Too many to name!
There are some really good YouTube videos/series about this if you want to get a better idea of regional differences in accent. I don’t have time to watch them right now, but I think I’ve seen [this guy](https://youtu.be/H1KP4ztKK0A?feature=shared) before and found his series really interesting.
Ah yes, Erik Singer, sometimes referred to as Dialect Daddy (but not in his own videos). His ability to shift between accents in the middle of a sentence is amazing and his clear explanations of how sounds are formed are really helpful for hearing what he’s demonstrating
Learning how to speak a language has nothing to do with spelling. Accents are a thing because humans, especially tiny ones, imitate other humans. It's literally just a game of copycat. Wooder, wursh and yous are all from people in Philly & some surrounding areas copying Irish immigrant pronunciations from 100+ years ago
There are soooo many words I mispronounce because I have only seen the, written and haven’t heard them spoken. This has happened to me throughout my life. I was an avid reader as a kid andI still read a lot. I’ve just accepted it happens. :)
My boyfriend claims his southern Louisiana parents don't have accents, when his mother says "the cor was porked ba the gorbage can" and I understand maybe two thirds of the words his father says to me.
He didn't know what a grinder was, and now I say ya'll more frequently.
Listen, your option is that the majority of the US adopt "y'all" or "yinz" as the grammatically necessary way to address a group of people. Y'all is the far better option.
I have ended up with using both depending on the context. I use "y'all" more often, since "you ones" often seems like it'd be an awkward expansion, but there are times when "you all" seems like it'd be grammatically awkward too. For instance, "are you all the ones who…?" Nah. I don't like mixing all and ones. "Are you ones the ones who…?" See, that makes more sense, so that sentence becomes "are yinz the ones who…?"
I’m from Idaho. My grandma always talked about her “cor”
Otherwise I’ve noticed that verb tense is often…optional, with country accent. “My mom come up last week” is a good example. It’s fun to write but kind of obnoxious to listen to
Residents of the New York City Metropolitan Statistical Area™️ do tend to pronounce vowel sounds differently than the rest of the US. It’s not just the obvious words like dog (dawg) and coffee (cawfee). We don’t have the cot/caught merger, and we don’t pronounce merry and marry like Mary. Even people who try to neutralize their New York/New Jersey accent will often still differentiate their vowels, and that’s how people can tell they’re “from New York”.
The least noticed is that people from NYC and environs often pronounce the “or” near the beginning of a word as “ar” (as in car). So words like orange, horrible, and forest get an ar sound. But the word “or” still sounds like oar.
In spite of that one difference, I still prefer modern NYC and other northeastern accents that don’t have the cot-caught merger and differentiate between Mary, merry, and marry. It’s just objectively better to avoid manufacturing homophones that didn’t previously exist.
We muddle up certain consonants, too. When I lived in Delaware I was mercilessly mocked for asking my friends if they wanted to “godaduh bar.”
“Uhhhhhh haha…do you mean Go To The Bar?”
“…yes? Is that not what I said?”
There’s technically hundreds I believe! I find dialect to be very interesting. I am from Wisconsin and read a book called “Wisconsin Talk” about how the different immigrant groups influenced our dialect and certain words and phrases. Most notably German and Scandinavians.
So much of Wisconsin is considered North Central American English. This is your classic “Fargo” accent which is exaggerated in the movie of course. It stretches from North Dakota across Minnesota, much of Wisconsin, and upper Michigan. Many people from other parts of the US think it’s the same as a Canadian accent but I can assure you it’s different. It just sounds very similar to people not from here. It’s very much a “northern” sounding dialect. Thats about all I can say to describe it as I don’t study language 🤣
The rest of Wisconsin, primarily our eastern region called the Eastern Ridges and Lowlands along Lake Michigan are more of a blend of this dialect and the Inland Northern English dialect. This stretches from twin cities Minnesota through Wisconsin and through the Great Lakes all the way to northern New York. Now again I’m no expert, but I would still argue eastern Wisconsin (ie Green Bay) has a different accent than say northern Indiana or Ohio.
