Britons frequently talk about how almost every block in the cities of the UK have their own dialect, and how one can identify a speaker of a certain dialect from their inflection and slang. There also seems to be a feeling that Americans, aside from a handful of Texans twanging their vowels, are much less diverse in their accents than our neighbors across the pond. Well, I don’t know about every American city, but New Orleans definitely has a lot of accents, and you can place a native in their area (Uptown, Garden District, 9th Ward, Da Parish, etc.) from their accent. Native New Orleanians also have accents distinct from those in nearby states or even in the rest of Louisiana (trust me, they know I’m from MS when I open my mouth). And much as in the British example, you can make assumptions about someone’s economic and social status from their accent.
So what other cities in the US have several different accents? I’m looking for accents endemic to that area, accents those people are raised with.
There’s always been a lot of jokes about the difference between the South St. Louis accent and the North St. Louis accent. Supposedly the northside accent was more heavily influenced by German immigrants, leading to such pronunciations as “zink” – the place where you wash your dishes, and “zunduh” – ice cream with a topping on it.
Supposedly a native northsider can actually pronounce the number 4 as “four” rather than “fahr” but I’ve never actually heard it.
New York City easily wins hands down in America, mainly 'cause there are so many immigrants there. And as people learn English and have kids their kids pick up that way of talking and it changes a bit.
Well, I think in most US cities there will be distinct AAVE and non-AAVE accents.
And not quite in a city, but in the suburbs of Washington DC (at least on the Maryland side, though I’d imagine it’s true for Virginia too) there tends to be a difference between white working class and middle class accents. When an ex of mine from New York was visiting me, as we sat in the Silver Spring Tastee Diner surrounded by local blue collar workers, he commented that I had far less of a twang than they did.
I’m not looking for immigrant accents, but for accents that develop in different sections of a city, so that you can tell where in the city the speaker comes from. You could say the child of Mexican immigrants has a Chicano accent or whatever, but it wouldn’t necessarily say anything about where in the city that child grew up, or mean that other people that live in that section of the city also have Chicano accents if their parents weren’t immigrants.
I think even without the immigrants, New York City still qualifies. There is a difference between Brooklyn and Bronx accents, for example. Now, it is true that because of so much immigration both from overseas and from other parts of US, you need to pay more attention to pick up on the “native” accents. But old guys from Brooklyn still sound like Bugs Bunny, and old guys from the Bronx still sound like … well, that one is harder to describe but it sounds like a typical New York accent with a little bit of that New England twangy A shoved in there.
There is a dialect known as Pittsburghese. It’s been made into a joke, but it actually exists. It is marked by accent, speech patterns and vocabulary. There are contractions like “jeetjet?” to mean “did you eat yet?” (a precursor to offering a meal) or “sliberty” to mean the neighborhood of East Liberty or, on the other side of town, West Liberty Avenue, and “n’at” at the end of sentences, a contraction of “and that” signifying that there’s more to the story. “I had to run errands n’at.”
There are pronunciations such as “dahntahn” for downtown, “wursh” for wash, “earl” for oil, and our football team is widely known as the “Stillers.” There’s an inability to pronounce “nt” sounds, so women wear “pannyhose” and in poker games, people “anny” up. Verb forms are odd in the dialect too. Cars don’t need to be washed, they need washed. Babies’ diapers need changed, burgers need flipped, and every couple of months drivers know that their car’s earl needs checked.
It is most prevalent in people who were raised in the more insular white, eastern European-extracted, working class communities such as Polish Hill, the South Side slopes, Spring and Summer Hill and Lawrenceville than in other parts of the city. It migrates, as people move around, but there are neighborhoods, especially suburban ones, where it’s almost never heard, and neighborhoods where you absolutely cannot avoid it.
I reluctantly spent about 6 years in Charleston, South Carolina. The difference in accent there is subtle, but once you’re aware of it you notice it everywhere.
It seems to be based on social class and money; the poorer folks, the ones that don’t live on the penninsula in Charleston proper, have the typical poor, sloppy Southern accent. The wealthier folks from the old Southern families sound like Foghorn Leghorn; very ‘proppuh’ very ‘aristuhcradic’.
One can definately tell if one has grown up on the south side of the city or its suburbs versus the northside. Also many of the suburbs have their own distinct accents.
I was made fun of terribly when I went to highschool in a suburb with a “sout syde ob da citee” drawl in my voice.
The south side of Milwaukee had a distinct Polish and German population and their english patterns stuck, so even now where the south side is predominantly hispanic you still get the same accent overlaid with a hispanic one. My boyfriend still thinks its hilarious when I say certain words.
I am a proud grad of the University of Illinois. Maybe seventy percent of the undergrads are from the greater Chicago area. After a while, the various accents were so distinguishable to me that I could guess where they were from, within about 10 miles.
Waukegan, Berwyn, Elgin, Naperville, Chicago actual, whatever. I knew what your home turf was, pal.
Although this is fading away, in Buffalo der is dat der Chickatavaga eksint der, a very distinct, staccato accent spoken in Cheektowaga, a large suburb populated primarily by blue-collar Polish-Americans. Theeyat’s compeahred to theeah normal Buflo eyacksint, which reflects the region’s location at the heart of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift area, and sounds more like an extremely strong Chicago or Detroit accent to the uninitiated.
The Cheektowaga accent, called an ethnolect by area linguists, was spoken primarily by second- and third- generation Americans of Polish descent in the town. Younger Cheektowaga residents tend to speak in the general Buffalo accent, although more strongly than the rest of the region.
Also, while Buffalonians speak in a very strong, nasal Great Lakes/Midland Northern accent, just across the Canadian border, locals speak in a Canadian accent that is practically unaffected by their proximity to Buffalo.
Although this isn’t what the poster was looking for, I found that in Cleveland, in the suburbs east of the Cuyahoga River, a larger percentage of locals tended to speak in a more generic American accent, while west of the river, the Great Lakes/Midland Northern accent was more common. Even the pronunciation of the river that divided the region was different on each side of it:
East Side: kuy-uh-HO-guh
West Side: kuy-uh-HAWG-uh
Also remember that in American cities, blacks and Hispanics will speak with their own unique accents. No black person in Buffalo or Cleveland speaks in Midland Northern.