I was born and raised in s-e Kansas. My mother's family has been here since 1869. My dad's family came from southern Missouri in 1902. People from all over the US think I'm from Texas...including Texans. Standard American is falling apart because almost EVERYONE has grown up with a friend whose parent or grandparent for whom English was a second language. PLUS, real fluency in English is undervalued.
I was stationed on Ocracoke for 3 years. I still understand the dialect, and still fall back to speaking it at times. It's the closest dialect to old English left in the world.
Haha I know the Texas accent very well Texas gal born and bred and I know the Appalachian accent too my family is originally from out there and a lot of them are from the Carolinas and Virginia and Kentucky lol..and I'm part Cherokee and Irish and I keep my accent it's apart of me
I'm from the West Coast of Scotland. I emigrated to the US when I was 20 years old. I've lived mostly in the deep American South as well as parts of the NE and Illinois. I spent almost a decade living in the DFW area. There are parts of Dallas that have really large percentages of immigrants. South Asian, Middle Eastern, African etc There are still Texans that have a wonderful drawl. But I think they tend to be from more rural areas. I believe that living in large urban areas definitely affects historical dialects. I love that my ear has become so well tuned to all the different ones. 🙂
That sums up my experience perfectly. Southeast Tennessee, and my nana naturally has a strong accent which I subconsciously mimic when I’m around her. I used to try to speak as generic as possible, but I’ve started letting my natural rhythm come out recently.
I hate that we’re losing our regional accents in the US. When I was a kid and we would travel, listening to and talking to the people who lived in our destinations made me feel like I’d gone someplace new and different. Now, wherever you go, you feel like you never left home.
I like this. Certain accents just kind of grate on me, and it’s good (to me, lol) to see them moderating or going away. From a more practical perspective, it also makes it easier on immigrants. Learning a new language is difficult for a lot of people, but learning to understand a new language and a bunch of dialects / accents could be impossible. Not everyone is a linguist or a polyglot.
@@enbyharborimagine advocating for the end of cultural and linguistic diversity for a continent sized nation in favor of Hollywood/tiktok-monoculture/globalism because it “makes life easier for immigrants” . Truly brain dead take G
I’m from WV and I use to hate my accent. I had speech therapy as a child and I worked so hard to try to enunciate my words to not have such a thick accent. Now I embrace it. It’s part of who I am.
me too! as a yinzer. i used to drive dahn wv though, it's not too far. now i don't live there anymore so it's hard, but i do try to embrace my childhood accent still :)
SERIOUSLY? Who sent you to SPEECH THERAPY for speaking how the people where you grew up spoke, and where did you even get this different speech therapy anyway? Had to have been where you grew up, they sure didn't ship you up to New York City for this speech therapy!
I'm technically from WV as well, I was born in a neighboring state (MD), but grew up in WV and was there into early adulthood. Where I'm from in WV though, we really didn't have much of an accent. It wasn't southern sounding at all. We enunciated every vowel and consonant when we spoke. In fact, I left WV for England when I was 23 and EVERY person I met in England thought I was from Canada (even though I didn't say "about" like some Canadians)! lol! When I told them I was from the states, they were shocked and asked me why I didn't have the "appropriate" accent "for an American" especially a southern American...lol! It gets even weirder... While I lived in England, I was in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. I eventually picked up that accent. Some years later I did move back to the states and had that Sheffield accent and got a lot of "Where are you from?" from my fellow Americans...lol Eventually that did stop, but my once non-southern American accent, that drifted into an Northern English accent, then drifted into the most southern sounding accent ever!...lol! That's gone now though, as I live in central Massachusetts, but haven't picked up on any strong accent. The accent where I live is all but dead now, only older folks sound like people from this area.
Being a truck driver and a having a weird interest in American accents I can assure you that the yinzer accent drifts west from Pburgh across the panhandle of West Virginia and into the east side of Ohio in the Steubenville Ohio area. In my area of Columbus Ohio I can hear bits of the yinzer accent from people born and raised there. Specifically in the word “going”. They pronounce it “gowin”. Accents are awesome!
Can confirm! Half of my family is from Pittsburgh. I grew up in Columbus. I married someone from SW VA, which is basically WV. My mom's family has a heavy Yinzer-Appalachian drawl, despite living in Ohio
I live about an hour and 45 min south east of Pittsburgh just outside of Johnstown and the accent is definitely present here and in the surrounding smaller towns. I have cousins who live in Pittsburgh and growing up we use to constantly compare the way we said certain words and then fight over who was saying them right 😂. There was a lot we said the same but definitely some we said different.
Born and raised Appalachian. A lot and I mean a TON of folks are doing the work to reclaim our accent and pushing back against the stigma. It’s ourn and ain’t goin nowhere ❤
another interesting one is the "yooper" accent. basically finnish immigrants that got trapped in the upper peninsula of michigan by themselves. the longest running talk show in television history was actually run by them, have in english and half in finnish
My husband of 34 years is a Yooper from Escanaba..He still knows a few Finnish expressions Before him, all of my boyfriends have been Michiganders. Every other gay guy that I met in Texas was from Michigan. My very Southern Sister lost her accent living in Michigan while her husband was at University in East Lansing.
A good way to hear people's natural, un-selfconscious speaking patterns is in local news clip interviews of citizens when the news is reporting on real time accidents, fires, robberies, or public events like festivals, fairs, and carnivals, or job fairs. Usually, the people won't be thinking about how they are talking and will just speak authentically in the moment, unlike when doing dialect tests, where people become self-observing.
This is true. Also, if you can rattle someone's chain a little, the natural accent comes straight out. My mother in law has a fairly thick southern accent, but when she's worked up, it may as well be a different language. I only catch words here and there.
Well, when the dialect tests were done in the big US survey most recently, they pretended to be an ad agency doing a marketing study. When I realized years later that I'd been a respondent, I finally figured out why they'd asked me about such disparate products, and why the caller had seemed so nonplussed by some of my answers.....
I grew up I Louisiana. I have add a video of my dad reading night before Christmas with his S Louisiana accent for my kids. I love his soft Cajun accent. It is so comforting to me. And the use of “Me I” to refer back to the speaker is also comforting.
Born in CT and raised in WY and having traveled 40 of the 50 states have given me a wide appreciation for the different accents. My favorite is English cajon in Louisiana. I grew up with a larger vocabulary including alternate pronunciations. In the 60s, you heard the different accents more often. Now the differences seem to have disappeared, though many people could switch to their older accent(s).
Having grown up in da ‘Burgh, but now living overseas I notice when I go back that the accent is alive. It definitely exists in some classic Pittsburgh locales such as going to the amusement parks in tawn.
Yinz accent is def going strong today all over Western Pa, especially Johnstown, but Pittsburgh has been attracting more newcomers who don't have the accent so I can hear people taking that as its going away. Alas.
I'm from Chicago and didn't realize I had an accent until I moved downstate. After being asked where I'm from so often, I started hearing my own accent. It's a weird feeling, and what's even weirder is that I can't tell you how many people ask me if I'm from Sweden. Seriously. I get it all the time.
I lived in Las Vegas for two years, one of my best friends could identify people from Chicago by their clothing! She was a retired Psychiatric Nurse from Detroit, but she knew "sisters from Chicago" immediately!
I'm from Charleston, my family has been there since the early 1700s, and the last generation in my family to have a strong Charleston accent are my grandparents. It makes me so sad, I say a lot of words with an accent, but it's nowhere near as strong as my grandpa's was.
@@Danielle-gc6ilSame here! Family landed in Charleston in the 1700s and it’s so sad now that my grandparents’ accents are rarely, if ever, heard anymore. If someone wants to hear what it sounds like, watch some old videos of Senator Fritz Hollings. I sure do miss hearing that while running errands around town, back when Charleston was small. Hugo brought in a lot of outsiders, then the internet introduced a lot of other accents, so the real Charleston accent got so watered down it’s nearly gone. 🙁
The oldest living generation of my family has the Charleston accent. I grew up in Georgia though and missed out. I really treasure any opportunity to hear a Charleston accent.
@@RainyJan309 I still have a lot of the vestiges of that accent, as we live in an old, fairly insulated part of Mt. Pleasant where natives are plenty. I find myself calling my son, Wade, “WAY-id” and pronouncing “here” as “hair.” 😄
I worked in a call center 5 years ago that took calls nationally. Yes those accents still exist. I wish we still had the accents from the 40’s And 50’s.
My mom, from Dormont, PA (northwestern PA), always said “gum band” for rubber band and “redd up” for straightening up or declutterring the house (or a room). We stand in line or wait in line; standing on, or waiting on line is totally a New York thing.
We say "on line" in North Jersey too. We also say "down the shore". In New Jersey you have to go down the shore to go to the beach. You can't go to the beach unless you're down the shore. It's a Jersey thing.
Alabama gal here, there are so many different southern accents that ‘experts’ seem to have glanced over. Just my daughter’s accent is so much more country than mine, despite being raised 15 miles away.
I used to hate my northern RI (Worcester corridor) accent. Then I went to high school in Honolulu and fell in love with pidgin. Mixed that in with my native accent, got back home to RI after graduation...and none of my friends could understand me. I LOVE ALL accents now and I do not want a single one to die. It is part of who we are. Been back in New England for ever...and I watch Andy Bumatai on youtube just to hear the beloved pidgin.
What is amazing is that the negative baggage of one accent is cherished in a totally different place. My mild Appalachian accent is thought of poorly in my area but Northerners are fascinated with it. If you came to Atlanta they wouldn't think poorly of your Worcester accent.
That rings true! I wonder if it similar to liking certain music or art styles. I do like thinking of regional accents as an artform! Do they like to drop their Rs in Atlanta, too?
I live in Central Pennsylvania, and the Yinzer accent has definitely spread out to at least the Appalachians in PA. It’s crazy how you can hear the accents start to flip more towards Philly and Jersey once you cross the Susquehanna.
Yinzer was everywhere when I was in college. We rented a ski house once outside Seven Springs, and were awaiting the arrival of someone named Dawn - I was surprised that Dawn was a guy named Donald. They were also talking about a baseball player named Bawns. Took me a while to see it was Barry Bonds. The only thing I picked up myself was not the accent but one of its sentence constructions "that bed needs made" or "the floor needs swept" And BTW: The ugliest accent is my own - a Philadelphia accent. Have worked my whole life to get rid of it. The University of Pennsylvania has always had a prestigious linguistics program, so they've been studying it for years.
In York County, they have all different types of accents just in that one county. I moved to York from Northern New Jersey and have an entirely different accent so I can tell even from one part of a town to the other the accent changes.
@@michelebella677 I hear you. You hear them all up at Penn State, and they are different. Once when I was home from college, I asked one of my mom's friends, based on her accent, "Are you from Allentown?" She frowned at me. "NO. I'm from EASTON." I can tell a Philadelphian who went to Catholic school from a Jewish Philadelphian from the Northeast from a Main Line WASP, all of whom still have Philly accents, just all a little different.
