# Do West Coast Americans have an Accent?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [June 4, 2006, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370 "2006-06-04T09:46:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2006, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/61 "2006-06-04T21:37:58Z")
> [@Johnny L.A.](#):
>
> Interesting. It says that in California English ‘king’ and ‘keen’ have the same vowel sound. As a native Southern Californian, I pronounce ‘king’ with a short ‘i’ (sort of like in ‘pin’), and ‘keen’ with a long ‘e’ sound.
Really? I’ve lived here all my life, and I definitely use the same vowel sound for both.
Do you remember seeing commercials for Paul’s TV (the King of Big Screen) in La Habra? “I am the keeng!”
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### Author:  [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2006, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/62 "2006-06-04T22:28:03Z")
I grew up in the Midwest, spent 25 years there, then moved to California and lived in both SF and LA. I didn’t notice any dialectical differences attributable to geographics, but I did notice cultural and jargon differences, like the black accent in rock music or Valley Girl sounds in some juvenile groups.
And now that I’m back in the Midwest, I don’t notice accents in people from Chicago, altho there are slight accents in rural parts of Wisconsin that remind me of scandinavian influences (the “o” in “No” is different, and drawn out). Not to mention phrases like “There ya go!” to mean “OK”.
I remember Ronnie Eckstine in LA educating us (lily-white musicians) on how to pronounce “alright” properly, as in “Feelin’ AW-RAT!”
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### Author:  [@Dragonblink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragonblink)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2006, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/63 "2006-06-04T22:41:00Z")
The above Wikipedia link on California English is pretty much right on the money.
There is definitely a difference between the SoCal and Midwestern accents – I learned this in one of my first linguistics classes when I found out I was the only one besides the prof who pronounced cot and caught differently (likewise body and bawdy, hottie and haughty). Other distinctions (like merry/marry/Mary) I go back and forth on. And this despite living in LA since my fourth birthday. I blame my parents and their Midwestern accents.
– Dragonblink, linguistics grad student
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2006, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/64 "2006-06-04T22:49:31Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#):
>
> I’ve heard claims that singing through microphones tends to lead people to use vowel sounds which are more typical of American accents than English ones. I prefer this to the idea that in the 1960s there was a real concept of emulating an American accent in order to be successful (after all, plenty of people made a fortune just from the British market.)
Is there no recordings of British people singing previous to 1960? What names should I look for on iTunes?
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### Author:  [@Cardinal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardinal)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2006, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/65 "2006-06-05T00:35:21Z")
Go to Bakersfield, and you can find plenty of people who don’t speak “standard”. I think it’s more of a rural/urban thing. My college buddies from suburban Dallas/Plano, TX don’t “sound Texan”, either.
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2006, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/66 "2006-06-05T00:48:24Z")
I can recognize a distinctive “California” pattern of speech, but I don’t know if I can describe it. Let me give it a shot.
Soft vowel sounds are exceptionally soft. While an Easterner may say “Sawft” and a Midwesterner might say “soft” a Westerner will pronounce it more like “Sahhhhhft.”
Also there’s a particular sing-songiness to Western U.S. speech. Whereas many people choose to emphasize the noun and/or verb in a sentence, or raise their voices at the end the sentence to indicate a question, it seems westernERS seem to RAISE and lowER their voiCES every FEW syllaBLES. Some Southerners do this to, but with their own distinct pronunciations.
If you have a sing-songy speech pattern combined with soft vowels, you sound “Californian” to me.
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### Author:  [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2006, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/67 "2006-06-05T01:01:52Z")
Anybody up for a Doper Teleconference? 😃
“I can name that accent in three words, Bob.”
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2006, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/68 "2006-06-05T01:44:43Z")
So, kunilou, is that Northern Californian, Central Coast Californian, Southern Californian?
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### Author:  [@jimmmy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimmmy)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2006, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/69 "2006-06-05T02:56:53Z")
[Another](http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/californian/) Linguistics thing on the California Accent (& yes: no ifs, ands, or buts there is one)
On singing I can add that on piece of the homogenous “Anglo-phone” accent is that we all use the same notes and words when we sing, so our distinctive regional speech rhythms, patterns and words are lost or largely mitigated.
