she occasionally lets it slip through.

Larson from Tomb Raider has a hillbilly accent and it becomes more exaggerated in Tomb Raider Chronicles. Tomb Raider: Anniversary changes Larson's accent to be more Texan.

Western Animation

Boomhauer is a legendary example from King of the Hill. It's based off of the accent of an angry caller to Mike Judge while working on Beavis And Butthead.

Applejack from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has been generally identified as having this accent, and it's likely what they were going for. Then again, she has a Texas motif and the show is produced in Canada so maybe were going for "anything Southern" and the VA came up with the Appalachian type.

Fuzzy Lumpkins from The Powerpuff Girls

Cletus and Brandine Spuckler from The Simpsons are from some unspecified Appalachian community, with a redneck/hillbilly accent, living in a dirt-poor shack, with numerous children (and growing), with such hobbies as wood-carving, searching for roadkill, scavenging through garbage, while brewing moonshine on the side.

Real Life

Former US President Bill Clinton. Before his sex scandals, the most common stereotype of Clinton was of a saxophone-playing Good Ol' Boy; the more Flanderized versions of his accent often sounded like "muh felluh 'Muricans".

West Virginia native Brad Dourif is an acclaimed actor who can do just about any accent and is fluent in a half-dozen languages. His natural accent can charitably described as "hillbilly," and people have (upon hearing it) told him to knock off the silly redneck impression.

Piedmont

This accent of the Southern American English accent is found in North Carolina and Virginia. A contributor to 'Newscaster English' because several prominent early TV and Radio Journalists had this accent. David Brinkley, Charles Kuralt, and Edward R. Murrow, in particular

Hoi Toider

The only accent in the US not considered an American Accent, but a British accent instead. Spoken only on the island of Okracoke in North Carolina. The island's population was founded by pardoned Pirates in the early 1700s, and remained mostly isolated until the 1950s, when regular ferry service was established. It's most distinctive feature is 'oi' replacing a long-'i' sound, giving the dialect its name: "high tide" is pronounced "hoi toide" in a way similar to how it is pronounced in parts of southwestern England even today. Usages such as "weren't" in the place of "wasn't" ("she weren't here") and "to" for "at" ("she's to the store now") also mark Hoi Toider speech and appear to have come from eastern England. The word "mommick," meaning to harass or bother, which was used in the time of Shakespeare, remains in the Outer Banks lexicon thanks to the Hoi Toiders. "Dingbatters" are non-natives. The dialect is fading nowadays due to influence from the rest of the country through Television, the internet, and "dingbatters" buying homes on the island.

Gullah

Also called Sea Island Creole English and Geechee, Gullah is a creole language spoken by the Gullah people (also called "Geechees" within the community), an African-American population living in coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia (including urban Charleston and Savannah), as well as northeasternmost Florida. Gullah is based on different varieties of English and different languages of West and Central Africa.

The vocabulary of Gullah comes primarily from English, but there are numerous words of African origin for which scholars have yet to produce detailed etymologies. Some of these African loanwords are: cootuh ("turtle"), oonuh ("you [plural]"), nyam ("eat"), buckruh ("white man"), pojo ("heron"), swonguh ("proud") and benne ("sesame").

South Midland

The South Midland dialect, a cousin to North Midland and to Southern, is an accent heard in central Tennessee and most of Kentucky. This accent is also found in northern Oklahoma, eastern and central Kansas, Missouri generally, the southern halves of Illinois and Indiana, southern Ohio, western Delaware, and south-central Pennsylvania. is documented as sharing key features with Southern American English, albeit to a weaker extent.

Texas

Michael Caine, when learning the Texan accent, characterized it as "all the words just leanin' up ag'inst one another." Related to, but distinctly different from, Cowpoke and Dixie, although the three are often treated as interchangeable in live media. This accent is noted for its fluid-but-guttural sound, mixing archaic words and syntax with a utilitarian but oddly poetic approach to pronunciation, creating one of the more complicated American accents.

Includes ubiquitous use of "y'all" and "all y'all," note sometimes spelled as ya'll, and other unique phrases such as "might could" for "might be able/be willing to" and "might should" for "might want/need to" (an example of something linguists call modal stacking), "fixin' to" for "about to", "gonna'"note Pronounced gun-nah or gone-ah for "going to", and "cain't" for "can't". The contraction "I've" is almost always followed by the word "got", while the full phrase "I have" may or may not be. Thus, a Texan may say "I've got a dog and a cat" or "I have a dog and a cat", but will never say "I've a dog and a cat" when talking about their pets. This is also true when the word "have" is being used to mean "must", as in "I have got to get to the store after work today; I'm out of milk."note In this case, the word got will usually be emphasized, increasing the imperative and implying that being without milk is a disaster, or that the store is likely to close before one's late shift finishes; if it's less pressing, or the speaker is less concerned about closing times, the phrase will usually be softened to "I've gotta get to the store" Syllepsis note an archaic pattern of speech where words and phrases are implied to repeat within a sentence: "You go that way, I'll [go]this way" , Anacoluthon note That thing when, in the middle of a sentence, something is, for no particular reason, inserted that would normally go at the end, or in a different sentence., spur of the moment analogies, and hyperbole are also common speech patterns.

An additional facet often left out of Hollywood portrayals (other than the Simple Country Lawyer or Fat, Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit) is that many words considered formal, archaic or obscure in mainstream English are common in the Texas Drawl dialect. (Just to name a few: reckon, heretofore, hence, thus, and yonder all see everyday use.) This paired with the archaic, stacked syntax frequently leads to some Sophisticated as Hell dissonance for those not familiar with hearing this sort of speech conversationally outside of a renaissance fair, let alone in a Texan accent.

The easiest distinction from Dixie, though, is the accent's namesake "Drawl": a tendency to soften and gutturalize the syllables of words while exaggerating vowel sounds. With verbs, for instance, an "-ing" ending often becomes "-in'"note Rhymes with "Win", not "Wing". On a related note, nouns like wing or thing will get a pronounced "g"- but one like "trimmings" may or may not.. The word "and" may be shortened to "an'" or just "'n'" (as in the phrase, "It's just you 'n' me now."note In particularly thick accents, "just" may drop its T, and in extreme cases, the T and S of "it's" will merge into a sort of Z, resulting in, "Iz jus' you 'n' me now."). This principle might extend to the point of excluding entire syllables: "Pontiac" becomes "Ponniac". Another good distinction is the tendency to soften hard vowel sounds to a greater extent than Dixie. "Want" becomes "wunt," for instance, and "what" may become "whut" (which sounds like a Flat "What" to other accents, often giving the impression Texans are slow-witted and setting up the surprise for a Southern-Fried Genius). Also, while many Dixie speakers dance around the "r" sound, ("Why, I do declay-ah!") "r" is often pronounced very gutturally in a Texas Accent. ("I d'clur!") When it's particularly strong, "isn't" may become "iddn't", "int", or substituted with the more fluid "ain't", which sounds nearly identical in a Texas Draw.

One side effect of the fluid, back-of-the-throat pronunciaton of a Texan accent is the tendency to seemingly rearrange or invent syllables in certain words. Many hearing even a well-educated Texan pronounce the word "New-cue-lar" are baffled, but this not as strange as it might seem. Many common words with hard consonantal stops receive an added vowel syllable to smooth the pronunciation, while also dropping hard syllables as normal, seemingly shuffling the word's letters. For instance, partner often becomes "pard-un-nur", "tentative" becomes "ten-at-tive", and "comfortable" becomes "comf-tur-bull". Many native speakers of the accent don't notice the mismatch between nu-klee-are and nu-cue-lur until they have it pointed out to them, and afterward self-consciously fumble with pronunciations such as "new-CLAY-ur" and "NUKE-lea-UR" for a while before falling back into the less awkward habitual pronunciation until it's pointed out again. Much was made in the media of George W. Bush using this pronunciation, with hardly a thought given to the fact that nuclear physicists from Texas will say it the exact same way.

The final piece in the complex tangle is that while all of this slurring and shuffling of words may sound funny to others, there is a bizarre precision to the accent rivaling that of Received English. Beneath the phonetic acrobatics (or maybe because of them) a large number of phonemes that have merged in most English dialects are not homophones in a Texan Accent. Dew & Do, horse & hoarse, wader and waiter, and wine & whine all receive subtly distinct pronunciations. Much like the shuffling of "nuclear", a Texan with a heavy drawl will simply take it for granted that clear and deer are a mildly Painful Rhyme, and that Bazaar has two different forms of "a"...its just that neither of those "a"s will sound much like an "a" to non-Texan.

It should be especially noted that there is no one "Texas" accent, given the size and diversity of the state. People on the Gulf Coast and in East Texas may synthesize Cajun and Dixie accents, some dip into a Cowboy accent, and Latino Texans have their own distinct speech patterns. West Texans tend to to speak with a Southwestern "twang", rather than a Texan drawl. In this vein, the city accents also are different. Some Houstonians speak with an odd hybrid of a Texas and "That Other Mid Atlantic" accent, while Dallas natives tend a more neutral Midwestern affect. All tend to be more "neutral" when compared to someone from more rural areas like Nacogdoches or Beaumont. What unifies the many variants, however, is that strange combination of precise, fluid, and gutteral pronunciation.

Stereotypes: Everyone is armed. Remembers the Alamo! Women with big hair and men in cowboy hats and boots. Fond of eating Tex-Mex and BBQ. May consider "American" to be a secondary nationalitynote The line given in that regard is "American by birth, but Texan by the grace of God". Typically portrayed as salt-of-the earth working folks or oil-rich elite; however in recent years the presence of NASA's primary research center and mission control in Houston, a booming high-tech hardware and software industry, and the popularity of Steampunk, Cattle Punk, and Weird West fiction has been recasting Texas as the home of both the Southern-Fried Genius and Badass Longcoat.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

Osaka in the English dub of Azumanga Daioh (her accent is specifically derived from the Houston area).