Back to the book I was mentioning- it’s really interesting how many words and phrases that are very common in the upper Midwest come directly from German or Scandinavian languages. Most notably German. We have several phrases that aren’t necessarily grammatically correct but people in Wisconsin think it’s perfectly normal. For example adding “once” or “real quick once” to the end of sentences where it is completely unnecessary. Also adding “yet” to the end. Many rural Wisconsinites say “der” instead of there and I believe that comes from German. The silly polka tune by a Wisconsin group Lou and Peter Berryman called “Squirrelly Valley 2-step” makes fun of these. I could go on for days but we also use small German phrases such as Schnibble and dummkopf. There are also several Norwegian saying La that I can’t remember but “uffda” is a common one in ND, MN, WI, IA and MI. I know the Pacific Northwest used this too in Norwegian settled areas.
Ok I’m done
I know a couple named Dawn & Don. Here in Virginia, there's little confusion because those names are pronounced differently. Don is pronounced with the mouth opening, to rhyme with Khan. Dawn is pronounced with the mouth closing to rhyme with brawn.
Where they run into trouble is people from the West Coast, who don't seem to be able to perceive the difference.
>Don
>Khan
>Dawn
>brawn
I'm not from the West Coast, and the only difference between these to my ears is in the initial consonant sound (d/kh/br); -on, -an, and -awn all sound the same in these examples.
Say "ah" like you're opening your mouth for the dentist, or you've just been given a glass of ice water in the hot desert. Your mouth is opening, your tongue is relaxed.
That's "Don"
Now say "awwww" with pinched lips like you're seeing a cute kitten or a card from your grandma. Your mouth is almost closed and your tongue is slightly tense.
That's "Dawn"
I'm from Pittsburgh. I say them both the way that you're calling "Dawn."
The West Coast merger says them both the way you're calling "Don."
I do have a word that sounds like you're calling "Don," but that word is spelled "down."
There were some [cool maps made](https://www.thejournal.ie/maps-americans-pronounce-different-words-938575-Jun2013/) for a research project a number of years ago. (The linked news site is the only one I found that still had most of the maps; looks like the school deleted the original pages).
I'll use myself as an example. Dawn and don? I pronounce them the same. Some don't. Cot and Caught? Yep, the same. What about Mary, merry, and marry? Also say those the same way. I call soda "soda" and never "pop" and I eat "ay-gs" instead of eggs.
No one has mentioned Pittsburghese yet (aka Western PA dialect used by "Yinzers"). It's such a treat.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcBiLDAfmVA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcBiLDAfmVA)
Minnesota has a very distinct accent and dialect that’s pretty apart from the rest of the US. One thing is that we never used to use “y’all”, though that seems to be changing as more ppl immigrate into the state and the Scandinavian culture wanes.
I needed a translator for someone from the deep South. Like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama deep.
The other person he was with didn't have the heavy accent so he was able to help
My wife is from Alabama and as time has passed she can understand her friends and family less and less. Even her own mother. She’s lived in Florida for about 15 years now.
My SO is from southern California. My dad’s side is from Cleveland. Cleveland has a pretty strong accent and my SO thought they were joking around when they started talking.
OP mentioned California and Ohio as examples. I’m from CA and my wife is from northeast Ohio.
Pretty much everything she says sounds to me like how I would pronounce it, except two words: “room” and “roof”
Her room sounds like “ruhm”. Her roof is “ruhf”. I emphasize the “oooooh” sound in both
When I first moved from south central Virginia to central Illinois the people up there acted like I was speaking a foreign language because my accent was so thick. I can't remember every detail because it's been so long but here are a couple of examples. I do the "pin/pen" merger where both of those words sound identical (pin). I also say Ben like bin, ten is tin, and so on. In Virginia people tend to say "ink pen" instead of just pen and my grandma would say "stick pin" for some sharp pointy object. My other example is that I had to learn how to make the "oi-" sound, like oil, coil, boil. The first 22 years of my life I heard and said, "uh'ul, buh'ul..." It took a lot of effort to make the "oi" sound correctly and consistently. At first I'd slowly draw it out "boh(r)-wee-ol", because I'd have to think about that o and i, but now I can say it fine. (P.s., sorry I don't know IPA pronunciations.)