Yinzer and Appalachian basically blur together, I grew up a north of the Burgh but everyone spoke with both sets of words. Jumbo, gumband, crick, buggy, rid up, yinz, pop/ sody-pop, britches, fixin, allow, tater, winder… all those were quite common in throughout most of western PA. Also, love the Myron Cope clip at the beginning of the Pittsburgh section. A true legend of the city.
I live in central PA, and before you revealed it was the Philly accent I was like “where… is the accent? What am I missing?” I have a mix of Philly, Pittsburg, & PA Dutch more so in grammar than speech. Never really noticed until the military when a few people pointed it out.
I lived in Appalachia (as a Chicagoan) for half a year. Crazy way of talking, loved it. The youngest in the family (now ~30) dropped the accent and was more of a city guy, the rest retained it
My grandpa was a Pittsburgh Slovak and his brother, who is still alive, has a strong Yinzer accent. But he’s in his 80s, I don’t think the younger generations have it.
I live in Pittsburgh. Both of my parents are from here but I wasn't born or raised here. Anyway, my older relatives, 60+ have the Yinzer accent hardcore. Their children don't
@dqarqeer8603 Some don't have it, but some I know have it as much as any old timer from the Burgh. I was far enough out of town that the "Yinz" was more like "Youns".
I once asked my high school English teacher how to spell it and he said younz! Lol It was/is very specific to parts of Southwestern PA and my family says it and surely always will 🙂
My family is also of Pittsburgh Slovak/Carpatho Rusyn heritage (with some others mixed in) from Braddock/Swissvale/Homestead and Hazelwood/Greenfield neighborhoods of the city. Some had a very strong dialect while others had almost none like they just did not pick it up for whatever reason. One odd thing I have noticed is that while "Yinz" is widely used for plural you the word "Youse" or "Yous" is also used, just not by everybody. I recall family members mixing Yinz and Yous in the same sentence of a conversation. We had some extended family down in Fayette County that had a significantly different sound and intonation to my ears when they spoke.
“There's a southern accent, where I come from The young 'uns call it country The Yankees call it dumb I got my own way of talkin' But everything is done, with a southern accent Where I come from” -Thomas Earl Petty
My husband was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Queens and moved to Florida years ago. He still has his accent and he's proud of it. A's are R's and R's are A's. Banana is Bananer. Brenda is Brender.
I'm originally from Pittsburgh and I can detect the accent immediately even when travelling throughout Europe or other countries. It's not disappearing! It's well ingrained in western Pennsylvania.
I'm older and grew up Southern American regional accents and went camping often on Tangier Island. I have a great ear for mimicry which has helped me immensely in 60 years of acting, dialect coaching, pronunciation and elocution. I really enjoyed your video.
Things really started to change in The US when television became more prominent. As more people got electricity in rural areas, they got TVs the accents got much softer and more homogenized, towards TV broadcast type of speech.
Not just television but travel. Interstates and aircraft made going from one place to another so much easier. I remember growing up in the northeast. I could tell a Queens accent from a Brooklyn accent.
That's a form of code-switching. I've noticed, among children of immigrants, even when they're speaking English - if they're speaking amongst their friends, they'll speak in a "standard" dialect, but when talking to their parents (even when speaking English) they adopt the accented English their parents speak.
Proud Yinzer here! Although I grew up about an hour east of Pittsburgh, in the mountains. The dialect in the mountains, only an hour drive and its completely different accent and dialect. Little more of a southern accent… I just find this all so fascinating 🌹
My Dad had the Brooklyn Accent (born and raised Brooklyn New Yorker). It got watered down over the years while i was growing up in Mass. But when he got riled up, the Brooklyn accent came in STRONG.. haha ....I miss hearing it some times. RIP Dad
This’s just the most intriguing accent video I’ve ever seen, thank you 🙏!!! You’ve tied 3 childhood memories together for me so far & ain’t even watched it through!!! I grew up vacationing in The Outer Banks of North Carolina, Whalehead & Corolla area, but when we’d go pick up blue crab from the fishery up Nagshead way back in the 80’s those fellas definitely sounded like pirates!!! Good Show friend!!!
I had a professor from Pittsburgh (he wore a Pirates hat to class when his team won the ‘79 World Series) and I was baffled at first by his accent. It was unique among U.S. cities.
I had a boyfriend from Pittsburgh. He always pronounced measure as "maysure." Then I realized that Mr. Rogers (also from that neck of the woods) said it the same way on his TV show.
My parents were raised speaking with Appalachian accents. When they got married, they moved around the Midwest, following where my father was stationed with the Air Force. It didn't take them long at all to lose their accents. People didn't take my parents seriously when they spoke with their Appalachian accents; my parents were written off as poorly educated, even though they weren't. I carry on the Midwestern accent that they learned.
I used to have a slight accent when I was younger, but then I purged it to fit in. After I graduated high school, I began to get involved with dialectology and realized that one's accent is something to be proud of, not ashamed. Since I know that my home accent is dying out, I have deliberately tried to reinvigorate my old speech patterns. Currently, it is not consistent; but I hope in due time that I will be able to. If you're curious, I grew up in Mid-Eastern Ohio, and so I have a mixture of that Ohio-river and Western Pennsylvanian twang.
I was a nurse in an Endoscopy Department in Athens GA. One of our docs,Dr.C.Kretzschmar,husband was a linguist at UGA. We were all self conscious of our southern accents when he stopped by!!
HA!!! I live in delco south east PA but I have aunt who's from Pittsburgh I had never heard "Yins" till she met my uncle 30 years ago and every time i see her being Thanksgiving that happened to be tonight I always greet her with "How yins doin" and any time someone tells me there from Pittsburgh I always say it and it never fails to make them smile!
Thanks for including Cajun! Growing up near Louisiana, having a cajun stepmother, going to college in the heart of Cajun country & living in Louisiana for more than a decade, I felt like I was home again. Back in the early-to-mid 1800s, there was a clash between Louisiana culture & the incoming American culture - centered around New Orleans. American culture won that war, but Cajun culture has survived by keeping to itself around southwestern Louisiana. State politics seems to assist in this isolation by largely disregarding the southwest during sessions in Baton Rouge. Our parents insisted we become educated, successful Americans, and to improve our English. Personally, it was acting in the school theatre that prompted me to improve my English skills. It makes me feel sad to think that we’re gradually losing contact with Cajun culture, but I’m pretty sure language & history just work that way naturally. At least I still have my Texas side!
I’m from BR and most of my family, even my French-speaking grandparents, have close to mainstream American accents (since it sounds more “educated” apparently). Some of my more distant relatives in SW LA have strong Cajun accents (and I’d love to add that they’re plenty educated!). I learned European French and I’m making it my mission to learn Cajun French to hang on to that culture for dear life! Vie ta culture!
I grew up in small town Vermont, and vividly remember my first grade teacher admonishing us about our accents. She was very derogatory about them, insulting both us, her young students and farmers , She scolded us for dropping our gs at the end of ing words (workin' instead of working) and ar sounds (we tended to say faam instead of farm). In a very snooty manner, she told us we all sounded like old farmers. Her tone of voice was so firm, we were to understand that sounding like a farmer was a horrible thing. I know it shaped my feelings about the good people who grow our food, very unfairly, for a number of years. Accents are not just a collection of sounds, they are part of the rich tapestry of our history and culture . Editing to add that I am in my 60s, so not only is that accent mostly gone now, so are most of the farmers. It's a vastly different culture now.
We have the same thing in Australia, my broad accent and strine dialect saw me singled out by teachers. "Tawkin' loik this, really mayd 'em stroppy and even sent a few tropo. But it's me mutha tung an' i jus' Kahnt do it, 'avin to finish and start words properly always got me danda up, I moin it's 'ard Yakka, what's wrong with "cooee cobber shargs in the billabong"?"
My father was a Pittsburgh native. Born in a blue collar neighborhood in 1950, and he didn't have the yinzer accent. While some Pittsburghese was in his lexicon, neither he, nor the rest of my family there, really sounded that way. By the time I first lived there, in the 90s, the yinzers were the odd man out, there. These days it is uncommon enough that hearing a true yinzer in the wild can catch you off guard.
I was born, bred and still live in Pittsburgh, the Paris of Appalachia I've been told. Yes, people seem embarrassed now speaking Pittsburghese but it's still around, many still speak right here, including myself and my family! Love the Myron clip btw!
In 1994, I was 20 years old. I was working as an intern at NATO in Brussels. I went to meet a girl I was dating at the US Embassy via shuttle bus that ran from NATO to the Embassy. I was talking a woman, another American, on the bus while waiting to leave. She finally stopped our conversation and asked where I was from, because I had "absolutely no discernable accent". She was a PhD student in linguistics and said that I was the first person she'd come across who she couldn't pinpoint where I was from. That story has stayed with me...I love that feature about me :)
I will say, I grew up in Texas and when I moved to south Florida, I had to flatten my accent for anyone to understand me. However, it definitely comes back the second I meet someone from back home, or when I visit. And if you want to laugh, it happens in Spanish as well. My accent in Spanish is a combination of Cuban and Spaniard (wildly different), but it leans more heavily in one direction, depending on whom I'm speaking with. 😆
That's something universal. It's called "code switching", when people unconsciously switch their accents depending on who they are talking with. Sometimes people get accused of being phony when they code switch, but it happens without thinking
@@vampiro4236 I notice when I hear another person from Miami speak on video or in movies then it's really noticable. Andy Garcia , Oscar Isaac, Gloria Esteban, Alex Rodriguez
I grew up in North Atlanta and am a gen X. In the Atlanta suburbs it’s really its own little accent like it was a mix between valley girl and southern like “omg let’s go to chick-fil-aaaaaa guys” it’s still slow but with just a little bit of southern accent. It’s pretty unique I fear it too is going away though with the gen Z’ers but I still hear it with my friends. Thanks for an awesome video.
I was just thinking about how the Birmingham suburbs spawned a lovely and particular accent, different from the country accents that seem more prevalent. I mostly hear it from the older folks, the ones who use the term "likta" and tell you "well aren't you a sight for sore eyes!" And yet despite growing up here, I didn't inherit that accent. People ask me all the time where I'm from, and no one can place it. I'm sure a lot of accents are doomed if even the locals aren't brought up using it.
I was born and raised in northeastern Indiana, my dad was from Boston, I lived in Chicago for 18 years and I now live in Orlando, Florida- so I have a hodgepodge of accents to contend with!
I moved to SF in 1983 and was there for about a year before I heard this old man with a very strange accent that I had never heard before. I was shocked when he told me he was SF born and bred-and that the accent was at one time common in the Mission District and surrounding neighborhoods, but by that time it only survived among the few older working class families native to the Outer Mission and Excelsior districts. I lived there for ten years and never heard the accent again.