Likewise, Daphne from the Funimation dub of Fairy Tail has a thick (albeit fake) Southern twang, which she drops when she's being serious. Combine this with how she speaks a mile a minute, and you can barely understand half of what she's saying half the time.

Film

Literature

In The Expanse, people from the Mariner Valley on Mars (including Alex Kamal, one of the main characters) all have this. While there were some Texans among the settlers, most were Chinese or Indian. Apparently, the drawl is contagious.

Live-Action TV

Music

Pinball

Buck the cowboy from Diner talks with a stereotypical Texas drawl.

Professional Wrestling

WWE wrestler John "Bradshaw" Layfield was a stock market wizard rather than an oil billionaire, but had the accent and otherwise fit the stereotype very well (right down to the white limousine with longhorns on the hood).

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin is a more blue-collar example.

Theatre

In The Most Happy Fella, Herman and Cleo are supposedly able to recognize each other as being from Dallas by the way they pronounce "evenin', Ma'am," "friendly state," "Neiman Marcus" and "crazy crystals."

Video Games

Western Animation

Most characters in King of the Hill have a rather strong drawl, since much is made of the Texas setting. The exception is Boomhauer, whose rapid-fire diction is certainly not a drawl and is more of a "hillbilly" accent.

Cajun

A further subset of Dixie and Hillbilly, localized to the southern half of Louisiana west of the Mississippi River. This accent is thick and, due to its mish-mash of French and English idioms, difficult, ah gah-ron-tee. The degree of difficulty in properly affecting this accent makes it an uncommon occurrence on shows. In reality, what many shows depict as a Cajun accent is a New Orleans accent (see Yat below), or even sometimes a Northern Louisiana accent (which is much closer to those of East Texas/Arkansas/Mississippi). To a Cajun, the distinction is important - the North is closer culturally to the bordering states, while there are geographical (read: the Atchafalaya Swamp between Lafayette and Baton Rouge) and historical (often class-based) differences with New Orleans despite the common French influence.

Stereotype: Insular. If they don't know your grandfather by name and reputation, you are most likely an enemy or "Gub'ment", whichever is worse. The stereotype takes a 180 for The West Wing/CNN/Daily Show set, whose primary source of Cajun accents is the famously Cajun, famously bald Democratic political wizard James Carville.

Examples:

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Comic Books

Gambit from X-Men, with healthy doses of Gratuitous French for good measure.

Film

In The Green Mile, Eduard Delacroix (played by Michael Jeter) has a Cajun accent thick enough that it can be incomprehensible at times.

Live-Action TV

Rene from True Blood fakes a Cajun accent.

Eugene Roe, the softspoken medic from Band of Brothers. He's only half Cajun though.

Snafu from sister-series The Pacific is an example as well, though their personalities are polar opposites.

Troy from The History Channel's Swamp People is an especially good example, but most of the gator hunters have some degree of authentic Cajun accent.

Justin Wilson hosted Cajun cooking shows on PBS, with a heavy (at least partially put on) Cajun accent.

Literature

In The Blind Side, Ed Orgeron, a Cajun who coached the book's subject Michael Oher at Ole Miss (and is now head coach at LSU in his home state of Louisiana), was depicted as having an accent so thick that almost no one could understand him, with one notable exception being Oher's adoptive father Sean Tuohy, a New Orleans native (though not Cajun). Orgeron would go on to play himself in the film, Cajun accent and all.

Music

Country Music singer Sammy Kershaw has traces of this.

Web Original

Dartz from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series is given a Cajun accent so thick, he ends up distorting his words to the point where nobody can properly understand what he's trying to say. Not to mention, the things Dartz says end up sounding like sexual phrases (such as saying "dick" when he really meant "deck", as in a deck of cards). His speech impediment doesn't help his case.

Western Animation

Killer Croc in The Batman

Jumbalaya Jake, minor villain from Darkwing Duck.

An episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force spoofing Scooby-Doo, has a villain called the "Bayou Booyah" who mostly speaks in Cajun-accented gibberish, but slips in an "Ah gar-on-tee" for no reason.

Real Life

Voice actor Jim Cummings is Cajun and so can turn the accent on if need be. As noted in the "Literature" folder, current LSU football coach Ed Orgeron.

Yat

The native accent of New Orleans , which differs from both Dixie and Cajun. Yat is very distinct, "like Brooklyn on Valium" with a few Southern features. An episode of Real Stories of the Highway Patrol depicted a traffic stop and car chase in the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette. The segment was subtitled in English for the non-Yat-speaking viewers.

The dialect is named for the Creole expression "Where y(ou) at??". Example: "Wheah y'at? Gat suh melotow fuh me? Ja burl'um? We hadda crab burl back at da Wrigaleys." Translation: "What's up? Do you have some mirlitons for me? Did you boil them? We boiled crabs on our trip to the Rigolets." The further "down" (east) you go into "Da Parish" (St. Bernard Parish), the more it sounds like Brooklyn, due to a similar immigrant mix. The cheer for the New Orleans Saints, "Who dat?", comes from this dialect.

There is no north, south or east in Yat. The cardinal directions, all of which relate to the Mississippi River, are "up", "down", "back", and "Tchoupitoulas" — Tchoupitoulas being the closest street to the river. Its pronunciation cannot be revealed here, because listening to tourists attempt it is a spectator sport in New Orleans.

One thing that must be understood is that "Yat" refers to any highly pronounced New Orleans accent. There are several. Chalmette and Algiers both have highly pronounced accents. Another thing that must be understood is that there are many ways of pronouncing the city's name, but that no one from New Orleans or who has spent any time at all there says "N'Awlins," though many people say "New Awlins." "N'Awlins" has become ubiquitous, even in the local press, and the typical laid-back attitude of many Orleanians may keep them from pointing out the error - probably initiated by a journalist from out of town with an inaccurate ear. In reality a real New Orleanian is about as likely to say "N'Awlins" as he/she is to say "Newer Leans."

Stereotype: Parochial. Laid-back, beyond lackadaisical. Obsessed with food and drink. Especially drink.

Examples:

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Comic Books

Krazy Kat speaks in this accent, as did the artist of the strip George Herriman. In the animated shorts she (the Ambiguous Gender was removed) has a Dixie accent.

Literature

John Kennedy Toole attempts to represent this in print with most of his white characters in A Confederacy of Dunces, particularly Mrs. O'Reilly. It's unclear what kind of accent the over-educated Ignatius is supposed to have, however: he could easily have a British accent, a classic Dixie accent, a Northern accent, or even be saying really fancypants things in Yat (which is really hard to wrap your head around).

Live-Action TV

Caroline, the recurring DA on Bones.

Det. Will LaMontagne on Criminal Minds.

Steven Seagal: Lawman. YMMV.

Tidewater and Regular Mid-Atlantic

A mix of Newscaster English, Urban and Dixie, with a regional twist. Caused by Northern and Southern accents cancelling each other out, overlaid on a peculiar "Tidewater" accent common only to natives of the Chesapeake Bay region and FFVs (First Families of Virginia, the Southern version of Boston Brahmins). Tidewater is characterized by archaic, Elizabethan inflection (a sort of proto-Southern drawl with an aristocratic, English flavor). In movies it is a stereotype of Washington gentry: ambiguously Southern politicians who own horse ("howhas") farms in Virginia, yacht ("yawart") clubs in Annapolis, and secretly control Congress. This accent is more broadly associated with old money.

Regular Mid-Atlantic, by contrast, is a bland mish-mash of flat Midwestern, Northern nasal intonation, and Dixie vocabulary. Characterized by the use of "or" for soft vowels — "want" = "warnt"; "Wor-shington", and for softening "r" in some words; "No-fuk" (Norfolk) and "Fuk-you-ah" (Fauquier County).

Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland are strange cases, as the accents range from Philly to Dixie, and due to tourism and migration, Midwestern, Inland North, etc., may also be heard. People in central Delaware may speak Military Basic, due to the presence of Dover Air Force Base. You'll also hear a good bit of Military Basic in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, in this case due to the very large Navy presence.

Stereotype: Impeccably-dressed evil power-brokers who live in mansions; disgruntled government workers with hidden files in beachfront cottages.

Examples:

Live-Action TV

Most characters on The Andy Griffith Show have the middle/lower class version of Tidewater, but especially Griffith himself.

Music

James Taylor grew up in North Carolina but spent a fair amount of time in Massachusetts (where he was born), so his accent is about two-thirds Tidewater, one-third Boston.

Web Original

Whateley Universe: As mentioned under 'Dixie', Tidewater speaks with the accent he takes his Code Name from. This apparently has confused some others who didn't recognize it and couldn't figure out where it could be from.

Real Life

Game Show announcer Johnny Gilbert (a native of Newport News), best known for announcing Jeopardy! and the latter days of the Pyramid franchise. It's particularly notable in the way he drops the "R" in "dollar", and says "cash" as "caysh".

Pastor Charles Stanley , founder of In Touch Ministries.

, founder of In Touch Ministries. American newscasters David Brinkley and Charles Kuralt, both native North Carolinians, spoke with toned down versions. They both had to drop most of their native accents to be taken seriously.

Talk show host and North Carolina native Charlie Rose.

Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan , who hails from Virginia.

