I don’t know about American cities, but here in Canada, many of the cities have a good number of homeless Indians, Aboriginals, Native Americans, First Nations people, etc. (I’m not sure the correct term these days). They seem to be almost entirely over 30 years old, so I’m not sure if it is a stat on the decrease or if they just tend not to move to they city until their 30s.
Anyway, they almost always have this accent that is unique. It definitely incorporates slurring - probably because of inebriation - but is different than that alone. To fake the accent, you would tend to keep your teeth close together or even closed while you talk. The pronunciation of ‘s’ would be ‘sh’.
I was wondering why they have this accent. As far as I know, they are not taught their native language as a first language, only to learn English later. I also find it odd that you will tend to find the same accent whether in Vancouver, Calgary, or Toronto. Since these regions all would house the reserves of different tribes, likely with different native languages, there is no reason for the accent to match regardless of location.
Also, if you see a homeless Indian, they are almost guaranteed to be inebriated. I find this interesting considering that most of the caucasian homeless are not “drunks” (that is, while many may well be drinkers, while they are panhandling they are not visibly displaying any signs of being drunk or stoned. Any thoughts on why this would seem to be?
While writing this, I tried to ask my questions in a way that will be least likely to be branded as bigoted. I’m not sure how successful I was. Please know that this was not meant to cast any diparagements upon Indians as general.