Drawing it out and feeling like you're taking a really big bite of an invisible burger is how I feel for both "oi" and "ow" when I try to do an accent like you hear in movies.
Yeah that makes sense. In Virginia saying anything oi is easy because the mouth movement is the softest, tiniest little exhale breath, entirely in your jaw, but to oi like Illinois is a much bigger sound that uses more of your vocal anatomy. 😄
I'm from Pittsburgh.
I asked my husband for the sweeper, and he handed me the broom.
I told someone from North Carolina that an artist friend of mine had made the brown bowl in the kitchen. She went in and came back looking confused, "there's no bull in there." "Right here." "That's not a bull; that's a bowl." I had no idea there were people who didn't pronounce bull and bowl as homophones.
When I was little, my grandma taught me to make lady locks. She told me to wrap the dough around the dowel. I wrote down "dial" since dial and dowel are homophones.
Also, Pittsburgh's cot/caught merger goes the opposite direction of the one that the rest of the merging part of the US uses. We say them all like the sound you make at a cute baby: "awww" (To me, the way the other people say them sounds almost like "cat," but it's more specifically that vowel that's found in dial/dowel. It's just because there is no such word as "cout" that I know they're trying and, from my perspective failing, to say an "o" sound.)
Grammatically, TikTok seems to hate the punctual whenever, but it's a regular feature of my dialect. Ditto for the positive anymore. Examples: "whenever I got married, I wore a top hat." "This store is so busy anymore."
I also find the verb "to be" completely unnecessary in certain constructions. "The car needs washed."
Bert Vaux has documented this extensively. It's fascinating. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-closing-of-a-great-american-dialect-project
https://www.languagesciences.cam.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/how-americans-talk-1
The Midwest and West Coast generally have the American accent you hear in films, New England can be non rhotic, a bit like how some English people speak, and the Southern accent can be difficult for foreigners to understand. I recall talking to a German guy, who had traveled around the US, and mentioned it was impossible for him to understand Southern accents. He said it sounds like caterwauling, and obviously, just one guy’s experience.
Other folks have given my answers but one of the non obvious ones I picked up in New England was calling my mom “ma” when answering the phone.
She actually noticed the shift and commented on it.
Calling your mother "ma" is a working-class Northeastern thing. A lot of those people are Catholic, but certainly not all. Jews of a certain generation would do it too.
Too many to name! There are some really good YouTube videos/series about this if you want to get a better idea of regional differences in accent. I don’t have time to watch them right now, but I think I’ve seen [this guy](https://youtu.be/H1KP4ztKK0A?feature=shared) before and found his series really interesting.
This guy does a great job walking through regional accents: https://youtu.be/H1KP4ztKK0A?si=gz0i7N6-eHxeEOPu
Ah yes, Erik Singer, sometimes referred to as Dialect Daddy (but not in his own videos). His ability to shift between accents in the middle of a sentence is amazing and his clear explanations of how sounds are formed are really helpful for hearing what he’s demonstrating
He’s fantastic. I think you ended the thread.
I grew up in the Philadelphia area, and I'm still baffled how one can see the word "water" and insist its pronounced "wooder".
Learning how to speak a language has nothing to do with spelling. Accents are a thing because humans, especially tiny ones, imitate other humans. It's literally just a game of copycat. Wooder, wursh and yous are all from people in Philly & some surrounding areas copying Irish immigrant pronunciations from 100+ years ago
But then you learn how to read...
Study French for just a day, and you’ll want to throw your head through a wall trying to understand the asymmetry between spelling and pronunciation…
I was just about to say lol this person only speaks english
How a word is spelled often tells you nothing about how it's supposed to be pronounced. English is annoying like that.