, who hails from Virginia. George S. Patton. He was born and raised in California, but he came from a prominent Virginia military family and his locutions were very much in this accent. "Coming ovah heah, there was a very great lesson. The foist four hou-ahs, we passed ovah a destroyed land."

The late Senator John Warner (aka Mr. Elizabeth Taylor)

Joseph Cotten

The other Mid-Atlantic/Transatlantic

"Mid-Atlantic" can also refer to an accent that combines features of American and British English, intended to favor neither type. It had been the dominant accent of the Northeastern upper class in the first half of the 20th century, but faded after World War II. It is rarely ever a natural accent. It can be regularly heard in classical Hollywood cinema, as this was the type of English taught in American acting schools of that day.

Examples:

Anime

Vegeta speaks with a mid-Atlantic accent in English dubs of the Dragon Ball franchise, as a result of Accent Adaptation and a need to convey his pompousness and superiority. It's most noticeable with Christopher Sabat's take on the character.

Film

Many stars of Hollywood's Golden Age used this accent in their films. Perhaps the most prominent example was Katharine Hepburn.

Lady Tremaine and the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella and Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty have this accent, in which their voices sound halfway British, but also halfway American.

Carrie Fisher uses it in A New Hope when talking to Tarkin, and James Earl Jones has always used a heavy dose of it as Darth Vader even back then. By the 1970s, the use of the accent in cinema was dying out, to the point where it sounds quite jarring to anyone not familiar with Golden Age Hollywood; at least some Star Wars fans' headcanon has that as Leia attempting, poorly, to affect a Coruscanti accent. If you're wondering why Leia only boasts the accent for that one scene, apparently everyone involved decided it was awkward and Fisher dropped it for the rest of the film.

Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond films from Dr. No to A View to a Kill.

Live-Action TV

Depending on the listener, late political pundit William F. Buckley, Jr., longtime host of PBS' Firing Line, either used this accent or the "Prep" accent outlined below.

Professional Wrestling

Matt Hardy uses this in his "Broken"/"Woken" persona. (In real life, his accent is typical of his native North Carolina.)

Western Animation

Rarity from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, couple with her peppering her speech with the occasional British idiom. It's apparently self-taught, as her father has a pronounced Midwesterner accent, and her mother sounds like she's from Joisey.

Real Life

Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and various other Roosevelts in the early 20th century. Not surprising, given the family's background as part of the East Coast elite. There is a "linking R" in FDR's pronunciation of the words, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

One of the few modern speakers of this accent is now-retired US international soccer goalkeeper Brad Friedel. Though raised in suburban Cleveland, he played in England for nearly 20 years, and developed an approximation of this accent. The man himself has said that when he speaks, Brits think he's American and Americans think he's English.

Urban

The accent of urban characters of darker skin tones. Characterized by dropping even hard consonants when slurring words together (eg. "err'thing" for "everything") and substituting "axe" for "ask". Also common is substituting an "f" sound for "th" as in some British accents. "Y'all" makes another appearance here, too. See also Jive Turkey

The Real Life version (formally known as African-American Vernacular English or Black English) has been lately lumped under "Ebonics", despite encompassing several dialects and not being exclusive to African-Americans. Has a lot of interesting grammatical features, much loved by linguists, such as the "habitual be" ("We clubbin'" means that we are, at this time, In Da Club, whereas "we be clubbin'" means that we go to Da Club a lot, most weekends in fact). Because of said features (many of which derive from African languages and from older forms of English, via southern slaveowners), it's considered a distinct dialect, and there are a lot of arguments in the black community about whether it should be used and is a valuable part of culture, or if it's bringing black people down.

As with clothing, music, and so on, in the context of accents, "urban" is often a euphemism for "black" - and as you might expect, there are different "urban" accents by region as well, influenced by the dominant accent of that region. Atlanta and the South have their own, characterized (for example) by pronouncing "there" as "thurr." "Urban" accents from the East Coast have something of a harder edge to them, and those from the West Coast have a flatter effect. There is a lot of variation in what slang terms get used in different regions; slang from New York City or Philadelphia's black communities will get you funny looks in Atlanta, Seattle, or Cleveland. Some regional variations may also borrow heavily from various West Indies dialects (particularly Jamaican Patois or Haitian Creole) if there is a heavy immigrant population.

Obviously, not all black Americans speak in this dialect, and those that don't tend to resent the assumption due to stereotypes that suggest such speakers are uneducated. Or they simply weren't raised within the black community and speak in the dominant accent of their region.

Stereotype: Just think of all the stereotypes of black kids. It's also not unusual to hear older blacks use bits of slang from their youth despite being outdated for decades, such as "cold", "bad", or "slammin'" for something that's impressive.

Examples:

Live-Action TV

Definitely Darius McCrary can make an Urban accent.

The Wire makes good use of the variations in its black characters' accents to provide some extra subtext about their backgrounds and aspirations. Most street dealers and thugs (e.g., Bodie, Omar, Snoop) use a Baltimore-specific version of a heavy urban accent, including plenty of slang. (There are a few scenes that lampshade the thickness by having police listening to a wiretap argue about what was said.) Some higher-level gangsters (e.g., Stringer Bell, Prop Joe), still sound urban to reflect that they're "from the streets", but tone it down to show that they've got some education or refinement and can mix with white folks if they want to. Black police characters run a gamut, usually matching directly with their connection to the street and/or their level of education; compare, for example, Maj. Colvin (grew up in West Baltimore) to Lt. Daniels (has a law degree). Finally, black politicians (e.g., Mayor Royce, Marla Daniels) generally have no urban accent at all, though they may be able to affect one depending on who they're talking to. Sen. Clay Davis is a special case; his accent sometimes has traces of urban but is really the accent of a black Baptist preacher.

Noo Yawk

The stereotypical accent of people from New York City and the surrounding area. Today, it's found primarily in Brooklyn, the surrounding areas having one of the four accents below. Characterized by a nasally sound, the shortening of "you" to "yo" (or lengthening it to "youse"), the "er," "or," and "th" sounds becoming "uh," "aw," and "d," respectively, and the extensive use of profanity . William Labov, "the father of sociolinguistics," found that (40 years ago, at least) any single New Yorker was highly unlikely to have all the distinctive local features: most will have only a subset. Stereotypical Noo Yawk phrases include "fuhgeddaboutit", "awright awready", and "ehfuckyou"; "mad" is also a common intensifier that is roughly analogous to New England's "wicked" aside from the fact that it is also frequently used to denote an abundance. Yiddish loanwords and Yiddish-derived idioms are somewhat common, even among non-Jewish residents.

Note: You can make more linguistic groups of the New York accents, right down to the boroughs (districts) of the city, though the divisions are more class- and ethnicity-based than geographical. Not a good idea, but you can do it. This video gives examples .

Stereotype: Working-class, ill-mannered (tactless at best, obnoxious at worst), Yankees or Mets fan. Very likely to be of Italian or Ashkenazi Jewish descent. As with Cockney, its rough British equivalent, Noo Yawkers can be either rough-hewn, salt-of-the-earth urbanites, or rude, petty criminals. Puerto Rican-born or -descended Noo Yawkers have their own speech patterns, with subtle differences from Chicano (see below). A Spanish equivalent would be Mexico City Spanish.

Examples:

Film

All of The Newsies; Racetrack stands out, in particular.

Vivian Blaine as Adelaide in Guys and Dolls.

Vinny and Lisa (especially Lisa) in My Cousin Vinny

Live-Action TV

Radio

Big Wayne from The Lazlow Show has the Queens variant.

Video Games

Cubot in these cutscenes from Sonic Colors, that is, until Orbot slaps him, which supposedly makes his voice return to normal.

cutscenes from Sonic Colors, that is, until The Scout from Team Fortress 2, although canonically, he is a Southie.

Web Original

Charlie the Unicorn.

Mike of The Literary Lair has it, although it isn't very pronounced.

The unnamed firefighter from SuperMarioLogan.

Western Animation

Bugs Bunny (Mel Blanc said his intention was a mix of Brooklyn and Bronx accents).

DC Super Hero Girls 2019 Robin primarily speaks this way in, especially whenever he says "th-werps". Young Barbara Gordon also spoke this way with a Lisp, according to the #FromBatToWorse episode, but she's seemingly lost it before moving to Metropolis once she got older.



Joisey/Da Bronx

The accent of thugs and The Mafia . The two areas, North Jersey and The Bronx, have distinctly different accents, but share the common attribute of stuffing the "th" sound into a "d." (Linguists call this fortition.) Note that if you reached adulthood after The '50s and say "Joisey," you are almost certainly not a native — though you might be from Long Island or Texas. Regardless, you will almost certainly get your ass kicked.

There is a much milder New Jersey/North-East accent that is most apparent by dropping "t" sounds all together note replacing the "t" phoneme with a glottal stop unless it starts a word or it's a double "t." In case of a double "t," it will usually sound more like a "d," making "better" sound more like "bedder." (An exception is "Manhattan," which most area natives will call MAN-HA[glottal stop]-'N.) This is also split when it comes to words that end in "t" followed by a word that starts with an "h." "Get him" can sound like either "geddim" or "ge' him." Any time a "d" sound is followed by a "y" consonant sound, the two tend to get collapsed into a single "j" sound, resulting in "did you" becoming "didja". Like in New York City English, "mad" is also a common intensifier and indicator of great abundance.

Stereotype: Thug, stooge, gangster, gangster's moll, and nowadays the guido/guidette stereotype.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

Similarly, many of the characters in Baccano! fall somewhere between this and Noo Yawk, especially Firo, which is especially odd because it officially takes place in Chicago.

Meowth from the Pokémon anime.

Joey Wheeler of Yu-Gi-Oh! is given one in the 4Kids dub (although he has a few Noo Yawk affectations too).

