Midwesterners - Accent, or lack there of?

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: vi_edit
I'm having a slight disagreement with some people. I said that midwesterners don't have an accent, or are lacking an accent.

Some members of another forum disagree. They say that midwesterners do have an accent - The Midwestern Accent.

Anybody have some insight on this?

Technically, the Midwestern "accent" is standard American English (as distinct from British English). So to be technical about it, Midwesterners do not have an accent. (Note that I am not including the Upper Peninsula of MI or areas of northern Wisconsin in my definition of "Midwest" as the U.P. and northern Wisconsin both have accents that are uniquely northern.)

On the other hand, if you want to play fast and loose with the definition of "accent", and claim that an accent is any manner of speaking that is different than the manner of speaking the same language and the same dialect, then yes, the Midwest has an accent.

Regarding the "Southern Accent", I think that there is both an accent and a dialect. The accent alone is simply the typically more relaxed method of pronounciation used in the south, whereas the dialect also includes the use of such words as "rekon", and "fixin'" as well as the use of phrases such as "the war of northern aggression".

Of course, there are people who will claim that I'm just playing semantic games, but I think that it's rather important to explicitly define one's terminology, otherwise one runs into confusion.

 

[slag]

Originally posted by: Dual700s

Originally posted by: slag
no accent.

The people in Wisconsin have accents, West coasters have accents, oklahoma and further south people have accents, and easterners have accents, but generally midwesterners have no accent, just plain jane folks. Floridians have no accent either.

So pretty much Kansas, Nebraska and the Dokotas are safe--shoo!

If you have ever watched FARGO, you'd know that dakota folks are not safe.

 

[vi edit]

Zen, that's where the disagreement lies I believe.

It was a thread concerning the south and them being a bunch of redneck idiots. I made the comment that after spending a week down there, that a lot of the misconceptions people have of the south(stupid, slow, hick, redneck, whatever) was due to their accent and speech pathology. To me, and others from the midwest have agreed with me, that the overall slowness of the southern dialect along with the "drawl" of the accent sounded, well, uneducated for a lack of better words.

I really didn't notice it until I spent a week down there (a day of it at a NASCAR race) and then came back up to the midwest. I made a comment that many midwesterners had no accent and all hell broke loose.

 

[Shantanu]

I moved to Ohio from Long Island in 1995. People in Ohio definitely have an accent. They tend to speak nasally, drop the "g" at the end of words, etc.

Of course, Ohio is at the fringes of the Midwest. This gets even more pronounced when you go out to Chicago, Wisconsin, etc.

I've noticed also that people in upstate New York tend to have something similar to a Midwestern accent.

Standard American English is - supposedly - how the broadcasters on TV speak. I think it's definitely true that people in the Midwest most closely approximate standard American English, when compared to people in the South and East Coast. Quite a few people in the Midwest don't speak with a nasalization, and that is the standard American English.

When I think of a Midwestern accent, I think of Dan Rather.

Dan Rather is from Dallas, TX, and has a very noticeable, suppressed Southern accent.

 

[xuanman]

i've noticed that old-school chicagoans say "you's guys"

 

[Maverick]

definitely exists...my parents live in Wisconsin so I hear those accents all the time. Chicago accent is similar as well. Dan Akroyd did a great Chicago accent in Tommy Boy.

"I sell caaahhrrr paaahrrrts for the working man because thats who I care about"

 

[vi edit]

I don't count Wisconsin and Chicago, especially among the "midwestern accent".

Peoria, Illinois, where I grew up, has been proclaimed the de facto standard for "American English".

 

[Triumph]

I like my Pittsburgh accent, when I feel like using it Otherwise I think I talk like the people on TV.

Oh, and my cousins from Chicago talk funny.

 

[Shantanu]

I like my Pittsburgh accent, when I feel like using it

Pittsburgh accent?

Most of the folks that I've met from Pittsburgh speak similar to the folks on TV (i.e. standard American English).

Now the people from Philadelphia, they've got accents.

 

[teddymines]

Originally posted by: Shantanu
I moved to Ohio from Long Island in 1995. People in Ohio definitely have an accent. They tend to speak nasally, drop the "g" at the end of words, etc.

Of course, Ohio is at the fringes of the Midwest. This gets even more pronounced when you go out to Chicago, Wisconsin, etc.

I've noticed also that people in upstate New York tend to have something similar to a Midwestern accent.

Standard American English is - supposedly - how the broadcasters on TV speak. I think it's definitely true that people in the Midwest most closely approximate standard American English, when compared to people in the South and East Coast. Quite a few people in the Midwest don't speak with a nasalization, and that is the standard American English.