I’m 29 and very much have a Brooklyn accent, though none of the guys I grew up with have one. Definitely not as common as it once was, but it isn’t dying.
Have you even been here? “Southern accent” is NOT one thing. There are dozens of regional accents in the South. They certainly are not dying out amongst the young people I work with in Mississippi, and have in Southern Alabama and central Louisiana. I hear at least four distinct strong Mississippi dialects every day spoken by people in their 20s and younger.
I'd say you are in a working class sector, and also, the issue gets more complex when race is brought into the mix. Your area would be a "holdover" compared to a lot of more urbanized areas.
@Kerryjotx yeah, but is that strong enough to represent an actual urban area. It also requires a high number of non-Southerners, and a certain solid percentage of college educated, to push niche accents out of the way.
The vast majority of the employees have at least one degree and many have two to three, including MSN, MD, DO, and PhD. I am not going to to try to prove what we all know and hear.
Espescially when they come from New Jersey. I come from a family of teachers. My brother's voice assimalated for him at age 8 when we moved to southern Kentucky from Hamilton, Ohio, develeping a twang so thick you could cut it with a knife. I cringe when I hear pronounçe long vowels with short and turn one syllable words into 2, ice pronnounced ass, them pronounced thee um, on pronounced as own, water prononounced warter, wash pronounced as warsh, school prononounced as skoo, ect make.
@@randyallen4959so im from sw ohio 24 rigjt, i hear hamilton has a lot of transplants or residents whose ancestors (parents grandparents to a degree) are from kentucky because i grew up in hamilton county right (suburbs) moved to butler county when i was 14 with my family and man id think im in kentucky talking to anyone especiallu older people
It's very kind of her to mention that they say "stand in line." Ever since I ventured beyond the NY metro area, everyone reacted to "stand on line" as if it were an absurd turn of phrase!
I live on the periphery of Appalachia in Southwest VA. My accent is mild compared to many in my town, and I try to cover it up a bit when recording, but I get a lot of RUclips comments of people pointing it out. Most say the love it because the accent is rare on RUclips but I receive almost equally as many telling me my accent makes me sound like an idiot.
I live in Southern West Virginia and the Appalachian accent here is still pretty strong. There definitely are some young people that try to erase their accent here but those people usually leave. So at least where I live it doesn´t seem to be going anywhere.
The only idiots are the ones in your comment section telling you that they don't like your accent! How freaking rude! I've heard a few people on this particular channel with an accent and I really like it!
Well, we ought to pity them. They don’t have any sweet memories of Grandma standing in her cotton dress, hands on her hips calmly telling them and countless cousins, “Yoins et nah. Yah nit tah kip yah stringth up, then git on ta bet an seh yah prayers.” Also their Grandmas definitely couldn’t quote the whole Bible, like it’s no big deal. That’s love they never had.
I remember moving to New York state as a kid, from California. My mom talked about going into a store and asking for some socks and "the sacks" were her first introduction to a language change.
In Panama City Florida they went "over town". I suspect it's because the bays make it possible to see the town "over there" from the small communities surrounding Panama City. In Texas I heard "pitch white" as a descriptor, they were baffled when I said "pitch is black". It's just an expression, was their answer. It was the first time I ever saw someone eat from a hand-held large block of cheese. In our store a customer asked me if we had any cool "pops", even though I had been born in Texas, I failed to understand him. It was PIPES he was asking about, as in bongs. Sound substitutions are bizarre!
I knew an Israeli psychologist who was fluent in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, German, French, and Arabic, who threw his hands up, trying to understand someone from West Virginia.
I am fascinated by the Appalachian and Ocracoke brogue accent, because my mother-in-law who grew up Outside Fayetteville, North Carolina sounds like her accent is exactly split down the middle of those two. How wild! 😊
"Down east" Carteret County, NC, here. There are still some local folks who speak with a thick brogue, but it's dying-out fast. The area isn't as isolated as it once was, and is a HUGE influx of people moving in from elsewhere.
As someone who lived both on the coast of NC and in the Blue Ridge, I can speak with both accents as well as a northern one since my parents were from the Midwest.
I'm in north texas, and yeah dallas especially feels like its losing its accent, but there's a lot of people coming from out of state so i'm sure thats also contributing. Most people I know born in Texas still have an accent, and i refuse to change mine, although I used to when I was younger.
Gosh, the accents in the now-DFW Metroplex have changed drastically over the decades. Listen to the old news footage of the JFK assassination, the way the local news reporters and anchormen sounded. Then go to the 'plex and see how people sound today. You'll still find a few vestiges of what used to be the twangiest Texas Twang ever, but in the last 60 years that twang has all but vanished completely.
59 year old born and raised in Pittsburgh. It’s a working class accent - always been - I wasn’t allowed to speak like this growing up - when I’d come home with a colloquialism I’d be corrected - my college educated parents would call it low. When the steel died and we became more of a white collar corporate city into the 80’s a lot of new folks moved in from elsewhere. They dont speak like the working class Pittsburghers. The accent is still here but not like it was when I was a kid in the 60’s & 70’s. I’d say it is kinda going away. That News Caster you had on initially speaking was a beloved Steelers announcer and radio DJ Myron Cope. He introduced our Terrible Towel.
I'm from "down east" North Carolina, on the coast. Due to it's historical isolation, the people in the area were known for speaking with a very distinct "brogue". Unfortunatly, it's disappearing quickly. Older folks passing on, a huge influx of "outlanders", and the general homogenization of American English, have taken their toll on a unique local dialect.
Some of my relatives have accemt #1, but they are older. The youngest is my 60 year old uncle. When I was 6-7 we moved to Philadelphia, but I still say 'red up the room' without it being deliberate.
Yes! I'm somewhat sad to be losing my bootheel drawl since I moved up north. Grew up in a spot where you could visit Tennessee and Arkansas on your lunch break
Sounds like we're all nearly neighbors. When I lived in southern California for a decade, I dropped my accent and imitated theirs pretty seamlessly. I just got so tired of valley girls going, "OMG your accents so cute! Can you say..." 🙄 I moved back home and it's stronger than ever😂
@@GC-fj4lcMy mom's side is from Cape Girardeau but have lived in SoCal since 1970. My mom's aunt however has lived here since 1955 and her accent is strong as any. She says Arizoner and Pianer.
I guessed a good many of these. I LOVE learning about accents and language. I've always said the quintessential southern accent is a grandchild of the British accent!
As a native yinzer. It’s still alive and well. Maybe not like it once was but I have it and lots of others around do too. It might only come out in certain words. But I also think it’s making a comeback.
I think it's just a lot softer than the caricature of it presents. Seems to always have been based on Myron Cope and the video of the woman from the 80s. I hardly noticed an accent for either of them, but any time someone intentionally affects one it feels super jarring. Not natural. But it could also be that I'm from an area where yinz is said more like yunz, so perspective.
I live in Northern California and I have heard a few older people speak with that "Mission brogue" but yeah, most of the people who spoke that way are six feet under in Colma (the city of cemeteries just south of San Francisco). It is true that many current residents of SF are not originally from there. But even someone like local sports radio talk show host Joe Shasky - a fifth generation San Franciscan with blue-collar roots - has a classic Northern California/general American accent and no trace of that old-timey accent. I can guarantee he probably knew a lot of people who spoke like that, but he certainly does not.
I am an Oakland native, and there is definitely an SF accent. It’s not as thick as the Mission Brogue anymore, but you can hear a native of The City. On the other hand, in the Central Valley anywhere between Redding and Bakersfield you can hear some people with the old Oakie accent.
Ahh... the trap that is Spanish place names in California. Americanize the pronunciation too much ("Valley Joe") and you're wrong. Go full-on correct Spanish pronunciation ("Vah-yeh-ho") and you're still wrong.
I grew up in Butler, Pennsylvania (35 miles north of Pittsburgh). There are still a decent number of people who talk like that. Some not as strong of an accent though.
20:00 - I was raised in Houston TX. In east Texas you don't "put some meat on the grill". No, instead you "put some mate own tha gree-ull." At least that's the way it was when I moved away forty years ago. Don't get me wrong, I love the way southerners talk. They are generally good, friendly, and kind-hearted gentle people. I R 1.
I'm from Brooklyn, NY - lived there 1950s to 1970s, then I moved abroad. Whenever I would go back to visit my family, I'd get to enjoy hearing the New York accents again. After being away for 10 years, I went back this year. I only heard senior citizens of around 75 years old and up speaking in the NY accent. Everyone else had a different accent now - a mix of Spanish innonations, and Sub contineet intonations,
There were more than one upper-class New York accents that no one uses any more. A perfect example is Billie Burke as Glinda the Good. Who talks like that anymore? Or Myrna Loy in the Thin Man series? Or a bunch of character actresses playing rich older women in NY, dressed-despite age and portly condition-in expensive shimmery silk and lace and velvet evening dresses-when that class always dressed for dinner. Or Kathryn Hepburn in Philadelphia Story as an upper-class Philadelphian.
12:00 - I recognized absolutely every one of those Appalachianisms! In addition to those, you aren't preparing to go and take a shower - "You fixin' ta go rainch awf." My dad was born and raised in Dalton Georgia, but early in life he rejected his native accent because he listened to radio announcers a lot, and he decided to speak like them instead. At age 25 I became a major-market radio announcer myself in Houston TX, and I did that for the next 27 years until I got a real job.
@@claudeyaz - The US "radio accent" is basically the southern Ohio (Dayton and Cincinnati) accent, because of WLW blanketing so much of the country back in the day. Used to be the same for the generic TV accent, but now it's more of a California accent instead.
I grew up in rural Arkansas and Mississippi, and a simple visit home shows many of the Southern Accent dialects are very much alive. All my nieces and nephews have accents thicker than my own.
Great video, Olly. I live in Pittsburgh, and I don't know anyone left who still speaks with a "Yinzer" accent in the city, but variations still exist in the towns around the metropolitan area and in the Monongahela Valley.
I asked a British lady once why she like American English. She said American English is easier to understand than British English. While nostalgia is great, being understand is gold.
The era of Shakespeare (1500s-1600s) coincided with eras of English Colonial Settlement in America. So that goes a way to explain where the American 'accents' generally developed. Such 'rhotic' features that distinguish an American accent generally as opposed to most English accents of England. William Shakespeare most likely sounded 'American' if we hard him today, also prior to the Great Vowel Shift in English. Additionally it is thought that as rhoticism disappeared in Upper Class England, Southern States of America desired to keep good business with Britain. Hence they dropped their rhoticism in speech to sound like the British more by then
@@RadagastTheGreat we’re correct because we pronounce things the way they’re spelled. We don’t add an unnecessary/imaginary “f” to the middle of “lieutenant”, we don’t ignore “r” in a word that does have it or place one at the end of a word that does have one. Modern British English was created in the late 19th century with the sole intention of sounding “proper” or in other words “not like other English speaking countries”. The UK made an intentional choice to pronounce words incorrectly. That is a historical fact.