Also from 4Kids, Sanji in their dub of One Piece is given an incredibly thick accent that sounds like it's supposed to be Joisey and/or Bronx.

Film

Jeff Anderson's (Randal Graves in Clerks) very distinctive snarky drawl appears to be a hybrid of this and Philly. Judge for yourself. Makes sense, as Leonardo and Monmouth/Ocean County are a halfway point between New York and Philly. Natives of the area say to themselves: He doesn't have an accent!



Live-Action TV

Common on CSI: NY, combined with Noo Yawk. Danny Messer notably.

Many characters on Boardwalk Empire (set in Atlantic City), combined with Noo Yawk.

Jon Stewart from The Daily Show is a Jersey native, and his normal speech is the actual New Jersey accent. You'll notice it's hard to tell he isn't from Ohio if you aren't paying attention to a few key giveaways (such as not pronouncing the T at the end of "Stewart"). However, he will frequently drop into Flanderized versions of both the "Joisey" accent and the "Noo Yawk" accent pretty much any time it helps his comedic delivery.

Tony Soprano and the rest of his family.

Mad Men: Paul Kinsey is originally from Hoboken, and according to his old Princeton classmate, he used to have a super-thick "Joisey" accent (actual classmate's words, and considering it's 1962 at that point...).

Danny "Danno" Williams of Hawaii Five-0 fame has a very prominent accent. His being from Jersey is even about in-series several times and in an early episode he identifies a guy as fellow "West Orange" by the accent.

Music

Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth of thrash metal band Overkill.

Debbie Harry.

Todd Edwards, Trope Codifier of microsampling and native of Bloomfield, New Jersey. You can hear it in action here.

Pinball

Oddly enough, the blue-skinned alien waitress in Big Bang Bar speaks with a thick Joisey accent.

Video Games

Web Videos

Daniel O'Brien from Cracked occasionally displays this accent when he appears in videos.

Mark and Corey of the Let's Play Modestly ProphItic are New Jersey natives.

Johnny T from Glove and Boots.

Ganju from Bleach (S) Abridged

Western Animation

Real Life

Regis Philbin, a native of The Bronx.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, born in Manhattan and raised in The Bronx.

Danny DeVito, born and raised on the Jersey Shore.

Prep

The American "posh" or "snob" accent. Also referred to as Boston Brahmin, after the East Coast Establishment families which are known as such. It is associated with Manhattan stockbrokers, Reagan-era yuppies, and the entire state of Connecticut, or "New England lockjaw" from its rather stiff pronunciation. Think American Psycho or Thurston and Lovey . Clench the jaw and talk about stock prices. The yacht-club villains from a Rodney Dangerfield or a mid-1980s John Cusack movie will probably speak in this accent. Most Baby-Boomer Americans and their parents associate this accent with William F. Buckley, Jr. For younger generations, Mitt Romney presents a Midwesternized variant (he went to prep school, but in his home state of Michigan, and then hung around these types after he went to Harvard for business and law school). It's extremely nasal (the "lockjaw" name is well-justified) with a tendency towards vaguely melodic, dropping tones, and in all respects is very much an Americanized version of a stereotypically posh British accent.

Stereotype: Politely amoral greed.

Examples:

Film

Christian Bale pretty much nails it (with a touch of Noo Yawk) in American Psycho, although his version is rather muted compared to the stereotype.

Live-Action TV

George Feeney from Boy Meets World.

Thurston Howell II from Gilligan's Island.

Major Charles Emerson Winchester III from M*A*S*H.

Frasier Crane on Cheers and both he and Niles on Frasier. They're from Seattle (which in itself never came up on Cheers) but both attended Eastern prep schools and Harvard.

Real Life

Western Animation

The Affect

Also called "The City Girl Squawk," this is an outgrowth of "Manhattan", probably influenced by "Joisey." Often associated with Queens and "Lunn Guyland", especially in the minds of New Yorkers. A raucous dialect that employs long, whiny vowels, a lazy, whistling "s" and a glottal stop that replaces the "t" in many words: for instance, "bottle" becomes "bah-uhl." It wanders tonally through a larger range than most dialects, but has a tendency to end every phrase with a rising tone as if it were a question (aka "uptalk"). Like all accents, it's used by both genders in Real Life , but on TV, it's almost exclusively spoken by women.

Stereotype: Young, upper-middle class women who are shallow, immature and somewhat less intellectually agile than average. Basically, the New York version of the Valley Girl, right down to ending every sentence like a question.note Interestingly, this particular inflection (which seems to have indeed originated in California in the 70s and 80s) is widely misunderstood. Although it's frequently perceived as sounding uncertain, in actual use it tends to be used to link related phrases and sentences and/or hold the listener's attention; if someone ends a sentence with a rising inflection, it's very likely they haven't quite finished making their point. In fact, far from denoting indecisiveness, deployed with a flat or over-serious affect, it can come off as condescending or even bullying.

Examples:

Film

Lina Lamont in Singin' in the Rain.

Matilda: Zinnia Wormwood takes this Up to Eleven (courtesy of Rhea Perlman, who herself has a thick natural Noo Yawk city girl squawk).

Live-Action TV

Music

Cyndi Lauper puts this on when she's in character, although her natural accent is straight-up Noo Yawk.

Country Music singer Lorrie Morgan seemed to put on a subdued version of this accent whenever she sang.

Just about any rendition of "Santa Baby".

Theatre

Video Games

A Ludiv from Rayman 3.

Western Animation

Harley Quinn in Batman: The Animated Series. Her voice was inspired by Judy Holliday. Worth noting that she only has the accent when she's in her psycho mode. When speaking sanely, she lacks it.

Betty Boop.

Rosie the robot maid, from The Jetsons.

Northeastern/Puerto Rican AKA Nuyorican

What happens when a Caribbean Latino accent crashes headlong into The Affect — fast, high-pitched, and sometimes extremely nasal. Despite the designation Nuyorican, it can appear anywhere in the northeast. Think Cardi B (who's actually Dominican but whatever—she's Latina and from the Bronx, and that's more significant for accent purposes) or Rosie Perez (although she does seem to play it up for comedy roles). Jennifer Lopez has a softer, more generic form of the same accent. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor—who self-identifies as Nuyorican—also still has traces (polished out by education, but you can still hear it in her interviews and Sesame Street appearance ).

Jewish

Also known as " Borscht Belt ", this is the accent spoken by some Jewish people, with influences of Yiddish and Hebrew. The "other" New York accent, and sometimes the standard accent of the non-performing side of show business. Good phrases: "Meshuggenah!", "Schmuck!", "Oy vey!" and "Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining!" In addition to Yiddish words, they will also use Yiddish sentence construction such as "What do you know from funny?", "For this I went to college?" "You want I should beg for a visit from my only son?!" or " A heart attack you almost gave me!". Often spoken by stereotypical "New York orphans," even if, by all rights, they really shouldn't be Jewish. (Of course, in the words of Lenny Bruce , "In New York, even if you're Catholic, you're Jewish.")

Stereotype: Since this dialect is strongly associated with an ethno-religious group, stereotypes are mostly limited to bickering old couples kvetching about how much they paid for something, overbearing mothers, deli owners, token Rabbis, actors' agents, Borscht Belt comedians, and members of the Friar's Club. The occasional Shylock type, as a greedy lawyer or banker, sometimes still shows up.

Examples:

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Comic Books

Vladek Spiegelman uses this sentence construction in the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman.

Live-Action TV

George's parents on Seinfeld.

Howard's mother on The Big Bang Theory. ("WHO'S CAWLING AT THIS UNGAWDLY 'OWAH?!")

The Wire gives this accent to corrupt defense lawyer Maurice Levy, including the occasional word of Yiddish.

Babylon 5: Commander Susan Ivanova would slip into this when she was frustrated sometimes. Interestingly, she isn't American at all, being a Russian whose family insisted on her studying abroad due to her being a latent Telepath, and her mother's wish to keep her away from the Psi-Corps. Her relatives and family friends, when they briefly appear, are shown to have more typical Hollywood Russian accents. She is a Russian Jew, however, though she lapsed as an adult after the stress of her mother's early death.

Multiple Media

Billy Crystal as "Miracle Max" in The Princess Bride, and as "Julius" (a new persona adopted as the result of a hypnosis accident) in the final season of Soap.

Mel Brooks in every movie and TV show he has ever had a role in - including Jakers!, in which he voices an Irish sheep.

Recorded and Stand-Up Comedy

Comedian-actor Jackie Mason (who is Jewish) has practically made a career out of this accent.

Western Animation

John Byner imitated Mason to provide the voice (and accent) for the Aardvark in the 1969-1971 The Ant and the Aardvark cartoons from De Patie Freleng Enterprises.

In Futurama, Doctor Zoidberg speaks in this accent, although in the Comic-Book Adaptation it is acknowledged to be "Squiddish".

Grampa Boris from Rugrats had this in spades, complete with constant references to "the old country."

Walter Wolf had one of these in Animaniacs; he was typically attacking Slappy Squirrel, the gimmick being both were in Social Security territory.

Krusty the Clown from The Simpsons. Appropriately, since he's Jewish (though he doesn't like to admit it).

Real Life

Joan Rivers also had a slightly tweaked version of this accent.

Judith Sheindlin, better known as Judge Judy. One of her catchphrases is even "Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining."

2016 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders.

What's My Line panelist Bernett Cerf.

