Hello! I am researching English accents and dialects in the U.S.
I am particularly interested in the Pacific Northwest.
What accent do people who live in Washington and Oregon have?
Any idea where I can find more information on accents on the web?
Thanks.
P.S. This is for personal research, so don’t worry, you’re not helping me on a school project. 
Being from the UK, you Americans all sound like cretins to me, but my books tell me that there are different English acents in the US.
There seem to be three main divisons in th US accent: Northern, Southern and East New England. The Northern (or genneral)and Southern are both further divided into upper, lower, midatlantic and New York city and upper, lower, Virginia Piedmont and East Carolina repectively.
As far as I can tell from my linguistic map of America Washington state and Oregon are lower northern (but it’s not clear) which is the accent found in most parts of the USA.
The lack of accent of the people of Oregon is as notably profound as in most parts of CA, NV, ID, WA, MT, The closer to TX that you get the more “cowboy” you’ll hear in the tone and dialect, still you’d have to try to pick out folks from UT, CO, Dakotas, NM & AZ.
James Duncan’s “The River Why” describes a hick-ish tone to Eastern Oregon (quite rural)–I always heard it as a smattering of Alaskan longvowel woven nicely into an otherwise completely unaccented English.
“Lack of accent”? I think you probably mean that people from Oregon speak in the accent of standard American, the kind that you hear most from tv and radio. Everyone who speaks has an accent. Even Americans from Oregon.
Since people from the Pacific Northwest and the California Coastal areas have moved around a lot between the areas a lot, they all sound pretty similar.
In general, people on the West Coast don’t have a lot of distinct vocal sounds. Everything is pretty flat. The schwa is our favorite vowel sound.
Being from Oregon, I can safely say that unless there are people from England, or Canada, or anyother country that would tint the dialect, Oregonians do not have a different dialect. I believe the only dialects I can recall from the US is the southern dialect, and the brooklyn dialects
I have cousins in Oregon and yes, you do.
I guess now that I think about it, you’re right…to me, its perfectly “normal” but its not a strong “texan” or “cowboy” accent…and you never know…maybe your cousin’s parents influenced the way you speak…my dad has a minnesota accent, and my mom a mexican accent…but to them its not an accent at all.
Parents have very little influence on their children’s accents. Your accent is primarily influenced by your peers.
::shrug:: I’m not one to really care about dialects, I just think its kinda cool to hear a different one now and then, but I’m not stressin’ over it.
Sir, I give you…
Enjoy.
Oh, and MC Master of Ceremonies? “Cretins”? Aw, that’s sweet!
…Well to us, you all sound like butlers!
Ranchoth
(I suppose that should be y’all sound like butlers, shouldn’t it?)
if you’re adressing me, I’m a GIRL! LOL! and I guess I’ll forgive ya fer that one