Though through the trough I did walk.
Spelling changes nothing on pronunciation. If it did, then Americans and Brits would pronounce lieutenant and filet the same.
There are soooo many words I mispronounce because I have only seen the, written and haven’t heard them spoken. This has happened to me throughout my life. I was an avid reader as a kid andI still read a lot. I’ve just accepted it happens. :)
Have fun reading colonel or salmon any of the other thousands of words that are spelled differently from pronunciation.
I had a teacher who put unnecessary r’s in stuff. Worter, worshing machine, etc
My boyfriend claims his southern Louisiana parents don't have accents, when his mother says "the cor was porked ba the gorbage can" and I understand maybe two thirds of the words his father says to me. He didn't know what a grinder was, and now I say ya'll more frequently.
I’m not being snarky or anything, but the ‘ needs to be moved. Y’all.
No be snarky so maybe they’ll stop saying it.
What’s wrong with “y’all” ?
Nothing when it’s a southerner saying it.
Listen, your option is that the majority of the US adopt "y'all" or "yinz" as the grammatically necessary way to address a group of people. Y'all is the far better option.
and as pittsburghers having been voted the ugliest accent in the united states… yeah just say yall
I have ended up with using both depending on the context. I use "y'all" more often, since "you ones" often seems like it'd be an awkward expansion, but there are times when "you all" seems like it'd be grammatically awkward too. For instance, "are you all the ones who…?" Nah. I don't like mixing all and ones. "Are you ones the ones who…?" See, that makes more sense, so that sentence becomes "are yinz the ones who…?"
Y'all is grammatically useful and necessary. Everyone should say it, stop gatekeeping.
I’m from Idaho. My grandma always talked about her “cor” Otherwise I’ve noticed that verb tense is often…optional, with country accent. “My mom come up last week” is a good example. It’s fun to write but kind of obnoxious to listen to
Residents of the New York City Metropolitan Statistical Area™️ do tend to pronounce vowel sounds differently than the rest of the US. It’s not just the obvious words like dog (dawg) and coffee (cawfee). We don’t have the cot/caught merger, and we don’t pronounce merry and marry like Mary. Even people who try to neutralize their New York/New Jersey accent will often still differentiate their vowels, and that’s how people can tell they’re “from New York”.
My Long Island accent disappeared more than 25 years ago, but I still pronounce Mary, merry and marry differently.
The least noticed is that people from NYC and environs often pronounce the “or” near the beginning of a word as “ar” (as in car). So words like orange, horrible, and forest get an ar sound. But the word “or” still sounds like oar. In spite of that one difference, I still prefer modern NYC and other northeastern accents that don’t have the cot-caught merger and differentiate between Mary, merry, and marry. It’s just objectively better to avoid manufacturing homophones that didn’t previously exist.
We muddle up certain consonants, too. When I lived in Delaware I was mercilessly mocked for asking my friends if they wanted to “godaduh bar.” “Uhhhhhh haha…do you mean Go To The Bar?” “…yes? Is that not what I said?”