Luso/Faw Rivah

This is the accent of people raised in New England who are of Portuguese stock. Also known as "Portugee", this is a subset of "Down East" (see below) that almost never shows up in movies/TV because the producers are afraid that nobody will understand why the black-haired, olive-skinned guy sounds like a Bostonian (see below) raised in France. It should be noted that this accent is rare even in New England; outside of Fall River, New Bedford, Taunton, and Providence, it is only heard very sporadically and is usually so heavily diluted that it just sounds like a standard townie accent with near-imperceptible differences unless you're listening very closely.

Stereotype: Hard-working, honest, salt-of-the-Earth fisherman, almost certainly Roman Catholic (if favorable), or (like the Southie Irish townie, mentioned below), a rude, ignorant, trashy, and likely substance-addled idiot who places extreme and disproportionate pride in their Portuguese heritage and Boston sports teams (if unfavorable). Please note that "Portugee" is a slur and a great way to get a chouriçonote pronounced something like 'show-ree-sooh'-scented fist in your face if you are foolish enough to use this word around Portuguese people, unless you're Portuguese yourself; "South Coast accent" is the politically-correct nomenclature in this case.note Brazilian Portuguese also counts, but very few of them live down near the South Coast; the Brazilian diaspora settled up more towards Greater Boston, while the South Coast and Providence primarily got immigrants from Madeira and the Azores.

Down East

Spoken in upper New England (New Hampshire, Maine, and parts of Massachusetts; you'll hear it less and less as you head towards Western Mass, where it's nearly nonexistent), characterized by broad vowels and terse sentences. What most people think of as "the" classic down east accent comes from "down east" itself, the coast of Maine, where the tendency to use "Ayuh" for "yes" is most often found. The term comes from sailors going to Maine going "Down East".

There are differences within the Down East accent itself, of course. Someone from Maine will talk differently than someone from Vermont, and someone from Vermont will talk differently than someone from New Hampshire. Backwoods accents sound much different from city accents. Each state also has vocabulary unique to their culture. For example the words "rig" or "rigging" (in the nautical sense) is often used as a synonym for "create" or "assemble", but only in coastal areas: "I need a rigging to get on that roof" may work fine in Portland, Maine but might get you a blank stare in Rutland, Vermont. "Wicked" tends to be used more generally across NE as an intensifier adverb, as in "wicked good" or "wicked excellent."; "mad" is its New York City analog and also sees some use in New England, albeit nowhere near as frequently. Copious amounts of profanity are also common, though not as ubiquitous as they are in the Boston metro area. Occasionally mistaken for a Boston accent (which has similar, but not identical features); in New England, the "Boston-but-not-quite" variety of this accent is typically referred to with the blanket label of "townie". Depending on the part of New England, there may also be some features of Canadian French (particularly in New Hampshire) or Maritime English (northern Maine).

Stereotype: taciturn, parsimonious, dry, rural, witty (if favorable), or a dumb, ignorant redneck who has never ventured more than an hour from their hometown, holds an irrational hatred of Manchester (which they view as a Wretched Hive), and constantly complains about Massachusetts and its residents (if unfavorable). Likely of French-Canadian, Irish, or (depending on the part of the region) Greek descent.

Examples:

Film

Watch the early scenes in the classic movie Nothing Sacred with this in mind.

Fred Gwynne as Jud Crandall in the movie adaptation of "Pet Sematary."

Several of the 'locals' in the Chevy Chase movie "Funny Farm."

Literature

Most of Stephen King's books; not only does he write Down-Easters very convincingly, he has a Down East accent himself.

Bert and I.

Music

Web Original

Real Life

President Calvin Coolidge born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont and later settling in Northampton, MA before becoming Governor and U.S. president, epitomized the speech and the attitude.

Margaret Hamilton, in spite of being born and raised in Ohio.

This man went viral for losing it when he sees a sunfish, mostly due to his reaction, but his strong townie accent also played a part. "I don't know what this is, but Jay says it's a fahkin big sea turtle."

* background chatter*

"It's a baby fahkin WHEEL, man! HOLY SHIT! WE AH WITNESSING A BABY FAHKIN WHALE RIGHT HEAH, DOOD! HO-LEE SHIT!"

went viral for losing it when he sees a sunfish, mostly due to his reaction, but his strong townie accent also played a part. These two guys allegedly found a Red Sox title banner in the middle of McGrath Highway in Somerville. Many commenters derisively compared them to the "baby wheel" guys mentioned above.

Vermon

Glottal stop replacement of the "t" sound in a middle of a word (Example: Notebook becomes no'book)

Complete removal of a "t" sound at the end of a word. (Example: Vermont becomes Vermon)

If a "t" is not removed from the middle of a word, it is changed to a "d" sound. (Examples: water becomes wadder)

Broad "a" and "e" sounds. (Examples: calf sounds like caaf)

Some Vermonters—generally older ones—add an "er" sound to the end of some open-vowelled words. (Example: idea becomes idear)

There are a few exceptions: the town of Burlington, for example, is pronounced with its "t" sound. Montpelier, Swanton, Milton, and Rutland, however, all have their "t" sounds dropped.

Spoken predominantly in Vermont, but also in western Massachusetts and much of Connecticut. This distinct accent is characterized by:

Like other New England accents, it tends to be very fast and clipped, except for stereotypically "backwoods" Vermont speech, which tends to be slow with even broader vowels. This, combined with the glottal stops, can sometimes make the speech slurred or sound like mumbling. Canadian French features are also common in northern parts of the state.

Some vocabulary common to the region:

Creemee: a popular summer dessert similar to soft-serve ice cream, but creamier and with more milkfat.

Sugar on snow: candy made by pouring heated maple syrup over a pan of snow.

Jeezum Crow: exclamation of surprise or frustration.

Grinder: a submarine sandwich.

Leaf peepers: tourist who come to admire the fall foliage. Often spoken about in an annoyed manner. Also common in New Hampshire and Western Mass, where the connotation of "that asshole from New York in the Range Rover who is doing fifteen below in front of me" does not waver.

Flatlander: someone who is not originally from Vermont (also used elsewhere). Note: this condition never changes. You don't "become" a Vermonter. If we really like you, and you fit in really well, you might become "Almost a Vermonter." Also "White-plater", as Vermont has a green license plate, and until recently almost every other state had a white background. Away: Where flatlanders come from, if we're not exactly sure or just don't care. Transplant: A flatlander who stayed. Often mildly derogatory.

Wicked: adjective meaning "very". Also very common in Massachusetts.

Sugaring season: early spring, when sap is collected and boiled for maple syrup.

Sugar snow: a light, flaky snow after a relatively warm day/week during sugaring season. It hardly ever affects the flow of sap, contrary to what one would think.

Maple sugar: a super sweet sugar made by boiling maple sap until all the water is gone. It is much sweeter than white sugar, and is often used in candy.

Champ: the monster that reportedly lives in Lake Champlain.

Girls: milkcows.

Stereotype: The two most common stereotypes of Vermonters are probably hippiesnote Phish is from here. Also, when California hippie and Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee decided he wanted to retire in New England, he picked Vermont. and homosexuals; the latter owing (at least in part) to Vermont being the first state in the nation to offer civil unions between gay partners. However, in truth, the hippie aspect is not as common as popular image would have you believe, most prevalent in Burlington and Brattleboro, though it is growing more common in Montpelier and Rutland. Farmers are common, too, though less so than the above, especially dairy farmers (thanks to the success of Ben & Jerry's, which combines two stereotypes by being "hippies" into dairy). The high-brow intellectual is sometimes seen, though typically, the person is from somewhere else (think "Dead Poets Society"; though the school is in Vermont, the students are likely from elsewhere, and the transplants are typically from Connecticut or New York). They are also shown as being obsessed with maple syrup or with cows, which are partially true stereotypes-dairy products and maple syrup are two of Vermont's biggest exports, and Vermont does have the largest number of cows per capita in the US. There are also several dairy and maple festivals through the year.

Rusty Dewees, a local Vermont comedian, uses a thick Vermont accent in his stand-up routines, which usually involve benign stereotypes of backwoods Vermont culture. Here in this video from a TED Talk given in 2018, you can hear the extremely broad "a" vowel sounds, the glottal stop in words that have "tt" in the middle, and the dropping of the "t" sound at the end of certain words. He also exemplifies the mix between broad vowel sounds and rapid-fire speech patterns that make the accent sound slurred.

Boston

note

Please note that if you do try this, you will be summarily "towed to Meffud or Summaville", if you haven't already been arrested by the Harvard University Police for crashing through the gates. Also, saying it to a Bostonian or attempting to get them to say it is a very good way to get your face bashed in, and at the very least will result in a profanity-laced tirade about how "you can't fahkin' pahk theah, you stupid fahkin' cahksuckah, are you fahkin' retahded or somethin'?"

An urban version of Down East. " Pahk the caah at Haahvad Yaahd .""I am going to Korear to furthah my careah." "Wheabouts ya from, khed? Bellingham? Ya town is fahkin' queeah, khed." "Jesus fahkin' christ I'm fahkin' hungry. I'm gonna get a grindah at that D'Angelo ovah theah." "Waiddaminnit, Officah... didn't I useta play bahll with yah fahkin brothah? Sean Roche, right? How yah fahkin' been, khed?"

The Boston accent itself has two extreme versions:

"Kennedese," so Flanderized that it sounds more Australian than American (at least, what Americans think Australians sound like; it's more like Bostonian with a generous dose of British).



Stereotype: Sophisticated, a leader, rough rich character, Old Money (as Old as money gets in the US, anyway), aristocratic in a non-British-affected way, probably a bit stuck-up, parodying a Kennedy.