Oh, and Lawn Giland doesn't have an accent?

There are only a few places that don't have an accent. I strongly believe that if you sound like the majority of voiceovers on national TV commercials, you are qualified to say you have no accent. If those voiceovers sound awkward to you, then you have an accent.

 

[Triumph]

Originally posted by: Shantanu

I like my Pittsburgh accent, when I feel like using it

Pittsburgh accent?

Most of the folks that I've met from Pittsburgh speak similar to the folks on TV (i.e. standard American English).

Now the people from Philadelphia, they've got accents.

Oh yes, there is Definitely a Pittsburgh accent. It's mostly relegated to the working class families, many of them still have strong ties to the former steel industry. If you watch the local news in Pittsburgh, it can be quite entertaining.

 

[spaceman]

i have two co workers from Wisconsin.I can confirm,they do have an accent(at least to me in MA,and no i dont speak like a Chowd,im fronm western MA where R's are still relevant)

 

[MajesticMoose]

Everyone everywhere has an accent to someone. midwesterners are no exception

 

[Darein]

I think they do have an acent, at least further north, such as Minnesotta where I used to live.

 

[styrafoam]

If you have ever watched FARGO, you'd know that dakota folks are not safe

I was born in Fargo, and i still have family in ND. When my wife and I watched Fargo she laughed her a$$ of at me. I told her 'that movie is way over the top on the accent, you will hear it but not in every single word' . I didnt hear the end of it for YEARS, she was always "ya want some coffee, yaaaaa? Ooooh noooo". We recently traveled up north to see some of my family and to her dissapointment she didnt hear a single person speak with an accent.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: MajesticMoose
Everyone everywhere has an accent to someone. midwesterners are no exception

That's dependant on how fast and loose you are playing with the definition of "accent". See my first post.

ZV

 

[Moonbeam]

It's Californians that don't have an accent. We speak perfect Amertican English.

 

[spaceman]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
It's Californians that don't have an accent. We speak perfect Amertican English.

umm no.

 

[Entity]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: vi_edit
I'm having a slight disagreement with some people. I said that midwesterners don't have an accent, or are lacking an accent.

Some members of another forum disagree. They say that midwesterners do have an accent - The Midwestern Accent.

Anybody have some insight on this?

Technically, the Midwestern "accent" is standard American English (as distinct from British English). So to be technical about it, Midwesterners do not have an accent. (Note that I am not including the Upper Peninsula of MI or areas of northern Wisconsin in my definition of "Midwest" as the U.P. and northern Wisconsin both have accents that are uniquely northern.)

On the other hand, if you want to play fast and loose with the definition of "accent", and claim that an accent is any manner of speaking that is different than the manner of speaking the same language and the same dialect, then yes, the Midwest has an accent.

Regarding the "Southern Accent", I think that there is both an accent and a dialect. The accent alone is simply the typically more relaxed method of pronounciation used in the south, whereas the dialect also includes the use of such words as "rekon", and "fixin'" as well as the use of phrases such as "the war of northern aggression".

Of course, there are people who will claim that I'm just playing semantic games, but I think that it's rather important to explicitly define one's terminology, otherwise one runs into confusion.

The Midwest, like any other region, has an accent, technically speaking. According to the Glossary of Applied Linguistics, an accent is:

The mode of utterance peculiar to an individual or locality, indlcuing stress, tone and pitch.

Rob

 

[Moonbeam]

ncircle, umm no is not English. You can identify a midwestern accent. There is no accent that identifies an average Californian as Californian.

 

[Amused]

Oh yeah, ya betchya!

Northern Midwesterners have a distinct Norwegian bit in their accent. MN, WI, Northern IL and MI have the most noticable accents. Wisconson being the worst.

 

[thelanx]

I think we sound different from some other ppl, does that qualify as an accent? Cuz one of my teachers is Australian, and he has an accent, but to him, we're the ones with the accent.

 

[Cancer12]

I'm in Rapid City South Dakota and let me tell you, I've always thought midwesterners have the clearest accent. Whenever I go anywhere else, I always ask people to repeat themselves because I am so used to the slow, clear, pronounciated speach of my region. I once dated a girl in Texas when I was down there for a few weeks, and she said I had an accent in that I had no accent.

 

[Fatwhiteslug]

It is not really a Midwest accent it is more of a different cadence to the speech. Midwesterners seem to speak a little slower than Say a California native. And I know a girl from Kansas and she has a little twang to her speech and pronounces some words different.

 

[GasX]

What kind of retard says that people from one place do not have an accent?

Everyone in every place in every language has an accent.