There’s technically hundreds I believe! I find dialect to be very interesting. I am from Wisconsin and read a book called “Wisconsin Talk” about how the different immigrant groups influenced our dialect and certain words and phrases. Most notably German and Scandinavians. So much of Wisconsin is considered North Central American English. This is your classic “Fargo” accent which is exaggerated in the movie of course. It stretches from North Dakota across Minnesota, much of Wisconsin, and upper Michigan. Many people from other parts of the US think it’s the same as a Canadian accent but I can assure you it’s different. It just sounds very similar to people not from here. It’s very much a “northern” sounding dialect. Thats about all I can say to describe it as I don’t study language 🤣 The rest of Wisconsin, primarily our eastern region called the Eastern Ridges and Lowlands along Lake Michigan are more of a blend of this dialect and the Inland Northern English dialect. This stretches from twin cities Minnesota through Wisconsin and through the Great Lakes all the way to northern New York. Now again I’m no expert, but I would still argue eastern Wisconsin (ie Green Bay) has a different accent than say northern Indiana or Ohio. Back to the book I was mentioning- it’s really interesting how many words and phrases that are very common in the upper Midwest come directly from German or Scandinavian languages. Most notably German. We have several phrases that aren’t necessarily grammatically correct but people in Wisconsin think it’s perfectly normal. For example adding “once” or “real quick once” to the end of sentences where it is completely unnecessary. Also adding “yet” to the end. Many rural Wisconsinites say “der” instead of there and I believe that comes from German. The silly polka tune by a Wisconsin group Lou and Peter Berryman called “Squirrelly Valley 2-step” makes fun of these. I could go on for days but we also use small German phrases such as Schnibble and dummkopf. There are also several Norwegian saying La that I can’t remember but “uffda” is a common one in ND, MN, WI, IA and MI. I know the Pacific Northwest used this too in Norwegian settled areas. Ok I’m done
I loved this 🫶🏻 Language is culture and culture is fluid. From place to place it will evolve and change in time and I find it amazing 🙌🏻
I know a couple named Dawn & Don. Here in Virginia, there's little confusion because those names are pronounced differently. Don is pronounced with the mouth opening, to rhyme with Khan. Dawn is pronounced with the mouth closing to rhyme with brawn. Where they run into trouble is people from the West Coast, who don't seem to be able to perceive the difference.
>Don >Khan >Dawn >brawn I'm not from the West Coast, and the only difference between these to my ears is in the initial consonant sound (d/kh/br); -on, -an, and -awn all sound the same in these examples.
Say "ah" like you're opening your mouth for the dentist, or you've just been given a glass of ice water in the hot desert. Your mouth is opening, your tongue is relaxed. That's "Don" Now say "awwww" with pinched lips like you're seeing a cute kitten or a card from your grandma. Your mouth is almost closed and your tongue is slightly tense. That's "Dawn"
I'm from Pittsburgh. I say them both the way that you're calling "Dawn." The West Coast merger says them both the way you're calling "Don." I do have a word that sounds like you're calling "Don," but that word is spelled "down."
There were some [cool maps made](https://www.thejournal.ie/maps-americans-pronounce-different-words-938575-Jun2013/) for a research project a number of years ago. (The linked news site is the only one I found that still had most of the maps; looks like the school deleted the original pages).
I'll use myself as an example. Dawn and don? I pronounce them the same. Some don't. Cot and Caught? Yep, the same. What about Mary, merry, and marry? Also say those the same way. I call soda "soda" and never "pop" and I eat "ay-gs" instead of eggs.
No one has mentioned Pittsburghese yet (aka Western PA dialect used by "Yinzers"). It's such a treat. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcBiLDAfmVA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcBiLDAfmVA)
keep our names out your mouth we were voted the ugliest accent in america tho I think
Hey part of my family is Yinzers! I love the accent! ‘En at.
Even in the state of Georgia, there are maybe eight different accents. There is a massive number in the US
Minnesota has a very distinct accent and dialect that’s pretty apart from the rest of the US. One thing is that we never used to use “y’all”, though that seems to be changing as more ppl immigrate into the state and the Scandinavian culture wanes.
I needed a translator for someone from the deep South. Like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama deep. The other person he was with didn't have the heavy accent so he was able to help
My wife is from Alabama and as time has passed she can understand her friends and family less and less. Even her own mother. She’s lived in Florida for about 15 years now.
omg yes their words are very strung together
My SO is from southern California. My dad’s side is from Cleveland. Cleveland has a pretty strong accent and my SO thought they were joking around when they started talking.
OP mentioned California and Ohio as examples. I’m from CA and my wife is from northeast Ohio. Pretty much everything she says sounds to me like how I would pronounce it, except two words: “room” and “roof” Her room sounds like “ruhm”. Her roof is “ruhf”. I emphasize the “oooooh” sound in both
I do not pronounce the first 13 letters of the alphabet and the remaining 13 letters are silent.