Sophisticated, a leader, rough rich character, Old Money (as Old as money gets in the US, anyway), aristocratic in a non-British-affected way, probably a bit stuck-up, parodying a Kennedy. "Southie", mostly associated with gangsters, which can be spotted by a character saying "aboot" or "aboat" for the word "about". If you're going to try to learn only one Boston accent, this would be the one to learn, since it's very similar if not indistinguishable from the accent used in working-class inner suburbs like Cambridge and Medford note Which you should not pronounce "Mehfah"; the residents tend to find the joke exaggerated and very tired, and it's a little closer to "Mevfid" or "Mevfi'" anyway .



Stereotype: Of Irish descent, a rude, vulgar, ignorant (and probably bigoted), violent, perpetually angry, and generally trashy idiot with no real identity beyond their obsession with Boston sports and their Irish heritage.

. Of Irish descent, a rude, vulgar, ignorant (and probably bigoted), violent, perpetually angry, and generally trashy idiot with no real identity beyond their obsession with Boston sports and their Irish heritage. A peculiar, seldom-heard subset is the Rhode Island accent, which combines New York percussiveness and Boston consonants with flat Chicago vowels, and sounds vaguely Brooklynese to people from outside the area. note It's more or less how Peter Griffin of Family Guy talks, if you want an idea.

You will also hear some Bay Staters labialize their Rs - in other words, "Revere" becomes "Veveah". This particular quirk (most strongly associated with Essex County and some of the more heavily Jewish suburbs like Brookline) is nearly unknown outside the area, but has gotten the occasional weak laugh from morning radio DJs.

Examples:

Kennedese

Live-Action TV

Lloyd Grossman, an American who had a career on British TV as a presenter, food critic and general pundit, had an extreme case of pork the core in a core pork note "Park the car in a car park" . Fans were fascinated with the unique accent he spoke with, and speculated as to which part of the USA the generally urbane, witty and likeable Grossman came from. It is important to note that while Grossman grew up in Massachusetts, his years in England have mutated his accent into a mishmash of a Boston accent and a very strong British accent. The "pork the core" sounds almost nothing like a typical Boston "pahk the cah".

. Fans were fascinated with the unique accent he spoke with, and speculated as to which part of the USA the generally urbane, witty and likeable Grossman came from.

Western Animation

Mayor Quimby on The Simpsons

Mrs. Kerplopolis-Awesome on Rated A for Awesome

JFK on Clone High, being a clone of John F. Kennedy, speaks with a very exaggerated version of this accent. One episode was about him trying to teach the clone of Mahatma Gandhi to act and talk like him. JFK: (pulls down screen) Read this. Gandhi: "For supper I want a party platter." JFK: No no no, like this: "Fowah suppah I-er-uh wanna party plattah!"

Real Life

Southie

Film

Live-Action TV

Music

Late rapper and native Bostonian Guru of Gang Starr. It's less obvious on later albums, probably because of all the years he spent living in Brooklyn.

Radio

Click and Clack from NPR's Car Talk have this accent.

Stand-Up Comedy

Boston native Louis C.K. jokingly describes the Boston accent as "a whole bunch of people saying most words wrong."

Comic Jimmy Tingle poked fun at his accent while discussing people who ask him to say things like "Park the car at Harvard Yard": "Whattaya you, reTAAAAAAHded?!"

Video Games

David Young, the protagonist of D4, speaks in this accent, as well as a majority of other characters, since the game takes place in Boston.

Found on many characters in Fallout 4, which takes place in a post-apocalyptic Boston. Apparently, the "pahk the cah" joke survived as well.

Web Original

Whateley Universe: Vamp (Alex O'Brien), from Charlestown note a neighborhood which borders on South Boston - she was very pointed in mentioning that while her family was blue collar, they weren't 'Shanty Irish' , often deliberately plays up her lower-class accent when playing dumb. However, she is fully capable of pulling off a convincing Brahmin accent, which she used when working as a high-class call girl in her twenties (despite being broke, fifteen, and intersex, her Charm Person power being useful for that purpose).

Real Life

MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell often slips into (and usually deliberately exaggerates) this accent when covering stories about his native Boston. Otherwise he speaks in a deliberately neutral accent as is typical of television broadcasters.

Rhode Island

Live-Action TV

George Luz in Band of Brothers.

Video Games

Nahman Jayden from Heavy Rain has a bit of a Bostonian accent going on. Although this might be because Bostonian is the closest American accent his voice actor could produce, being British and all.

Western Animation

Peter Griffin from Family Guy has this accent and done pretty well—then again, he is created and voiced by native and RISD graduate Seth MacFarlane.

Real Life

The most famous example is probably Emeril Lagasse, who is not from Rhode Island but Fall River, across the border in Massachusetts, where the accent spills over to New Bedford or thereabouts and combines with the Luso accent; this is fitting, since Emeril is half-Portuguese (his father was French-Canadian). (Emeril enunciates his vowels a bit more than the typical Rhode Islander though.)

Pittsburgh

A city with a lot of Irish, Italian, and particularly Eastern European influences from the days of being a steel town, as well as several unique constructs such as "yinz" for the plural "you" (becoming less contracted the farther east you go, reaching "you'uns" around the center of the state) and "nebby" for "nosy", while "n'at" serves as a general extender and is frequently used to end sentences. They have great trouble with diphthongs and tend to turn them all into a short "a" sound (As in "dahntahn" for "downtown.") A few examples of Pittsburghese - bologna is called "jumbo," rubber bands are called "gum bands" and "redding up" means doing housework. Iron is pronounced as "arn" (such as "Arn" City Beer). This accent also features heavy rounding of the vowel "ah", sometimes to where a British person would pronounce the "o" in "gone". Some additional examples: "jag-off" for asshole, "warsh" for wash, chipped ham for chip-chopped ham (although Pittsburgh is not alone in this, plus the food originates in Pittsburgh), "Stillers" for Steelers, etc. "Yinz fuggin' jagoffs goin' dahntahn for the fuggin' Stillers game n'at?"

Stereotype: American descendants of the Stupid Pollock. Low-class and vulgar, economically depressed and trying to make up for it through a slavish devotion to local sports teams (Especially the Steelers).

Examples:

Film

Hollywood has yet to represent the Pittsburgh accent properly in films that are set there. In Striking Distance, two characters who were supposedly born and raised in the city had New York (Bruce Willis') and Midwest (Dennis Farina's) accents.

Sullivan and Sons is a comedy about a corporate lawyer taking over his father's bar in Pittsburgh. Per usual, the accents are terrible. Additionally, the cast have some strange slang and inflections that are definitely not Pittsburghese.

Innocent Blood, John Landis' often forgotten vampire movie set in Pittsburgh, whose main characters are very Italian-American (portrayed by Anthony LaPaglia and Robert Loggia), and while Pittsburgh does have a sizable population of Italian descent, there's nothing even remotely like a Cosa Nostra-type mafia. Although the film-makers did get their neighborhoods right.

Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno did an equally terrible job with Pittsburgh accents. Jeff Anderson didn't even try to change his very famous Jersey accent, and their attempt at a stereotypical drunken Steelers fan sounds more like a stereotypical drunken Bears fan. But on a positive note, the Monroeville Zombies hockey team was so awesome that it might soon become a case of Life Imitates Art.

Live-Action TV

Mike & Molly: Billy Gardell, the actor who portrays Mike Biggs, is a stand-up comedian born and (mostly) raised in the Pittsburgh suburb of Swissvale, and he doesn't hide his Yinzer accent.

Web Video

Pittsburgh Dad Picksburg Dad is the prime example of the Pittsburgh accent n'at.

Real Life

Pittsburgh native Dennis Miller still has a bit of his Yinzer accent left.

Character actor Ed O'Ross (born Ed Orosz).

BILLY MAYS HERE, AND I'D LIKE TO TELL YOU ABAHT MY HOMETAHN, PITTSBURGH!

Fred Rogers

Andy Warhol

The late, beloved Pittsburgh Steelers sportscaster Myron Cope had a particularly jarring one, along with a bit of Alter Kocker. Justified as he began as a writer, not as someone who announced in public. Fans loved his unusual delivery and personality, anyway.

Bill Eadie, a professional wrestler originally from Brownsville, PA who is most famous as Ax, one half of the tag team Demolition, had a very noticeably thick Yinzer accent. Kinda made being billed from "Parts Unknown" laughable to any of us. Further to that, Kurt Angle never managed to drop his accent either.



Philly

About halfway between Da Bronx/Noo Yawk and Pittsburgh, in both geography and accents, is Philly. Take Pittsburgh's flat vowel sounds, combine it with Da Bronx's disdain for pronouncing the letter h, add gratuitous use of "yo" as an interjection, and "youse" as a plural second person pronoun (possessive form: youse's), and you're about there. The 'ow' sound is replaced with a flat 'a', so "owl" becomes "al" and "towel" becomes "tal". Pronouncing "water" as "wooder" is also common and considered by many to be the defining characteristic of a Philly accent (this feature also spills into Maryland and parts of New Jersey and Delaware). Other characteristics include a clipped, percussive inflection, insistence on using articles (i.e. the, this) even when they do not hold particular grammatical weight, and stereotypically Mid-atlantic vowel traits (ex. "cot" and "caught", "Don" and "Dawn" sounding distinct from one another.) The use of "jawn" as a placeholder or replacement for a noun is another dead giveaway (though it also sees use in southern New Jersey). A Philadelphian might react to a story in the newspaper about the local football team with "Yo, you see dis jawn in da Inky abaht dee Iggles?"(Translation: "Hey, did you see this thing in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the Eagles?") However, certain neighborhoods do experience a slight difference in accent and wording, according to its inhabitants. Well-known regional accents include South Philly, North Philly, Northeast Philly, and Delco. A lot of the features listed here are very distinctly South Philly. North Philly is mostly Black and Hispanic and you'll hear mainly Black English Vernacular (see "Urban"), though with more similarity to the White accents than you see elsewhere ("wooder" is not uncommon for Black Philadelphia dialect, and "jawn" probably migrated from Black Philly to White Philly).