Further, in some cases - especially Rock N Roll it is traditional that certain words are purposely mispronounced “Bay-bee” for baby being one example to sound like rural African Americans of the mid-20th century (where Rock n’ Roll started). I have always though that Rock singers, if I suspected they were affecting a singing accent, sound more like Elvis or Ray Charles than they do like Jan and Dean – but that last bit is opinion - not GQ obviously
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### Author:  [@Lama\_Pacos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lama_Pacos)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2006, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/70 "2006-06-05T03:15:26Z")
All the talk of accents being “more muted” or of one regional accent being generally “stronger” than another betrays the incorrect assumption that there is some sort of base English pronunciation that, the further strayed from, the more accented a pronunciation is. I might pronounce ‘bacteria’ as ‘bacterier’ and you the more standard pronunciation, but that doesn’t make your accent more muted; it just makes it different.
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### Author:  [@Dubious\_Weasle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dubious_Weasle)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2006, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/71 "2006-06-05T10:11:19Z")
> [@Johnny L.A.](#):
>
> Interesting. It says that in California English ‘king’ and ‘keen’ have the same vowel sound. As a native Southern Californian, I pronounce ‘king’ with a short ‘i’ (sort of like in ‘pin’), and ‘keen’ with a long ‘e’ sound.
Interesting article and it seems well thought out. As a native Northern-Californian I don’t think I’ve ever heard the ‘keen’ ‘king’ issue. I pronounce them with different vowel sounds as well with “keen” having the longer ‘e’ sound.
Back to the OP though, of course the West Coast has an accent. It’s simply that it’s the dominant accent in media. Thus, I think someone would be correct to say that the West Coast accent has the most claim to be being “standard American” but that’s just because they’re leaving out that it’s the standard American _accent_
Either way, just because it’s dominant doesn’t mean it’s not an accent…
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### Author:  [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2006, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/72 "2006-06-05T11:10:45Z")
**Sage Rat** , how about this. Do you expect to be able to go up to an Australian, say “where am I from?”, and have them say, “I have no idea, you have no discernable accent”?
Of course you have an accent. At the very least people will consider you to have an American accent. You have a way of talking that distinguishes the region where you are from.
And Split Enz sing with a mild NZ accent, I can hear it now because I’ve been living in Australia for the last five years. Pink Floyd sing like the middle class English chaps they are (though I think Roger Waters seems to sing in American when it suits him.)
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### Author:  [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2006, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/73 "2006-06-05T12:48:16Z")
Of all the palces I’ve lived, I found that Buffalonians seemed to be the least aware of their own accents; so much so that they think they have the standard middle-American newscaster accent, even though in reality they speak in a very strong, very nasal Great Lakes accent. They think “We don’t sound like they’re from New York City, so we don’t have an accents.”
Buffalo is the only city I’ve ever lived in where it’s acceptable for television news reporters and radio disk jockeys to keep their local accents on the air. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a news reporter on a Southern television station speak in a thick drawl, use dude-speak in LA, or talk like a Mafia don in New York, but watch the news on a TV station in Buffalo, and the local flat A is more the norm than the exception.
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### Author:  [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2006, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/74 "2006-06-05T18:55:38Z")
> [@brian\_ax](#):
>
> I certainly agree that their singing accents often are not as strong as their speaking, accents, especially with their earlier, bluesier songs.
>
> But The Beatles sang with an accent. Grab a lyrics sheet and sing along with some of your favorite Beatles songs…you’ll find you pronounce words differently than you usually do.
>
> Unless yer from Liverpool 🙂
It always interested me to notice that the Beatles had different accents among the four of them. George and Ringo came from slightly poorer backgrounds and sounded much more strongly Scouse, at least as I understand it. Disgraced and dismissed early drummer Pete Best also has an accent you can cut with a feather, though through a fluke by which his mother acquired their large house, he grew up in somewhat more opulent surroundings.
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2006, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/75 "2006-06-05T22:03:18Z")
> [@Talon Karrde](#):
>
> U2 definitely still sing in an Irish accent. I’m surprised you don’t hear it on The Wall, it comes in really strong there.