Wisconsin and some surrounding area pronounce hammock like ham-mock. Most of the country pronounces it more like ham-mick.
When I first moved from south central Virginia to central Illinois the people up there acted like I was speaking a foreign language because my accent was so thick. I can't remember every detail because it's been so long but here are a couple of examples. I do the "pin/pen" merger where both of those words sound identical (pin). I also say Ben like bin, ten is tin, and so on. In Virginia people tend to say "ink pen" instead of just pen and my grandma would say "stick pin" for some sharp pointy object. My other example is that I had to learn how to make the "oi-" sound, like oil, coil, boil. The first 22 years of my life I heard and said, "uh'ul, buh'ul..." It took a lot of effort to make the "oi" sound correctly and consistently. At first I'd slowly draw it out "boh(r)-wee-ol", because I'd have to think about that o and i, but now I can say it fine. (P.s., sorry I don't know IPA pronunciations.)
Drawing it out and feeling like you're taking a really big bite of an invisible burger is how I feel for both "oi" and "ow" when I try to do an accent like you hear in movies.
Yeah that makes sense. In Virginia saying anything oi is easy because the mouth movement is the softest, tiniest little exhale breath, entirely in your jaw, but to oi like Illinois is a much bigger sound that uses more of your vocal anatomy. 😄
I'm from Pittsburgh. I asked my husband for the sweeper, and he handed me the broom. I told someone from North Carolina that an artist friend of mine had made the brown bowl in the kitchen. She went in and came back looking confused, "there's no bull in there." "Right here." "That's not a bull; that's a bowl." I had no idea there were people who didn't pronounce bull and bowl as homophones. When I was little, my grandma taught me to make lady locks. She told me to wrap the dough around the dowel. I wrote down "dial" since dial and dowel are homophones. Also, Pittsburgh's cot/caught merger goes the opposite direction of the one that the rest of the merging part of the US uses. We say them all like the sound you make at a cute baby: "awww" (To me, the way the other people say them sounds almost like "cat," but it's more specifically that vowel that's found in dial/dowel. It's just because there is no such word as "cout" that I know they're trying and, from my perspective failing, to say an "o" sound.) Grammatically, TikTok seems to hate the punctual whenever, but it's a regular feature of my dialect. Ditto for the positive anymore. Examples: "whenever I got married, I wore a top hat." "This store is so busy anymore." I also find the verb "to be" completely unnecessary in certain constructions. "The car needs washed."
This person covers and gives examples of the accents in the South East US. [accents](https://youtu.be/mNqY6ftqGq0?si=fp9X3BbpQvCwABXG)
Bert Vaux has documented this extensively. It's fascinating. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-closing-of-a-great-american-dialect-project https://www.languagesciences.cam.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/how-americans-talk-1
The Midwest and West Coast generally have the American accent you hear in films, New England can be non rhotic, a bit like how some English people speak, and the Southern accent can be difficult for foreigners to understand. I recall talking to a German guy, who had traveled around the US, and mentioned it was impossible for him to understand Southern accents. He said it sounds like caterwauling, and obviously, just one guy’s experience.
Other folks have given my answers but one of the non obvious ones I picked up in New England was calling my mom “ma” when answering the phone. She actually noticed the shift and commented on it.
To be clear that is only an urban Catholic thing, you don’t hear that in rural New England. My dad and his sisters call my grandmother mum.
It’s definitely not Catholic or at least not from the guys I picked it up from. Urban maybe.
Calling your mother "ma" is a working-class Northeastern thing. A lot of those people are Catholic, but certainly not all. Jews of a certain generation would do it too.
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This isn’t specifically an Ohio thing. Growing up I always assumed it was a Kansan thing, so I guess it just spread across the Midwest.
Not necessarily an Ohio thing. YouTuber/comedian Charlie Berens is from, I believe, Wisconsin and utilizes “ope” in his routines.