As an aside, Philadelphia's dialects are among the best-studied of American English, as William Labov, the father of American dialectology, was based at the University of Pennsylvania.

Stereotype: Thick-headed, overly aggressive. Superstitious and crazy when it comes to their sports teams.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

In the English dub of The Cat Returns, Muta speaks with a Philadelphia accent.

Film

Rocky Balboa, the definitive South Philly accent.

Live-Action TV

Radio

Bart Rathbone from Adventures in Odyssey seems to have this.

Mark Levin on his talk radio show, though it's a little bit muted. He comes by it naturally, having been born in Philly proper and raised just on the other side of the city limits in Montgomery County.

Real Life

CNBC host Jim Cramer.

Will Smith.

Chris Matthews of Hardball.

Bill Cosby.

Benjamin Netanyahu speaks English in a mixture of Middle East and Philly. (Though born in Tel Aviv, he spent a large part of his childhood, including all of his high school years, in the Philly suburbs.)

Pennsylvania Dutch

The old joke goes that Pennsylvania has Pittsburgh on one side, Philadelphia on the other, and Alabama in between. The large rural population in central Pennsylvania frequently carries the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect - "rural" here meaning "anyone not living in an urban center, and probably a lot of city folk too." The dialect originates from the German settlers ("dutch" being a gradual change from "deutsch," meaning "German") in the area in the early 18th century. Fun fact: these non-English settlers were deeply mistrusted by the English colonists to the east - Ben Franklin, among others, wrote about his fear that the young nation might be corrupted by the dregs of German society. The dialect also survives in a few neighboring states, but the vast majority of speakers can be found in central Pennsylvania. Main features of this dialect are omission of words and scrambling of sentence construction ("Throw the cow over the fence some hay," rather than "Throw some hay over the fence for that cow.") Particularly glaring is the removal of the verb phrase "to be" - "That car needs washed" is seen as a totally complete and correct sentence to native speakers. There is also a general sing-songy lilt in conversation, particularly found in questions. Similar to Pittsburgh, "you all" is said as "youns." More extreme examples feature consonant changes more akin to German speech. Also found are certain figures of speech - "come here once" (or "vonst") instead of "come here for a moment," for example, or "the chips are all" instead of "the chips are all gone." Confusing, ain't?

Also found in central Pennsylvania are some of the largest communities of Amish Mennonites, famous for living simply and eschewing modern technology, though how much each particular community avoids or embraces certain technology seems to vary, as well as how dutchy their speech is. But yes, the horse and buggies are frequently found on the roads of Lancaster and Snyder counties.

Stereotype: Country rednecks who eat weird food (look up scrapple if you haven't heard of it), or buggy-driving barn-raisers.

Baltimorean

Baltimoreans say they are from "Ballamur" or "Bawlmore", which is in the state of "Merlin" or "Marilyn," and hang a "hon" (short for "honey", pronounced "hun") at the ends of their sentences. If they are deep-inner-city Baltimore, all the vowels are different from all the other American vowels; back vowels are eliminated in favor of front rounded vowels. One of the defining characteristics of this accent is the strong fronting of the "oh" vowel in particular; when exaggerated, it practically becomes a long-a sound (like the "a" in "state"). Consonants occurring in the middle or at the end of a word are often dropped, slurred, or replaced with a glottal stop.

The accent is very similar to the Philadelphia accent in many ways, albeit with some slight differences. Like Philly, Baltimoreans say "wooder" for "water", "tal" for "towel", and use the word "yo" liberally. They also make a heavy distinction between the vowel in "cot" and "caught" in the same way. Occasionally sticks 'R's where they don't belong, as in "Warshington DC." People of Baltimore go "downy ayshin" for vacation, meaning down to Ocean City, MD. An odd mix of European immigrant, Northeastern, Dixie, Appalachian and Tidewater.

Stereotype: Polite guy who somehow ended up having your wallet; truck-stop waitress. People in John Waters' movies.

Examples:

Film

Edna Turnblad and others in Hairspray. People watching the 2007 remake often wondered why John Travolta was speaking so strangely, but his accent was fairly accurate. For that matter, any early John Waters movie.



Live-Action TV

The Wire: Surprisingly few, all things considered—although when you remember that most of the cast is Black (who have a different accent) this becomes less surprising. Ballmur accents are most common in Season 2, where a lot of the dockworkers have more modern "soft" B-more accents; the white police (e.g. Valchek and Rawls) are mostly the same, along with Carcetti (who shows up in Season 3, but never mind) (McNulty, the most prominent white cop, has an unplaceable accent, as Dominic West is actually from Yorkshire, and Herc is supposedly originally from New York and speaks with his actor's natural Queens accent). In Season 4, Lt. Asher notably mentions building his summer house "downy ayshin." Also, McNulty intentionally affects a very thick Bawlmore accent in Season 5 when he's posing as the fake serial killer he made up in a phone call he made to Scott Templeton. The show's best examples of genuine Ballmur accents come from those who were cast more for their authentic backgrounds than their acting. Lt. Mello, for instance, who is played by former real-life Baltimore homicide detective Jay Landsman.

The show's best examples of genuine Ballmur accents come from those who were cast more for their authentic backgrounds than their acting. Lt. Mello, for instance, who is played by former real-life Baltimore homicide detective Jay Landsman. Showed up occasionally on Homicide: Life on the Street.

Ethyl Darling from American Horror Story: Freak Show speaks in a thick Baltimore accent.

Music

90's Boy Band Dru Hill (whose most well-known member is Sisqo of "Thong Song" fame) is named after Druid Hill Park, pronounced "Dru Hill" in the local accent.

Midwestern

As with the British "Received Pronunciation", the target of many American actors is, unless the role allows them to use their own regional accent, or a "regional" is required by the character, the neutral-sounding accent of the Midwestern states sometimes called Newscaster English or General American.

This seems to lead to Americans claiming that people from the Midwest "don't have an accent", whereas, like everyone else on Earth, they obviously do.

There is, in fact, a distinct Midwestern accent spoken by Midwesterners. Just as some Southerners speak with accents while others talk like people on TV, some Midwesterners speak with a very distinct accent while others talk like people on TV. Generally speaking, the more rural you get, the "flatter" and more nasally-aspirated the vowels sound, taking on a similar affect to Inland North, but without the associated vowel shift. The native accent is centered on the state of Iowa (as well as central Illinois), but it's being encroached upon from all sides (and particularly by Inland North from the Great Lakes), and may eventually disappear from the wild (or mutate into something else).

Stereotype: None, really, as this is the closest to a "default" American accent, and doesn't draw attention to itself as a specifically regional accent. If overemphasized, or contrasted with accents from metropolitan areas, can imply "naive bumpkin" or "hayseed". See also those "Mid-West farmers' daughters".

Examples:

Live-Action TV

Mad Men: Don Draper. It adds to his general and highly cultivated "All-American Man" air, so you might think it to be fakery, but he came by it honestly. He grew up in the middle of nowhere in Illinois note Chicago was a day away by horse and cart. (he eventually moved to central Pennsylvania, but he was ten years old by then).

Multiple Media

Midwestern is the most common American accent in fiction. This is (as stated in the page description) due to the fact that it is very neutral, easy to fake, and doesn't carry the baggage of any regional identity (which would make it harder for Americans outside of that region to relate to the character).

Real Life

Edward R. Murrow had this accent. This is part of why it is "Newscaster Standard" and the closest to a "generic" American accent.

Similarly, Walter Cronkite, from Kansas City, has a slightly North Midlands-influenced version of this accent.

Brits: this is John Barrowman's American accent. He acquired it honestly, having spent his adolescence in Aurora, Illinois (just far enough away from Chicago to avoid speaking Chicagonese).

Gary Sinise, thanks to his growing up in Chicago.

Brad Jones, aka The Cinema Snob, from Springfield, Illinois.

Rush Limbaugh, from Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Chicagonese / Inland North

"ah" as in "cot" becomes closer to the "a" in "cat" note which lends itself to most of the accent's parodies, specifically in pronouncing the "a" in Chicago or similar ,

, "aw" as in "caught" moves in to fill the space left behind by "ah" (though the two sounds remain distinct),

the short "a" (as in the aforementioned "cat") is frequently broken into a diphthong ("can" comes out like "keean", for example),

The short "e" as in "bet" moves to the short "u" in "cut",

The short "u" as in "cut" sounds more like "aw", and

The short "i" in "bit" is lowered and backed, sounding more like "bet", but kept distinct, so that the pin-pen merger does not occur.

Velar stops are also frequently exaggerated, especially after consonants (the word Wisconsin would be pronounced wisConsin).

When the letter "s" appears at the end of a word, it is pronounced like an "s," unlike most other accents which pronounce it like a "z."

Areas on the Canadian border will also feature Canadian Raising that affects only the long "I"-sound. The words "rider" and "writer" are distinct by virtue of their vowels, but people don't "go oat" when they leave the house.

While not always present, some may pronounce "oht" and "awt" sounds with L's in them (e.g. "both" becomes "bolth").