I’m from Pittsburgh, until 2019. I live in Philly now, so still go back quite often. Yinzer accent is still very strong in “da sahside”, up in “cahrrck”, and other places like “mckeezpurt” or “new ken”. I still have quite a bit of the accent still in my speaking, really, since I spent almost 20 years before I moved out of Pittsburgh in the south side. Look up Pittsburgh Dad for a really good version of the current yinzer accent. And great humor.
Yes! Pittsburgh Dads is the perfect example of what the current Yinzers sound like. Still alive and well in the suburbs for sure. It’s not until you leave that you realize the vocabulary differences.
I lived in Pittsburgh for two years and it was one of the most unique cities and accents I had ever heard. A lady neighbor of the first place I lived said to me “won’t you sit daahn?” it sounded to me more like “won’t you sit darn?” I didn’t know if it was some sort of German or Dutch accent.
I grew up in Southern Illinois, largely German (Catholic and Protestant) with lots of Scots-Irish. Amusingly there are groups in New Zealand whose accent and phrasing sounds just like my older relatives.
Closest accents to what I grew up with would be the man and woman at 10:45. Makes sense in your grouping as Southern Illinois was Shawnee country. The woman could pass as my cousin with her hooded eyes.
Pennsylvanian who lives in the Pittsburgh area here. Pittsburghese is dying because of the increase in non-Pittsburghers moving to Pittsburgh (not complaining, just explaining). I will say, even outside of Pittsburgh you will find a similar sounding accent in the Southwestern areas of Pennsylvania. I was always told its due to heavy early German, Scottish, and Irish settlements in Pennsylvania.
My cousin spent her entire life in Charlotte NC as the city grew from people up north moving there for employment. One day everyone at work ( in Charlotte NC) everyone commented on her accent and wanted to know where she was from. She told them that she grew up a mile down the road in Charlotte NC.
I wasn’t quite raised in Appalachia, but not far away in middle TN with family that had thick Appalachian accents. I never thought of myself as having one until one day I finally allowed myself to completely relax when speaking and sounded closer to my grandparents than my friends. I live in the northwest now and still get sideways stares whenever I use phrases like “fixin’ to”.
Really appreciate the love for the Appalachian accent! I grew up in southeastern Ohio thinking my accent made me sound dumb, but recent media has made me wanna recapture that a little.
I grew up in Texas but had an English mother and Turkish father so maybe I did not have too strong of a Texas twang or accent growing up (but it WAS present). Then right after graduating college at UT/Austin by the way I went up to Connecticut. so most of the time I’ve lived in Connecticut or Rhode Island for the past 41 years I would say my accent has changed. I have no idea what it is anymore. Slightly Connecticut or Rhode Island New England-inflected version of a slightly Texan accent, maybe? I am fascinated by accents and I’m looking forward to your next Texas video!
12:27 grew up my whole life around people with the Appalachian accent as a Scotch Irish descendent in East TN/KY. I ran away from it and never wanted to talk that way because I thought it made you sound dumb. The older I get, the more nostalgic for it I get and I’m a reason that it’s dying out! Will be a sad day when it finally disappears.
12:49 100% that is how my grandma talked. She was from the northeastern coast of NC. It’s so unique and even my cousins talk like that still, like “Diddy” instead of “daddy” and a “slash” instead of “slice”.
Olly, if you want to hear one of the strangest and strongest accents in the US, check out Potter County, Pennsylvania. It's very distinctive and completely unique.
Is it? I'm from Central pA but often visit family in'n'around Sizerville SP and don't notice any real accent. Perhaps it's an accent shared with Snow Shoe 🤔
@bobbing4snapples Youd have to go a bit further into the north part of the county nowadays, more towards northeast. It's especially strong around the Ulysses to Cowanesque area.
Let me tell you this, now, that first older Tangier Island accent sounds like many of my kinfolk in southern Mississippi who are influenced by Cajun (coonass) English. It was as if I was listening to my Uncle Jimmy Dale who is now passed. Personally, I have worked on my very thick Southern twang over the years and most people do not reckon me being from South Mississippi. (adding French, Romanian, and Russian to the fray helps, for sure). Enjoyed the video. BTW, I have picked Russian Short Stories back up after over a year and am reading so well. Thanks for your work.
@blllllllllllllllllllrlrlrl7059 I worked to get rid of mine because I travel extensively and speak a few other languages. It is easier speaking Russian without a strong Southern accent. When I'm back around family, I can find my twang, still.
I'm a GenX raised in east TN. The accent there is very influenced by Appalachian, and I refuse to give mine up despite having lived all over the U.S. throughout my adulthood as a Navy wife. I moved to Roanoke, VA a few years ago and was surprised to discover everyone here speaks with my accent and expressions. An example: whenever a stranger apologizes for something (like getting in each other's way at the grocery store), I always respond, "You're fine!" I'd lived in so many places where people looked at me funny that I'd started wondering how/where I'd picked it up. When I moved to Roanoke, I found everyone here does that, too, and realized it was an Appalachian thing. Alas, my three sons have no real accent, and I think internet interaction is the biggest reason for that. When they were little, they'd picked up some of my accent from me. In their teens (and continuing in their early 20s), they had vocal interaction with people from all over the world. Wanting to be understood has had more impact than being raised by me.
It's not just an Appalachian thing - you here that in many Midwest states too. "Ope I'm so sorry for bumping into ya!" "oh no yer fine!" is a very common exchange in Meijers everywhere
I grew up in SF. I remember all the folks speaking that accent. It was common. Some people from the Outer Mission district would call the Inner Mission district "New York". Now I think I am going to review old Streets of San Francisco episodes for that accent...
There's the San Francisco Chinatown/North Beach accent. It's noticeable in children of immigrants who speak Cantonese to their parents at home and English outside of the home. I don't have this accent, but my childhood friend did.
How well do you know Texas accents? 👉🏼 ruclips.net/video/45DfrwXf0bA/видео.htmlsi=0JdIzsNCDFLswWe-
quebec+louisiana
I was born and raised in s-e Kansas. My mother's family has been here since 1869. My dad's family came from southern Missouri in 1902. People from all over the US think I'm from Texas...including Texans.
Standard American is falling apart because almost EVERYONE has grown up with a friend whose parent or grandparent for whom English was a second language. PLUS, real fluency in English is undervalued.
I was stationed on Ocracoke for 3 years. I still understand the dialect, and still fall back to speaking it at times. It's the closest dialect to old English left in the world.
Haha I know the Texas accent very well Texas gal born and bred and I know the Appalachian accent too my family is originally from out there and a lot of them are from the Carolinas and Virginia and Kentucky lol..and I'm part Cherokee and Irish and I keep my accent it's apart of me
I'm from the West Coast of Scotland. I emigrated to the US when I was 20 years old. I've lived mostly in the deep American South as well as parts of the NE and Illinois. I spent almost a decade living in the DFW area. There are parts of Dallas that have really large percentages of immigrants. South Asian, Middle Eastern, African etc There are still Texans that have a wonderful drawl. But I think they tend to be from more rural areas. I believe that living in large urban areas definitely affects historical dialects.
I love that my ear has become so well tuned to all the different ones. 🙂
Born and raised in Appalachia. Used to hate when my accent would come out, but in recent years, I've embraced it
Hillbilly
That sums up my experience perfectly. Southeast Tennessee, and my nana naturally has a strong accent which I subconsciously mimic when I’m around her. I used to try to speak as generic as possible, but I’ve started letting my natural rhythm come out recently.
Same
I love the Appalachian accent
As you should!
I hate that we’re losing our regional accents in the US. When I was a kid and we would travel, listening to and talking to the people who lived in our destinations made me feel like I’d gone someplace new and different. Now, wherever you go, you feel like you never left home.
Soon, all restaurants will be Mid-Atlantic.
I like this. Certain accents just kind of grate on me, and it’s good (to me, lol) to see them moderating or going away.
From a more practical perspective, it also makes it easier on immigrants. Learning a new language is difficult for a lot of people, but learning to understand a new language and a bunch of dialects / accents could be impossible. Not everyone is a linguist or a polyglot.
@@enbyharborimagine advocating for the end of cultural and linguistic diversity for a continent sized nation in favor of Hollywood/tiktok-monoculture/globalism because it “makes life easier for immigrants” .
Truly brain dead take G
Part of the reason is the widespread travel and multiple relocations during people’s lives.
Can't even understand any of these people. Just use a damn standard accent
I’m from WV and I use to hate my accent. I had speech therapy as a child and I worked so hard to try to enunciate my words to not have such a thick accent. Now I embrace it. It’s part of who I am.
me too! as a yinzer. i used to drive dahn wv though, it's not too far. now i don't live there anymore so it's hard, but i do try to embrace my childhood accent still :)
SERIOUSLY? Who sent you to SPEECH THERAPY for speaking how the people where you grew up spoke, and where did you even get this different speech therapy anyway? Had to have been where you grew up, they sure didn't ship you up to New York City for this speech therapy!
Best accent south of the Mason-Dixon line
I'm technically from WV as well, I was born in a neighboring state (MD), but grew up in WV and was there into early adulthood. Where I'm from in WV though, we really didn't have much of an accent. It wasn't southern sounding at all. We enunciated every vowel and consonant when we spoke. In fact, I left WV for England when I was 23 and EVERY person I met in England thought I was from Canada (even though I didn't say "about" like some Canadians)! lol! When I told them I was from the states, they were shocked and asked me why I didn't have the "appropriate" accent "for an American" especially a southern American...lol!
It gets even weirder... While I lived in England, I was in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. I eventually picked up that accent. Some years later I did move back to the states and had that Sheffield accent and got a lot of "Where are you from?" from my fellow Americans...lol Eventually that did stop, but my once non-southern American accent, that drifted into an Northern English accent, then drifted into the most southern sounding accent ever!...lol! That's gone now though, as I live in central Massachusetts, but haven't picked up on any strong accent. The accent where I live is all but dead now, only older folks sound like people from this area.
Can you tell them there's nothing to be ashamed of
Being a truck driver and a having a weird interest in American accents I can assure you that the yinzer accent drifts west from Pburgh across the panhandle of West Virginia and into the east side of Ohio in the Steubenville Ohio area. In my area of Columbus Ohio I can hear bits of the yinzer accent from people born and raised there. Specifically in the word “going”. They pronounce it “gowin”. Accents are awesome!
It's even funnier when you hear what sayin and gotta find out where their from 😅 cause drivin you NUTS
Livef in cols OH for awhile, yes a definite mix of accents there!
I live in Northwest Ohio and will admit to saying “gowin”.
Can confirm! Half of my family is from Pittsburgh. I grew up in Columbus. I married someone from SW VA, which is basically WV. My mom's family has a heavy Yinzer-Appalachian drawl, despite living in Ohio
I live about an hour and 45 min south east of Pittsburgh just outside of Johnstown and the accent is definitely present here and in the surrounding smaller towns. I have cousins who live in Pittsburgh and growing up we use to constantly compare the way we said certain words and then fight over who was saying them right 😂. There was a lot we said the same but definitely some we said different.