Bloc Party is another, since you can clearly hear that they’re from the UK even if you aren’t paying attention to the lyrics which provide further clues like the use of the word “trainers” in _Staying Fat_ or “give you a million pounds” in _Plans_. Sadly, I can’t make out any words at all from a remix of their song _Helicopter_…
> [@Excalibre](#):
>
> Hey, do you pronounce the names “Don” and “Dawn” differently? Because there’s a merger of those two vowels such that most West Coasters pronounce them exactly the same way; it’s something that’s spread some across North America but it certainly isn’t the norm where I am. If you pronounce them the same, or “cot” and “caught”, then that should be an easily perceptible clue that you have a west coast accent.
That doesn’t prove a west coast accent: if you look at the dialect survey map, you’ll find that _most_ people in New England pronounce those word pairs the same way as well. “tot” and “taught” too, but “marry”, “merry” and “Mary” all differently. Since it is the norm here, you can’t really suppose several million people almost uniformly decided to chance to the West Coast pronouncation.
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### Author:  [@JCorre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JCorre)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2006, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/76 "2006-06-05T23:54:24Z")
this might help:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional\_accents\_of\_English\_speakers#United\_States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accents_of_English_speakers#United_States)
General American is the name given to the accent used by most TV network announcers; it is most similar to the local accents of Iowa and adjacent parts of Nebraska, and Illinois. General American makes a good reference accent, and a good goal for foreigners learning American English, because it is generally regarded as a “neutral” accent (when most Americans say someone “doesn’t have an accent” they mean he or she has a General American accent).
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### Author:  [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2006, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/77 "2006-06-06T00:39:50Z")
> [@](#):
>
> **JCorre** : General American is the name given to the accent used by most TV network announcers; it is most similar to the local accents of Iowa and adjacent parts of Nebraska, and Illinois. General American makes a good reference accent, and a good goal for foreigners learning American English, because it is generally regarded as a “neutral” accent (when most Americans say someone “doesn’t have an accent” they mean he or she has a General American accent).
You are correct. Early broadcasting schools were located in the Midwest and that accent became the broadcast tradition. That accent is different from the West Coast accents including California accents. There is sometimes a tendency to think of a broadcast (neutral, general) dialect as a “standard” dialect because we hear it so often from “authoritative” sources and people who are famous. The implication is that other dialects would be non-standard or sub-standard. That isn’t the case. There is no standard American dialect or standard American accent.
> [@](#):
>
> **Johnny L.A.** : I did notice a Great Lakes vowel sound in the PNW, but much softer. Ex-fiancée lived in Washington for many years, and she still has that ‘O’ sound – which sounds interesting since she’s picking up a Tennessee accent.
Which Tennessee accent? 😉 We stretch from Missouri to Virginia. (And how do you pronounce _Missouri_?)
> [@](#):
>
> **jimmmy** : Further, in some cases - especially Rock N Roll it is traditional that certain words are purposely mispronounced “Bay-bee” for baby being one example to sound like rural African Americans of the mid-20th century (where Rock n’ Roll started).
Very good. My earliest recollection of the widespread recording use is Mickey and Silvia’s (Sylvia’s?) _Love is Strange_ circa 1956 or 1957. “Bay-bee…Oh, Bay-bee…My Sweet Baybee, you’re the one…” If I am not mistaken, they were/are African Americans and the trend may have caught on from that recording. Just a hunch.
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2006, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/78 "2006-06-06T05:38:44Z")
> [@Excalibre](#):
>
> I can’t even figure out what this little rule you’ve invented could possibly mean. But trust me when I tell you that **Johanna** knows far more about linguistics than you do. Probably more than I do as well, come to think of it. You really shouldn’t go around attempting to correct her.
Thank you, **Excalibre**. Pronunciation is a set of features including phonetics, sandhi (phonetic changes at word boundaries), pitch intonation (at different levels: in sentences and phrases as well as individual words), stress (ditto), timbre, etc.
Any one or more of these features used in describing pronunciation may be used to distinguish dialects or accents. But the study of pronunciation itself does not depend on dialects or accents. And as Doper linguists have often pointed out, there is no strong definition for what constitutes a “dialect,” so the word isn’t much used by linguists in a rigorous technical sense, but it comes in handy for loose descriptions.
