I'm from Oregon. I have no accent. The only word I pronounce strangely is "bandana" and that is only because I choose to change the a into an e and call it "bendena". It's non-scientific silliness. Anyway, I was flying back to DC from Oregon a week ago and I noticed something rather peculiar. I've known this for a while because my mom and sister do it, but I had forgotten until I heard it again and some people next to me laughed at the absurdity. The flight attendant was telling us that the flight to Washington DC would be boarding soon. Only she didn't say Washington, she said "Warshington". This would also occur when someone mentioned doing the warsh or warshing the car. I think it's strictly a west coast thing, maybe even just Oregon. But my coworker says that her dad uses the extra R there too and he's from Texas. So maybe not.
The other word I can think of that we use in the West that I don't think is necessarily used here is "sack" as in a grocery sack. People here only use the word bag.
So I took this quiz and it predicted my accent correctly in that it showed The West as being the highest donominator... but The Midlands? I don't think so. It seems to think that people from Pennsylvania don't have an accent and I greatly disagree...
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You have a good voice for TV and radio. |
| The West | |
| North Central | |
| Boston | |
| The Inland North | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The South | |
| The Northeast | |
What American accent do you have?
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1 comment:
I'm from the Midlands, too. In fact I've never heard anybody pronounce some of the sample words in question that way...but then, I really haven't travelled to that many crooks & nannies across the U.S.
Also, have you noticed it tends to be more blue-collar folks that have accents? There's no excuse for it in this day and age, what with television and free access to education, and yet it persists. The kids in my school could choose to have a southern-style accent, or not, as they chose, and the ones who did were often the (lower-income) farm kids.
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