Born and raised Appalachian. A lot and I mean a TON of folks are doing the work to reclaim our accent and pushing back against the stigma. It’s ourn and ain’t goin nowhere ❤
I lived in Pittsburgh from 2018-2023. The accent isn’t as prevalent as it once was but it is still alive and well in born-and-raised Yinzers.
I lived there from 1973 to 1984. It was very prevalent then! Myron Cope (the first example of the Pittsburgh accent) was still around then.
@@arjaygee I loved Myron Cope, but that accent of his was really exaggerated.
@@JRBWare1942 Do you think he was faking it? I always wondered ... it seemed extra compared to the people I encountered in real life.
It is on its way out. No one below a certain age speaks with that accent.
@@arjaygee I think saying he was exaggerating it would be fairer than to say he was faking it.
another interesting one is the "yooper" accent. basically finnish immigrants that got trapped in the upper peninsula of michigan by themselves. the longest running talk show in television history was actually run by them, have in english and half in finnish
My husband of 34 years is a Yooper from Escanaba..He still knows a few Finnish expressions Before him, all of my boyfriends have been Michiganders. Every other gay guy that I met in Texas was from Michigan. My very Southern Sister lost her accent living in Michigan while her husband was at University in East Lansing.
@@leefi1 cool! I have family with a dairy farm in Escanaba. its funny that michiganders haunt you
I think it’s also Norwegian & Swedish influenced as well. Many of those immigrants settled in the U.P. & Northern Wisconsin
& what was or is that Talk Show on or from TV history?
@@iToldYaWRidesAway Soumi Kuustsu or "finland calling". it ended about 5 years ago as the host got too old
A good way to hear people's natural, un-selfconscious speaking patterns is in local news clip interviews of citizens when the news is reporting on real time accidents, fires, robberies, or public events like festivals, fairs, and carnivals, or job fairs. Usually, the people won't be thinking about how they are talking and will just speak authentically in the moment, unlike when doing dialect tests, where people become self-observing.
This is true. Also, if you can rattle someone's chain a little, the natural accent comes straight out. My mother in law has a fairly thick southern accent, but when she's worked up, it may as well be a different language. I only catch words here and there.
Or when they interview cops on TV. Cops always have the strongest local accents.
Well, when the dialect tests were done in the big US survey most recently, they pretended to be an ad agency doing a marketing study. When I realized years later that I'd been a respondent, I finally figured out why they'd asked me about such disparate products, and why the caller had seemed so nonplussed by some of my answers.....
@@pattieodonnell723
That's complete nonsense.
Cops are hardly ever local.
Yt democrats are the ones pushing for polices that are slowly destroying these languages.
I grew up I Louisiana. I have add a video of my dad reading night before Christmas with his S Louisiana accent for my kids. I love his soft Cajun accent. It is so comforting to me. And the use of “Me I” to refer back to the speaker is also comforting.
ya herd me⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️🥾🥾🥾🥾
Please upload that to RUclips that sounds fun
@@nola504creole5 man the young people in the nolia dont got a accent like that anymore its crazy
@@SoSikWitIt i do
@ u under 30?
Born in CT and raised in WY and having traveled 40 of the 50 states have given me a wide appreciation for the different accents. My favorite is English cajon in Louisiana. I grew up with a larger vocabulary including alternate pronunciations. In the 60s, you heard the different accents more often. Now the differences seem to have disappeared, though many people could switch to their older accent(s).
Having grown up in da ‘Burgh, but now living overseas I notice when I go back that the accent is alive. It definitely exists in some classic Pittsburgh locales such as going to the amusement parks in tawn.
Accehts live longer among the working class.
while speaking about amusement parks, let us not forget...Kennywoods open
Steelas ganna soopa bow
In da clerb we all fam
Yinz accent is def going strong today all over Western Pa, especially Johnstown, but Pittsburgh has been attracting more newcomers who don't have the accent so I can hear people taking that as its going away. Alas.
I'm from Chicago and didn't realize I had an accent until I moved downstate. After being asked where I'm from so often, I started hearing my own accent. It's a weird feeling, and what's even weirder is that I can't tell you how many people ask me if I'm from Sweden. Seriously. I get it all the time.
Da Bears ! Byack Pyack !
I lived in Las Vegas for two years, one of my best friends could identify people from Chicago by their clothing! She was a retired Psychiatric Nurse from Detroit, but she knew "sisters from Chicago" immediately!
Swedes heavily populated Chicago in the late 1800s.
You must have grown up in Andersonville ! haha!
@@cubbie8330 👍
The Charleston (SC) accent is almost totally gone too. Only ever heard it in Silent Generation ladies who lived “south of Broad St.” Truly beautiful
I'm from Charleston, my family has been there since the early 1700s, and the last generation in my family to have a strong Charleston accent are my grandparents. It makes me so sad, I say a lot of words with an accent, but it's nowhere near as strong as my grandpa's was.
@@Danielle-gc6ilSame here! Family landed in Charleston in the 1700s and it’s so sad now that my grandparents’ accents are rarely, if ever, heard anymore. If someone wants to hear what it sounds like, watch some old videos of Senator Fritz Hollings. I sure do miss hearing that while running errands around town, back when Charleston was small. Hugo brought in a lot of outsiders, then the internet introduced a lot of other accents, so the real Charleston accent got so watered down it’s nearly gone. 🙁
The oldest living generation of my family has the Charleston accent. I grew up in Georgia though and missed out. I really treasure any opportunity to hear a Charleston accent.
@@RainyJan309 I still have a lot of the vestiges of that accent, as we live in an old, fairly insulated part of Mt. Pleasant where natives are plenty. I find myself calling my son, Wade, “WAY-id” and pronouncing “here” as “hair.” 😄
I was going to mention this one as well. We almost never hear it anymore.
I worked in a call center 5 years ago that took calls nationally. Yes those accents still exist. I wish we still had the accents from the 40’s And 50’s.
My mom, from Dormont, PA (northwestern PA), always said “gum band” for rubber band and “redd up” for straightening up or declutterring the house (or a room). We stand in line or wait in line; standing on, or waiting on line is totally a New York thing.
We say "on line" in North Jersey too.
We also say "down the shore". In New Jersey you have to go down the shore to go to the beach.
You can't go to the beach unless you're down the shore.
It's a Jersey thing.
Alabama gal here, there are so many different southern accents that ‘experts’ seem to have glanced over. Just my daughter’s accent is so much more country than mine, despite being raised 15 miles away.
Yes. So many!
Fr I grew up in mobile, southern accents range a lot.
They really do!
Yes. All the city accents sound mostly the same, but the rural accents vary so much.
I used to hate my northern RI (Worcester corridor) accent. Then I went to high school in Honolulu and fell in love with pidgin. Mixed that in with my native accent, got back home to RI after graduation...and none of my friends could understand me. I LOVE ALL accents now and I do not want a single one to die. It is part of who we are. Been back in New England for ever...and I watch Andy Bumatai on youtube just to hear the beloved pidgin.
What is amazing is that the negative baggage of one accent is cherished in a totally different place. My mild Appalachian accent is thought of poorly in my area but Northerners are fascinated with it. If you came to Atlanta they wouldn't think poorly of your Worcester accent.
That rings true! I wonder if it similar to liking certain music or art styles. I do like thinking of regional accents as an artform!
Do they like to drop their Rs in Atlanta, too?
I went to Providence College in the early 70s. We outer of staters would make fun of the local accent and always say “Wusta”
No matter where we go, we can't escape our NE accent. I had a strong one I wasn't proud of, but in Germany and Russia they loved it.
The Pidgin island boy accent is so nice sounding.
I live in Central Pennsylvania, and the Yinzer accent has definitely spread out to at least the Appalachians in PA. It’s crazy how you can hear the accents start to flip more towards Philly and Jersey once you cross the Susquehanna.
Yinzer was everywhere when I was in college. We rented a ski house once outside Seven Springs, and were awaiting the arrival of someone named Dawn - I was surprised that Dawn was a guy named Donald. They were also talking about a baseball player named Bawns. Took me a while to see it was Barry Bonds. The only thing I picked up myself was not the accent but one of its sentence constructions "that bed needs made" or "the floor needs swept"
And BTW: The ugliest accent is my own - a Philadelphia accent. Have worked my whole life to get rid of it. The University of Pennsylvania has always had a prestigious linguistics program, so they've been studying it for years.
@@pattieodonnell723Add my cousin Jawnie to your list! He and my brother Chon made quite the pair 😉!
In York County, they have all different types of accents just in that one county. I moved to York from Northern New Jersey and have an entirely different accent so I can tell even from one part of a town to the other the accent changes.
@@michelebella677 I hear you. You hear them all up at Penn State, and they are different. Once when I was home from college, I asked one of my mom's friends, based on her accent, "Are you from Allentown?" She frowned at me. "NO. I'm from EASTON." I can tell a Philadelphian who went to Catholic school from a Jewish Philadelphian from the Northeast from a Main Line WASP, all of whom still have Philly accents, just all a little different.
That’s funny it sounds a bit Philly to me
Yinzer and Appalachian basically blur together, I grew up a north of the Burgh but everyone spoke with both sets of words. Jumbo, gumband, crick, buggy, rid up, yinz, pop/ sody-pop, britches, fixin, allow, tater, winder… all those were quite common in throughout most of western PA.
Also, love the Myron Cope clip at the beginning of the Pittsburgh section. A true legend of the city.
Pittsburgh is "the Paris of Appalachia." 😄
I live in central PA, and before you revealed it was the Philly accent I was like “where… is the accent? What am I missing?”
I have a mix of Philly, Pittsburg, & PA Dutch more so in grammar than speech. Never really noticed until the military when a few people pointed it out.
I've lived in Southeastern PA all my life and my Southern wife makes fun of me for saying "wooder."
I lived in Appalachia (as a Chicagoan) for half a year. Crazy way of talking, loved it. The youngest in the family (now ~30) dropped the accent and was more of a city guy, the rest retained it
My grandpa was a Pittsburgh Slovak and his brother, who is still alive, has a strong Yinzer accent. But he’s in his 80s, I don’t think the younger generations have it.
My family is Chicago Polish/Slovak and honestly the yinzer accent sounds like a combination of our accent with a Philly accent.
I live in Pittsburgh. Both of my parents are from here but I wasn't born or raised here. Anyway, my older relatives, 60+ have the Yinzer accent hardcore. Their children don't
@dqarqeer8603 Some don't have it, but some I know have it as much as any old timer from the Burgh. I was far enough out of town that the "Yinz" was more like "Youns".