As for the difference **Sage Rat** noted between British pronunciation of a word said with an American accent and the way it sounds in British speech: In this example the phonetics coincide while the pitch accent diverges. British speech has a wider pitch range than the relatively flat American speech, especially for men.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2006, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/79 "2006-06-06T18:13:04Z")
Bump. Hoping for any answer to the specific items mentioned in the OP. Current status is:
1. Almost universally, all musicians throughout the world affect an American pitch accent to a sufficient extent that most Americans don’t realise they aren’t American bands until they speak. And are able to sing so regardless that those band members couldn’t speak with an American accent any better than Dick Van Dyke could do British.
2. No comments as yet.
3. No comments as yet.
4. You can tell through word usage, or mini-cliques like Valley Girls or whatever the current fad accent is. But no comments on the lack of “pitch accent” differences (though the simplest answer would simply be that we’re all locked in to each other due to TV using it.)
And the new addition of:
1. Floridians (as I recall) and other areas of the country also use, or are near it, even though they are physically separated from the West Coast. (?)
And again to all the posters saying “Try talking and I can guess that you’re from the West Coast”, yes, I realised this. And that isn’t what I meant.
I was wondering if there was some sort of something where, like **Shagnasty** postulated, lots of people with different pitch accents who have converged on an area and are now trying to communicate will default to some pitch accent that is easier for everyone to pick up the words. So far we have determined that the accent sounds “slow” (“drawl,” per **even sven** ) which sounds likely from that theory.
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### Author:  [@DiosaBellissima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiosaBellissima)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2006, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-west-coast-americans-have-an-accent/359370/80 "2006-06-06T18:28:45Z")
> [@Johnny L.A.](#):
>
> I somewhat disagree about Californians. (With the state being – what, 800 miles long? – and with 30 million people, three large cities, lots of other cities that would be huge in other states, coastal regions, mountains, deserts, forests, and large, diverse agriculteral areas, one really can’t be definitive.) There’s something about a generalised Midwestern accent that sounds different to me. A little more broad? A little more folksy? A little more nasal on the short-'A’s? I don’t know. But I can hear _something_ different.
>
> I did notice a Great Lakes vowel sound in the PNW, but much softer. Ex-fiancée lived in Washington for many years, and she still has that ‘O’ sound – which sounds interesting since she’s picking up a Tennessee accent.
I was born and raised in California and I can almost always tell you whether someone is from the north, the south, or the central valley. We all have slight variations in how we talk (which I am unable to explain without havnig an example of the other two here in front of me- a lot of it is speed and inflection on certain words).
> [@Johnny L.A.](#):
>
> Interesting. It says that in California English ‘king’ and ‘keen’ have the same vowel sound. As a native Southern Californian, I pronounce ‘king’ with a short ‘i’ (sort of like in ‘pin’), and ‘keen’ with a long ‘e’ sound.
And I say them the same. I say “Keeng” and “keen”. Perhaps that’s more of a valley thing?
> [@Cardinal](#):
>
> Go to Bakersfield, and you can find plenty of people who don’t speak “standard”. I think it’s more of a rural/urban thing. My college buddies from suburban Dallas/Plano, TX don’t “sound Texan”, either.
Oh come on now, don’t tell people to come here. It’s just not nice. 😉 We definitely have odd accents here- very odd ones. When I travel, people almost always say, “Ohhh you’re from California! Yeah?” then they stop themselves and say, “But. . . you do have a bit of a southern accent. . . so which is it?”. When I went to San Antonio, I found that I sound more Texan than most Texans, while still maintaining my “likes” and “fer sures”.
And to answer some of the unanswered questions (well, attempt):
1. I can _totally_ lay the California accent on thick. All I have to do is stop relaxing my tongue (that’s where the Southern accent comes from) and change my pacing up a bit. I’m so good at it, that sometimes people think that’s actually how I speak.
Oh, and I already addressed 4. I wish I had some way to record my voice, that way y’all (that’s the Bakersfield in me) could hear how I speak. I guarantee you’d say, “Whoa, she’s from California.” Everyone always does (in fact, I noticed New Yorkers were particularly interested in how I talk, as were Chicago…ans, and Floridians).
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