Ranging from northern New York to to Southeast Wisconsin along the Great Lakes, this is the result of the famed Northern Cities Vowel Shift. This accent gets stronger as you go further west, but is most closely associated with Chicago, and to a lesser extent Cleveland. Guido mobsters will be heard using the accent, if they aren't using the Brooklyn one. The word for carbonated soft drinks is "pop", except for the eastern reaches of the dialect in central New York as well as Eastern Wisconsin (especially the Milwaukee area), where it's "soda". People from the "pop"-saying area tend to be very defensive about it, regarding "soda" as a word exclusively denoting the non-scientific name for sodium bicarbonate (baking soda); a few Eastern-educated Midwesterners ( David Foster Wallace comes to mind) attempt to keep the peace by calling it "soda-pop," though to what effect is unclear. Among the most universal traits:

Incidentally, pre-Vowel Shift Inland North is the "original" Yankee dialect, brought by settlers from Upstate New York and New England: Michigan was settled almost entirely by New Yorkers and New Englanders, as were northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois (the southern parts of these states were settled by Virginians), and southern Wisconsin (the northern part being settled by more or less fresh-off-the-boat Germans and Scandinavians). Ironically, if we were to hear John Adams talk today, we'd probably remark that he sounded more like he was from Detroit or Chicago than Boston.

Stereotype: Die-hard fan of local sports teams (professional and college-level), to the point of violence against fans of rival teams. Has a penchant for beer and anything made entirely of meat, especially sausage. Likely to have a bushy mustache. In New York, tends to overlap with the "hayseed" stereotype, representing either dairy farmers from the North Country, or ethnic Germans and Italians from (slightly) more urban CNY.

Examples:

Film

Live-Action TV

Professional Wrestling

Second City Saints Ace Steel, CM Punk and Colt Cabana, the former two being Chicago natives.

Web Animation

Coach Z of Homestar Runner fame has an exaggerated version of this accent, though most people with this accent will not say "jorb". (They might, however, say "jaahb".)

Web Original

Doug Walker of Channel Awesome.

The Irate Gamer, most obviously in words like "both" or "flaw", which become "bolth" and "flawl", respectively.

Real Life

James Belushi and his late brother John.

Any given film critic from a Chicago-area newspaper (Ebert, Roeper , Phillips , we're lookin' at you).

, Phillips , we're lookin' at you). Can be used for Cubs fans, Browns fans, Bears fans, Cheeseheads, and other sports fans from the region.

Percy Peoples .

. This is an example of the accent intentionally exaggerated for comic effect.

is an example of the accent intentionally exaggerated for comic effect. Barack Obama.

Jeremy Wagner.

North Midland

This accent is sort of what happens when Appalachian meets Inland North, but also takes cues from Pittsburgh. It's spoken in central and southern Ohio, central Indiana and Illinois, and parts of Iowa and Missouri (where it starts to merge with Midwestern), and can sometimes be found as far west as parts of Nebraska and northern Kansas, and may overlap with communities like Wheeling and Weirton, West Virginia, with W. Virginia's northern panhandle being one of the few parts of the state actually located north of the Mason-Dixon line.

It has the same back-vowel shifts as Inland North, but can retain some features of Appalachian ("warsh" comes up from time to time, ESPECIALLY in St. Louis). The biggest peculiarity of this accent (if not a universal one) is the "positive anymore"; essentially using the word "anymore" to mean something like "nowadays" or "from now on".

Stereotype: Being rustic without quite being a full-blown hillbilly. Or just being a hillbilly, if you're feeling unkind. Alternatively, way too hardcore Big Ten football fans.

St. Louis

Think Inland North trapped in the North Midland. Despite being closer to the Ozarks than Chicago, the St. Louis accent is heavily influenced by the Northern Cities Vowel Shift and sounds quite similar to Chicagonese with some notable local differences, such as the use of "soda" instead of "pop" as well as some influence from Pittsburgh and Appalachia, mainly the word "warsh". Warsh, however, is most commonly used by the older generation and is gradually dying out with time, causing St. Louis to become more and more of an Inland North city.

There is also some influence from Yat as St. Louis was owned by France a very long time ago and still has the second largest Mardi Gras celebration in the country after New Orleans. In parts of South St. Louis, especially in neighborhoods settled by French and Italian immigrants, the word "po boy" is used for a submarine sandwich, although this is quickly dying out and being replaced with "sub".

Also, "hoosier" refers to anyone from the country and is a term of derision (sorry, Indiana). St. Louisans are especially well-known for substituting the th sound with a d, as in "Get in dat car over dere" instead of "Get in that car over there." Nicknames are big in St. Louis - the Cardinals will always be "da Cards", Interstate 40 / 64 will always be "40", University City is "U City", Jefferson County is "Jeff County" and of course North County, South County, Mid County, and West County all refer to the different parts of St. Louis County.

Stereotype: Loves the Cardinals to the point of religion, as well as Budweiser beer and toasted ravioli. Criticizes all other parts of St. Louis besides their own neighborhood.

Examples:

Real Life

Mayor Francis Slay and Police Chief Sam Dotson, both heard throughout the country as a result of the Ferguson unrest.

John Goodman

Jon Hamm was born in St. Louis and grew up in its suburbs. His accent is closer to the "neutral" Midwestern on account of practice, but it still shows up sometimes.

St. Louis Cardinals radio broadcaster Mike Shannon has a very pronounced older style St. Louis accent, with the Redbirds playing the "Warshington" Nationals several times a year- and makes constant references to sponsors Budweiser, Bud Light, and Busch beer. Beloved fellow Cardinals broadcaster Jack Buck, who Shannon broadcast with for nearly 30 years before Buck passed away, also had a broad St. Louis accent. Their strongly local flavor is/was one of the reasons the KMOX broadcasts of the games are *everywhere* in the summer.

Michigan

This is probably best described as a strange combination of the Inland North and Vermont accents. There's a hint of influence from their Canadian neighbors — "about" is not quite pronounced "aboot", but it's close, and "eh" is relatively common. Humorously, people with these accents are perhaps the most likely to say, "But we don't have an accent," second, perhaps, only to those with the standard Midwestern accent.

This accent is also characterized by a glottal stop; t 's (and sometimes g 's and nd 's) are often chopped off at the end of words. Talking quickly is an optional part of the accent, but doing so makes the above-mentioned glottal stop more defined, and obviously, it has the effect of having words sound slurred together. Some endword consonants—r, in particular—are more drawn out than usual. For instance, fire sounds like "fye-errr;" particularly distinctive is the pronunciation of "car." In Southeast Michigan, unnecessarily adding a possessive "'s" to proper nouns is a common additional feature. "Ford's" (for the car company) is particularly common, as is "Meijer's" (for Meijer, the less-evil local version of Walmart). Some Southwest Michigan communities (Holland, Zeeland, et al.) have Dutch heritage festivals, and some of the residents' speech patterns may be reminiscent of Dutch ancestry.

The other thing to remember is this: Someone from Michigan is called a "Michigander"; stress the second-to-last syllable (Mish-uh-GAN-der).

Michiganders will refer to their home state's state-level roads by their number, prefixed by the letter M, and refer to interstate highways by their number with the letter I prefixed, so when you ask a Michigander for driving directions, you'll hear terms like "I-96" or "I-75" and "M-37" or "M-44".

Consult this guide for more information.

Examples:

Real Life

Tim Allen. It's most notable in The Santa Clause series, where he repeatedly says "roof" as "ruf".

Iggy Pop's Michigan accent is on full display in his bit with Tom Waits in Coffee and Cigarettes. You can kind of hear it elsewhere, but in that scene it's particularly obvious.

The White Stripes: Jack White's Detroit origins are clear whenever he isn't faking being from somewhere else; Meg never even bothers to fake an accent on the rare occasions she does speak. Incidentally, they also get a scene, in their native accents, in Coffee and Cigarettes.

Michael Moore.

Alice Cooper, with a touch of Appalachia (his mother is from Tennessee).

The singer Porcelain Black has this accent. You especially notice it when she speaks in interviews.

Minnesoooota/Upper Midwest

Scandahoovian. It is found in the states of the northern Midwest west of the Great Lakes, chiefly Minnesota (the state that it's most frequently associated with), North Dakota, Northeastern Montana, Northern Wisconsin, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Has a mixed influence of Canadian and Scandinavian accents. A mix of flat vowels and a sing-song inflection make this accent hard to describe. Common phrases include "Don'cha know" and "You (pronounced yoowoo) betcha." "Yes" is expressed as "Yah" with a pulled "A", commonly as "Oh ya-a-ah". "Coupon" is pronounced "kyoo-pahn." A common bumper sticker in Michigan's Upper Peninsula perfectly sums up this accent: "I'm from da UP, eh?" (pronounced "I'm frum daah yoo-pee, ay?") Some of the "yooper"isms may also cross over to the Lower Michigan accent, above (particularly north of Saginaw, it gets stronger the closer you get to the Mackinac Bridge).

In North Dakota in particular, there is a peculiar slurring of words with two stressed "oo"s such as root. Words like these are shortened into a short U sound, rhyming with "put".

Stereotype: Homespun, self-effacing, middle-aged, stay-at-home moms. Surprised by any attitude prevalent after the 1950s. Very frequently a Glurge Addict. Examples: Bobby's mom from Bobby's World cartoon, the den mother for the nursery in A Bug's Life, Frances McDormand in Fargo. Mothers outside of the Upper Midwest seem to develop this accent for some strange reason, all around the nation!

Examples:

Film

See Fargo for a classic movie example.

Grace, the receptionist at Ferris Bueller's school.

The porcupines from Over the Hedge seemed to have these.

Blanche Gunderson in the film New in Town.

Escanaba in Da Moonlight is a perfect example of the "yooper" accent.

Most of the cast of Drop Dead Gorgeous have thick Minnesota accents. Allison Janney later gave a more muted version in Juno (also set in Minnesota).