I once asked my high school English teacher how to spell it and he said younz! Lol It was/is very specific to parts of Southwestern PA and my family says it and surely always will 🙂
My family is also of Pittsburgh Slovak/Carpatho Rusyn heritage (with some others mixed in) from Braddock/Swissvale/Homestead and Hazelwood/Greenfield neighborhoods of the city. Some had a very strong dialect while others had almost none like they just did not pick it up for whatever reason. One odd thing I have noticed is that while "Yinz" is widely used for plural you the word "Youse" or "Yous" is also used, just not by everybody. I recall family members mixing Yinz and Yous in the same sentence of a conversation. We had some extended family down in Fayette County that had a significantly different sound and intonation to my ears when they spoke.
“There's a southern accent, where I come from
The young 'uns call it country
The Yankees call it dumb
I got my own way of talkin'
But everything is done, with a southern accent
Where I come from” -Thomas Earl Petty
Great song, but Johnny Cash did a cover that really hits.
im a yankee and i love the southern accent
its got a rhythm to it that just sounds pleasant
Mississippi
Nonsense, we Yanks LOVE the southern accent.🥰
The southern accent comes in its own special flavors pack
My husband was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Queens and moved to Florida years ago. He still has his accent and he's proud of it. A's are R's and R's are A's. Banana is Bananer. Brenda is Brender.
I speak like this ...I'm a Yinzer and proud of it. I was a teenager in the 70's.
I'm originally from Pittsburgh and I can detect the accent immediately even when travelling throughout Europe or other countries. It's not disappearing! It's well ingrained in western Pennsylvania.
Swear
Accents are just so fascinating. If you haven't watched Erik Singer's videos on accents in the United States, I HIGHLY recommend it!
They are awesome. And he is so good at reproducing them!
In deep Appalachia, we still have our accents. I can code-switch quite well, though.
even out in the foothills in Southern Appalachia, we've still got it
Sadly, the Arkansas Variant is about gone.
Code switching...the funnest hobby!
My cousins from around Asheville refer to something small as "beety".
@@Flies2FLL eety beety 😂
I'm older and grew up Southern American regional accents and went camping often on Tangier Island. I have a great ear for mimicry which has helped me immensely in 60 years of acting, dialect coaching, pronunciation and elocution. I really enjoyed your video.
As a Virginia Appalachian I can confirm we still sound like that and we’re damn proud of it.
W
And you should be
I love different accents.
Things really started to change in The US when television became more prominent. As more people got electricity in rural areas, they got TVs the accents got much softer and more homogenized, towards TV broadcast type of speech.
Not just television but travel. Interstates and aircraft made going from one place to another so much easier. I remember growing up in the northeast. I could tell a Queens accent from a Brooklyn accent.
My accent migrates. We moved a lot when I was a kid, so I tend to fall into what I hear around me.
That's a form of code-switching. I've noticed, among children of immigrants, even when they're speaking English - if they're speaking amongst their friends, they'll speak in a "standard" dialect, but when talking to their parents (even when speaking English) they adopt the accented English their parents speak.
Military brat here
This video isn't correct. The word "grit" is a Germanic word so he needs to correct that. I am sick of it. The slow erasure and change is real.
A chameleon
Me too. I have KS accent, TX Southern accent, WY accent & talk fast. Army brat, so I picked up all that.
Proud Yinzer here! Although I grew up about an hour east of Pittsburgh, in the mountains. The dialect in the mountains, only an hour drive and its completely different accent and dialect. Little more of a southern accent… I just find this all so fascinating 🌹
My Dad had the Brooklyn Accent (born and raised Brooklyn New Yorker). It got watered down over the years while i was growing up in Mass. But when he got riled up, the Brooklyn accent came in STRONG.. haha ....I miss hearing it some times. RIP Dad
This’s just the most intriguing accent video I’ve ever seen, thank you 🙏!!! You’ve tied 3 childhood memories together for me so far & ain’t even watched it through!!! I grew up vacationing in The Outer Banks of North Carolina, Whalehead & Corolla area, but when we’d go pick up blue crab from the fishery up Nagshead way back in the 80’s those fellas definitely sounded like pirates!!! Good Show friend!!!
I had a professor from Pittsburgh (he wore a Pirates hat to class when his team won the ‘79 World Series) and I was baffled at first by his accent. It was unique among U.S. cities.
I had a boyfriend from Pittsburgh. He always pronounced measure as "maysure." Then I realized that Mr. Rogers (also from that neck of the woods) said it the same way on his TV show.
My parents were raised speaking with Appalachian accents. When they got married, they moved around the Midwest, following where my father was stationed with the Air Force. It didn't take them long at all to lose their accents. People didn't take my parents seriously when they spoke with their Appalachian accents; my parents were written off as poorly educated, even though they weren't. I carry on the Midwestern accent that they learned.
I used to have a slight accent when I was younger, but then I purged it to fit in. After I graduated high school, I began to get involved with dialectology and realized that one's accent is something to be proud of, not ashamed. Since I know that my home accent is dying out, I have deliberately tried to reinvigorate my old speech patterns. Currently, it is not consistent; but I hope in due time that I will be able to. If you're curious, I grew up in Mid-Eastern Ohio, and so I have a mixture of that Ohio-river and Western Pennsylvanian twang.
I was a nurse in an Endoscopy Department in Athens GA. One of our docs,Dr.C.Kretzschmar,husband was a linguist at UGA. We were all self conscious of our southern accents when he stopped by!!
HA!!! I live in delco south east PA but I have aunt who's from Pittsburgh I had never heard "Yins" till she met my uncle 30 years ago and every time i see her being Thanksgiving that happened to be tonight I always greet her with "How yins doin" and any time someone tells me there from Pittsburgh I always say it and it never fails to make them smile!
Thanks for including Cajun! Growing up near Louisiana, having a cajun stepmother, going to college in the heart of Cajun country & living in Louisiana for more than a decade, I felt like I was home again. Back in the early-to-mid 1800s, there was a clash between Louisiana culture & the incoming American culture - centered around New Orleans. American culture won that war, but Cajun culture has survived by keeping to itself around southwestern Louisiana. State politics seems to assist in this isolation by largely disregarding the southwest during sessions in Baton Rouge. Our parents insisted we become educated, successful Americans, and to improve our English. Personally, it was acting in the school theatre that prompted me to improve my English skills. It makes me feel sad to think that we’re gradually losing contact with Cajun culture, but I’m pretty sure language & history just work that way naturally. At least I still have my Texas side!
From SW Louisiana and I feel like you’ve articulated this perfectly.
I’m from BR and most of my family, even my French-speaking grandparents, have close to mainstream American accents (since it sounds more “educated” apparently). Some of my more distant relatives in SW LA have strong Cajun accents (and I’d love to add that they’re plenty educated!). I learned European French and I’m making it my mission to learn Cajun French to hang on to that culture for dear life! Vie ta culture!
I live in Terrebonne Parish.
The accent is certainly ebbing away with each successive generation - especially after Gen X.
meh, I don’t have no accent, me. it’s everybody else.
I grew up in small town Vermont, and vividly remember my first grade teacher admonishing us about our accents. She was very derogatory about them, insulting both us, her young students and farmers , She scolded us for dropping our gs at the end of ing words (workin' instead of working) and ar sounds (we tended to say faam instead of farm). In a very snooty manner, she told us we all sounded like old farmers. Her tone of voice was so firm, we were to understand that sounding like a farmer was a horrible thing. I know it shaped my feelings about the good people who grow our food, very unfairly, for a number of years. Accents are not just a collection of sounds, they are part of the rich tapestry of our history and culture . Editing to add that I am in my 60s, so not only is that accent mostly gone now, so are most of the farmers. It's a vastly different culture now.
What an awful teacher. I’m sorry…
Yep, now you're all a bunch of woke pansies... just like that teacher wanted. Just being real, no offense
I’m so sorry you experienced that! Thank you for sharing
We have the same thing in Australia, my broad accent and strine dialect saw me singled out by teachers. "Tawkin' loik this, really mayd 'em stroppy and even sent a few tropo. But it's me mutha tung an' i jus' Kahnt do it, 'avin to finish and start words properly always got me danda up, I moin it's 'ard Yakka, what's wrong with "cooee cobber shargs in the billabong"?"
@kingbillycokebottle5484 I'm sorry that your teachers tried so hard to change your authentic dialect. 💜
My father was a Pittsburgh native. Born in a blue collar neighborhood in 1950, and he didn't have the yinzer accent. While some Pittsburghese was in his lexicon, neither he, nor the rest of my family there, really sounded that way.
By the time I first lived there, in the 90s, the yinzers were the odd man out, there. These days it is uncommon enough that hearing a true yinzer in the wild can catch you off guard.
I was born, bred and still live in Pittsburgh, the Paris of Appalachia I've been told. Yes, people seem embarrassed now speaking Pittsburghese but it's still around, many still speak right here, including myself and my family! Love the Myron clip btw!
In 1994, I was 20 years old. I was working as an intern at NATO in Brussels. I went to meet a girl I was dating at the US Embassy via shuttle bus that ran from NATO to the Embassy. I was talking a woman, another American, on the bus while waiting to leave. She finally stopped our conversation and asked where I was from, because I had "absolutely no discernable accent". She was a PhD student in linguistics and said that I was the first person she'd come across who she couldn't pinpoint where I was from. That story has stayed with me...I love that feature about me :)
I will say, I grew up in Texas and when I moved to south Florida, I had to flatten my accent for anyone to understand me. However, it definitely comes back the second I meet someone from back home, or when I visit.
And if you want to laugh, it happens in Spanish as well. My accent in Spanish is a combination of Cuban and Spaniard (wildly different), but it leans more heavily in one direction, depending on whom I'm speaking with. 😆
That's something universal. It's called "code switching", when people unconsciously switch their accents depending on who they are talking with. Sometimes people get accused of being phony when they code switch, but it happens without thinking
I just mentioned the Miami accent. Even white people from Miami sound Cuban.
@@Shinobi33 It's funny how many people in Miami don't think they have one, when it is so distinct.
@@vampiro4236 I notice when I hear another person from Miami speak on video or in movies then it's really noticable. Andy Garcia , Oscar Isaac, Gloria Esteban, Alex Rodriguez
I grew up in North Atlanta and am a gen X. In the Atlanta suburbs it’s really its own little accent like it was a mix between valley girl and southern like “omg let’s go to chick-fil-aaaaaa guys” it’s still slow but with just a little bit of southern accent. It’s pretty unique I fear it too is going away though with the gen Z’ers but I still hear it with my friends. Thanks for an awesome video.
I was just thinking about how the Birmingham suburbs spawned a lovely and particular accent, different from the country accents that seem more prevalent. I mostly hear it from the older folks, the ones who use the term "likta" and tell you "well aren't you a sight for sore eyes!" And yet despite growing up here, I didn't inherit that accent. People ask me all the time where I'm from, and no one can place it. I'm sure a lot of accents are doomed if even the locals aren't brought up using it.
I was born and raised in northeastern Indiana, my dad was from Boston, I lived in Chicago for 18 years and I now live in Orlando, Florida- so I have a hodgepodge of accents to contend with!
That's very unique
I moved to SF in 1983 and was there for about a year before I heard this old man with a very strange accent that I had never heard before. I was shocked when he told me he was SF born and bred-and that the accent was at one time common in the Mission District and surrounding neighborhoods, but by that time it only survived among the few older working class families native to the Outer Mission and Excelsior districts. I lived there for ten years and never heard the accent again.
I’m 29 and very much have a Brooklyn accent, though none of the guys I grew up with have one. Definitely not as common as it once was, but it isn’t dying.
Have you even been here? “Southern accent” is NOT one thing. There are dozens of regional accents in the South. They certainly are not dying out amongst the young people I work with in Mississippi, and have in Southern Alabama and central Louisiana. I hear at least four distinct strong Mississippi dialects every day spoken by people in their 20s and younger.
I'd say you are in a working class sector, and also, the issue gets more complex when race is brought into the mix. Your area would be a "holdover" compared to a lot of more urbanized areas.
Large urban university/ medical center, surrounded by thousands with advanced degrees
And the areas in Alabama and Louisiana were also academic medical centers.
@Kerryjotx yeah, but is that strong enough to represent an actual urban area. It also requires a high number of non-Southerners, and a certain solid percentage of college educated, to push niche accents out of the way.
The vast majority of the employees have at least one degree and many have two to three, including MSN, MD, DO, and PhD. I am not going to to try to prove what we all know and hear.
7:40 Country singers grossly exaggerate Southern accents on purpose.
Espescially when they come from New Jersey. I come from a family of teachers. My brother's voice assimalated for him at age 8 when we moved to southern Kentucky from Hamilton, Ohio, develeping a twang so thick you could cut it with a knife. I cringe when I hear pronounçe long vowels with short and turn one syllable words into 2, ice pronnounced ass, them pronounced thee um, on pronounced as own, water prononounced warter, wash pronounced as warsh, school prononounced as skoo, ect make.
@@randyallen4959so im from sw ohio 24 rigjt, i hear hamilton has a lot of transplants or residents whose ancestors (parents grandparents to a degree) are from kentucky because i grew up in hamilton county right (suburbs) moved to butler county when i was 14 with my family and man id think im in kentucky talking to anyone especiallu older people
I live in wv. Accents change from holler to holler. You can travel 5 miles and hear 5 different accents.
Spent a week in Pittsburgh and absolutely heard the yinzer accent. It’s pretty rad.
It's very kind of her to mention that they say "stand in line." Ever since I ventured beyond the NY metro area, everyone reacted to "stand on line" as if it were an absurd turn of phrase!
That does sound weird. Online? How do you stand on the Internet? Lol
@@GUITARTIME2024I heard it decades before the Internet. It always made me picture someone standing in a line, sometimes even on the line of people.
I've never understood that expression. There is no visible line to stand on. You are in a group of people standing in a line!
@@kimfleury totally. It was on King of Queens, Seinfeld, etc.
It is.
I live on the periphery of Appalachia in Southwest VA. My accent is mild compared to many in my town, and I try to cover it up a bit when recording, but I get a lot of RUclips comments of people pointing it out. Most say the love it because the accent is rare on RUclips but I receive almost equally as many telling me my accent makes me sound like an idiot.
I live in Southern West Virginia and the Appalachian accent here is still pretty strong. There definitely are some young people that try to erase their accent here but those people usually leave. So at least where I live it doesn´t seem to be going anywhere.
The only idiots are the ones in your comment section telling you that they don't like your accent! How freaking rude! I've heard a few people on this particular channel with an accent and I really like it!
Accents add flavor. Anybody assigning intelligence by accent is the true idiot.
Well, we ought to pity them. They don’t have any sweet memories of Grandma standing in her cotton dress, hands on her hips calmly telling them and countless cousins, “Yoins et nah. Yah nit tah kip yah stringth up, then git on ta bet an seh yah prayers.” Also their Grandmas definitely couldn’t quote the whole Bible, like it’s no big deal. That’s love they never had.
@@GeographyGeek that's normal for working class regions, having a lot of locals maintaining the accent.
I remember moving to New York state as a kid, from California. My mom talked about going into a store and asking for some socks and "the sacks" were her first introduction to a language change.
In Panama City Florida they went "over town". I suspect it's because the bays make it possible to see the town "over there" from the small communities surrounding Panama City. In Texas I heard "pitch white" as a descriptor, they were baffled when I said "pitch is black". It's just an expression, was their answer. It was the first time I ever saw someone eat from a hand-held large block of cheese. In our store a customer asked me if we had any cool "pops", even though I had been born in Texas, I failed to understand him. It was PIPES he was asking about, as in bongs. Sound substitutions are bizarre!
@@leefi1cool pops ,that's what we freeze and eat as a cool treat in summer..😂😂
I knew an Israeli psychologist who was fluent in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, German, French, and Arabic, who threw his hands up, trying to understand someone from West Virginia.
I am fascinated by the Appalachian and Ocracoke brogue accent, because my mother-in-law who grew up Outside Fayetteville, North Carolina sounds like her accent is exactly split down the middle of those two. How wild! 😊
"Down east" Carteret County, NC, here. There are still some local folks who speak with a thick brogue, but it's dying-out fast. The area isn't as isolated as it once was, and is a HUGE influx of people moving in from elsewhere.
As someone who lived both on the coast of NC and in the Blue Ridge, I can speak with both accents as well as a northern one since my parents were from the Midwest.
Just south of Fayetteville in the Pembroke/Prospect area of Robeson County the Lumbee Indians speak very similar to the Ocracoke/Outerbanks brogue.
I'm in north texas, and yeah dallas especially feels like its losing its accent, but there's a lot of people coming from out of state so i'm sure thats also contributing. Most people I know born in Texas still have an accent, and i refuse to change mine, although I used to when I was younger.
We still have our accent in Fort Worth 🤠
Gosh, the accents in the now-DFW Metroplex have changed drastically over the decades.
Listen to the old news footage of the JFK assassination, the way the local news reporters and anchormen sounded. Then go to the 'plex and see how people sound today. You'll still find a few vestiges of what used to be the twangiest Texas Twang ever, but in the last 60 years that twang has all but vanished completely.
@@marlenekirkham1386
A lot of people in Fort Worth sounded almost as if they were from western Tennessee. I haven't heard that in awhile.
59 year old born and raised in Pittsburgh. It’s a working class accent - always been - I wasn’t allowed to speak like this growing up - when I’d come home with a colloquialism I’d be corrected - my college educated parents would call it low. When the steel died and we became more of a white collar corporate city into the 80’s a lot of new folks moved in from elsewhere. They dont speak like the working class Pittsburghers. The accent is still here but not like it was when I was a kid in the 60’s & 70’s. I’d say it is kinda going away. That News Caster you had on initially speaking was a beloved Steelers announcer and radio DJ
Myron Cope. He introduced our Terrible Towel.
I agree. I'm 55 and can remember the 70s when it was stronger. DVE morning show had it down with "Pants N At".
Yep, but Myron Cope had his own accent.
DOUBLE YOY !!
@@Buconoirloved Pants N’at! I still listen to it on RUclips occasionally
@ShanLH5 i miss Randy's cat, lol
Everyone listening/watching, please keep your accents 🙏🏼. I love how different people talk. It’s so interesting.
I'm from "down east" North Carolina, on the coast. Due to it's historical isolation, the people in the area were known for speaking with a very distinct "brogue". Unfortunatly, it's disappearing quickly. Older folks passing on, a huge influx of "outlanders", and the general homogenization of American English, have taken their toll on a unique local dialect.
Some of my relatives have accemt #1, but they are older. The youngest is my 60 year old uncle. When I was 6-7 we moved to Philadelphia, but I still say 'red up the room' without it being deliberate.
My great-aunt used to say to us after we visited, "Ya'll come back now, ya' hear?"
Southern MO... 'bout 15 miles er so north of the Arkansas border.
Like from the Beverly Hillbillies TV show!😁
Yes! I'm somewhat sad to be losing my bootheel drawl since I moved up north. Grew up in a spot where you could visit Tennessee and Arkansas on your lunch break
Sounds like we're all nearly neighbors. When I lived in southern California for a decade, I dropped my accent and imitated theirs pretty seamlessly. I just got so tired of valley girls going, "OMG your accents so cute! Can you say..." 🙄 I moved back home and it's stronger than ever😂
@@GC-fj4lcMy mom's side is from Cape Girardeau but have lived in SoCal since 1970. My mom's aunt however has lived here since 1955 and her accent is strong as any. She says Arizoner and Pianer.
I guessed a good many of these. I LOVE learning about accents and language. I've always said the quintessential southern accent is a grandchild of the British accent!
As a native yinzer. It’s still alive and well. Maybe not like it once was but I have it and lots of others around do too. It might only come out in certain words. But I also think it’s making a comeback.
I think it's just a lot softer than the caricature of it presents. Seems to always have been based on Myron Cope and the video of the woman from the 80s. I hardly noticed an accent for either of them, but any time someone intentionally affects one it feels super jarring. Not natural. But it could also be that I'm from an area where yinz is said more like yunz, so perspective.
The "closed captions" was fighting for its life!!! 🤣🤣🤣
I live in Northern California and I have heard a few older people speak with that "Mission brogue" but yeah, most of the people who spoke that way are six feet under in Colma (the city of cemeteries just south of San Francisco).
It is true that many current residents of SF are not originally from there. But even someone like local sports radio talk show host Joe Shasky - a fifth generation San Franciscan with blue-collar roots - has a classic Northern California/general American accent and no trace of that old-timey accent. I can guarantee he probably knew a lot of people who spoke like that, but he certainly does not.
A few people who are 65 and up maintain the accent. A few guys out in the excelsior.
I am an Oakland native, and there is definitely an SF accent. It’s not as thick as the Mission Brogue anymore, but you can hear a native of The City.
On the other hand, in the Central Valley anywhere between Redding and Bakersfield you can hear some people with the old Oakie accent.
Ahh... the trap that is Spanish place names in California. Americanize the pronunciation too much ("Valley Joe") and you're wrong. Go full-on correct Spanish pronunciation ("Vah-yeh-ho") and you're still wrong.
@ or Concord! A friend of pronounces Benicia like Valencia. Dude Ben Knee Sha.
@@rjohnson1690that combined with the Portuguese accent is really cool
I grew up in Butler, Pennsylvania (35 miles north of Pittsburgh). There are still a decent number of people who talk like that. Some not as strong of an accent though.
Trump was in Butler
@@JimmyGoldberg-ux8ik I wondered if anyone would notice.
That’s where I am, Butler, and yeah a good amount of people around here that still talk that way.
20:00 - I was raised in Houston TX. In east Texas you don't "put some meat on the grill". No, instead you "put some mate own tha gree-ull." At least that's the way it was when I moved away forty years ago. Don't get me wrong, I love the way southerners talk. They are generally good, friendly, and kind-hearted gentle people. I R 1.
My Texas grandfather, "Gwahd a' mighddy da yumed."
@@pphedup I love when old people get mad and say that its so funny to me. I'm a born and breed texan lol.
I'm from Brooklyn, NY - lived there 1950s to 1970s, then I moved abroad. Whenever I would go back to visit my family, I'd get to enjoy hearing the New York accents again. After being away for 10 years, I went back this year. I only heard senior citizens of around 75 years old and up speaking in the NY accent. Everyone else had a different accent now - a mix of Spanish innonations, and Sub contineet intonations,
There were more than one upper-class New York accents that no one uses any more. A perfect example is Billie Burke as Glinda the Good. Who talks like that anymore? Or Myrna Loy in the Thin Man series?
Or a bunch of character actresses playing rich older women in NY, dressed-despite age and portly condition-in expensive shimmery silk and lace and velvet evening dresses-when that class always dressed for dinner.
Or Kathryn Hepburn in Philadelphia Story as an upper-class Philadelphian.
12:00 - I recognized absolutely every one of those Appalachianisms! In addition to those, you aren't preparing to go and take a shower - "You fixin' ta go rainch awf." My dad was born and raised in Dalton Georgia, but early in life he rejected his native accent because he listened to radio announcers a lot, and he decided to speak like them instead. At age 25 I became a major-market radio announcer myself in Houston TX, and I did that for the next 27 years until I got a real job.
You spoke with any sort of accent?
@@claudeyaz - The US "radio accent" is basically the southern Ohio (Dayton and Cincinnati) accent, because of WLW blanketing so much of the country back in the day. Used to be the same for the generic TV accent, but now it's more of a California accent instead.
In NYC, I used to work with some ironworkers from New Foundland. Those conversations were awesome! You should check out their accents!
It's like a watered-down Irish.
Republic of Doyle
I grew up in rural Arkansas and Mississippi, and a simple visit home shows many of the Southern Accent dialects are very much alive. All my nieces and nephews have accents thicker than my own.
Great video, Olly. I live in Pittsburgh, and I don't know anyone left who still speaks with a "Yinzer" accent in the city, but variations still exist in the towns around the metropolitan area and in the Monongahela Valley.
My dad and Grandpa lived and grew up near Philly. You can still hear it in my dad when he gets loud and it made my grandpa a very intimidating man
I asked a British lady once why she like American English. She said American English is easier to understand than British English. While nostalgia is great, being understand is gold.
90% of my television viewing is British Television. Since viewing "Monty Python" on public television in the 70's, I've been hooked!
Yeah, because we pronounce things correctly and Brits don’t.
The era of Shakespeare (1500s-1600s) coincided with eras of English Colonial Settlement in America. So that goes a way to explain where the American 'accents' generally developed. Such 'rhotic' features that distinguish an American accent generally as opposed to most English accents of England. William Shakespeare most likely sounded 'American' if we hard him today, also prior to the Great Vowel Shift in English.
Additionally it is thought that as rhoticism disappeared in Upper Class England, Southern States of America desired to keep good business with Britain. Hence they dropped their rhoticism in speech to sound like the British more by then
@@Blackdiamondprod.
You’re not correct for sounding different
@@RadagastTheGreat we’re correct because we pronounce things the way they’re spelled. We don’t add an unnecessary/imaginary “f” to the middle of “lieutenant”, we don’t ignore “r” in a word that does have it or place one at the end of a word that does have one. Modern British English was created in the late 19th century with the sole intention of sounding “proper” or in other words “not like other English speaking countries”. The UK made an intentional choice to pronounce words incorrectly. That is a historical fact.
I’m from Pittsburgh, until 2019. I live in Philly now, so still go back quite often. Yinzer accent is still very strong in “da sahside”, up in “cahrrck”, and other places like “mckeezpurt” or “new ken”. I still have quite a bit of the accent still in my speaking, really, since I spent almost 20 years before I moved out of Pittsburgh in the south side.
Look up Pittsburgh Dad for a really good version of the current yinzer accent. And great humor.
Yes! Pittsburgh Dads is the perfect example of what the current Yinzers sound like. Still alive and well in the suburbs for sure. It’s not until you leave that you realize the vocabulary differences.
I work in Cahrrck 😆👍🏽
New Ken native here 👍.
''Fixing" for "getting ready" in African-American usage has long ago morphed into "fin". At least as far back the 1970s.
Finna
Fid’n
I lived in Pittsburgh for two years and it was one of the most unique cities and accents I had ever heard. A lady neighbor of the first place I lived said to me “won’t you sit daahn?” it sounded to me more like “won’t you sit darn?” I didn’t know if it was some sort of German or Dutch accent.
Fascinating content! A little hard to absorb because of the fast pace. We will listen to you even if you talk at a normal rate!
I grew up in Southern Illinois, largely German (Catholic and Protestant) with lots of Scots-Irish. Amusingly there are groups in New Zealand whose accent and phrasing sounds just like my older relatives.
Closest accents to what I grew up with would be the man and woman at 10:45. Makes sense in your grouping as Southern Illinois was Shawnee country. The woman could pass as my cousin with her hooded eyes.
Pennsylvanian who lives in the Pittsburgh area here. Pittsburghese is dying because of the increase in non-Pittsburghers moving to Pittsburgh (not complaining, just explaining). I will say, even outside of Pittsburgh you will find a similar sounding accent in the Southwestern areas of Pennsylvania. I was always told its due to heavy early German, Scottish, and Irish settlements in Pennsylvania.
Dying? It sounds like they are a separate species that do not reproduce with others and are literally dying due to habitat loss in the environment.
I would like your take on Detroit
Sounds like my folks from Bal'more, I've heard it's the Scotch-Orish
My cousin spent her entire life in Charlotte NC as the city grew from people up north moving there for employment. One day everyone at work ( in Charlotte NC) everyone commented on her accent and wanted to know where she was from. She told them that she grew up a mile down the road in Charlotte NC.
We have that here in Raleigh-Cary.
@@GUITARTIME2024 Yeah, I get that in Durham, too. I tell them "I don't have an accent, you do"! BTW I'm old enough to still call Cary "Cay-ry",
@@GUITARTIME2024OMG, yes! Scarcely a southern accent to be heard. You know what they call Cary though- containment area for relocated yankees. 😅
@Mick_Ts_Chick lol. True but it's also north and west raleigh, Apex, Morrisville
I wasn’t quite raised in Appalachia, but not far away in middle TN with family that had thick Appalachian accents. I never thought of myself as having one until one day I finally allowed myself to completely relax when speaking and sounded closer to my grandparents than my friends. I live in the northwest now and still get sideways stares whenever I use phrases like “fixin’ to”.
Really appreciate the love for the Appalachian accent! I grew up in southeastern Ohio thinking my accent made me sound dumb, but recent media has made me wanna recapture that a little.
The Texas twang is still alive and well in East Texas and most rural areas.
Montana Jordan is a prime example! 😊
I grew up in Texas but had an English mother and Turkish father so maybe I did not have too strong of a Texas twang or accent growing up (but it WAS present). Then right after graduating college at UT/Austin by the way I went up to Connecticut. so most of the time I’ve lived in Connecticut or Rhode Island for the past 41 years I would say my accent has changed. I have no idea what it is anymore. Slightly Connecticut or Rhode Island New England-inflected version of a slightly Texan accent, maybe? I am fascinated by accents and I’m looking forward to your next Texas video!
One of my favourite channels. Waiting for new episodes.
12:27 grew up my whole life around people with the Appalachian accent as a Scotch Irish descendent in East TN/KY. I ran away from it and never wanted to talk that way because I thought it made you sound dumb. The older I get, the more nostalgic for it I get and I’m a reason that it’s dying out! Will be a sad day when it finally disappears.
12:49 100% that is how my grandma talked. She was from the northeastern coast of NC. It’s so unique and even my cousins talk like that still, like “Diddy” instead of “daddy” and a “slash” instead of “slice”.
Olly, if you want to hear one of the strangest and strongest accents in the US, check out Potter County, Pennsylvania. It's very distinctive and completely unique.
I lived in Cattaraugus Co. NY back in the '70's. Potter County Pennsylvania, God's Country! Loved living there, just no enough jobs to go around 😏
Is it? I'm from Central pA but often visit family in'n'around Sizerville SP and don't notice any real accent. Perhaps it's an accent shared with Snow Shoe 🤔
@bobbing4snapples Youd have to go a bit further into the north part of the county nowadays, more towards northeast. It's especially strong around the Ulysses to Cowanesque area.
Let me tell you this, now, that first older Tangier Island accent sounds like many of my kinfolk in southern Mississippi who are influenced by Cajun (coonass) English. It was as if I was listening to my Uncle Jimmy Dale who is now passed. Personally, I have worked on my very thick Southern twang over the years and most people do not reckon me being from South Mississippi. (adding French, Romanian, and Russian to the fray helps, for sure). Enjoyed the video. BTW, I have picked Russian Short Stories back up after over a year and am reading so well. Thanks for your work.
Why would you work to get rid of your accent? Its beautiful.
@blllllllllllllllllllrlrlrl7059 I worked to get rid of mine because I travel extensively and speak a few other languages. It is easier speaking Russian without a strong Southern accent. When I'm back around family, I can find my twang, still.
I'm a GenX raised in east TN. The accent there is very influenced by Appalachian, and I refuse to give mine up despite having lived all over the U.S. throughout my adulthood as a Navy wife. I moved to Roanoke, VA a few years ago and was surprised to discover everyone here speaks with my accent and expressions. An example: whenever a stranger apologizes for something (like getting in each other's way at the grocery store), I always respond, "You're fine!" I'd lived in so many places where people looked at me funny that I'd started wondering how/where I'd picked it up. When I moved to Roanoke, I found everyone here does that, too, and realized it was an Appalachian thing.
Alas, my three sons have no real accent, and I think internet interaction is the biggest reason for that. When they were little, they'd picked up some of my accent from me. In their teens (and continuing in their early 20s), they had vocal interaction with people from all over the world. Wanting to be understood has had more impact than being raised by me.
It's not just an Appalachian thing - you here that in many Midwest states too. "Ope I'm so sorry for bumping into ya!" "oh no yer fine!" is a very common exchange in Meijers everywhere
This is really sad, America is losing it’s voice 😢
Sadder is its loss of grammar and punctuation, as demonstrated.
I grew up in SF.
I remember all the folks speaking that accent. It was common. Some people from the Outer Mission district would call the Inner Mission district "New York".
Now I think I am going to review old Streets of San Francisco episodes for that accent...
There's the San Francisco Chinatown/North Beach accent. It's noticeable in children of immigrants who speak Cantonese to their parents at home and English outside of the home. I don't have this accent, but my childhood friend did.