Just wonderin’.
You’re not the only one. I assume you’re referring to Sarah Palin’s accent, which reminded a lot of people of Marge from Fargo, or Winston Rochschild (the septic sucking guy) from Red Green.
None of the Alaskans (that I heard anyway) who were interviewed at the convention had an accent. I’ve had one Alaskan friend, and she had no accent. I’ve always thought of Alaska as a mini melting pot, because of all the people who relocated there to work on the pipeline, so I didn’t think there’d be an Alaskan accent
Hoping an Alaskan Doper will chime in, because I’m curious about this too.
Everyone has an accent… (Alaska may or may not lack a distinct regional one, but everyone in it still speaks with some accent, as all speakers do)
As for the OP, here and here are a meager discussion of the issue of Alaskan accents and Sarah Palin’s accent.
It’s been discussed here before.
Alaska is huge. At least twice as big as Texas although admittedly with far fewer inhabitants. But just like there’s not really a distinctive accent for Texas (I’ve known folks from Dallas and Houston with absoloutely no discernable accent at all), there is arguably not one that’s going to pin someone as Alaskan.
That said, there is a pretty distinctive accent I’ve not heard from anyplace else. So I guess I’d say, there is an AK accent, but not everyone has it.
I grew up in Alaska. There is no white Alaskan accent, although lots of native Alaskans have a distinctive accent even if english is their first language. White Alaskans either speak with whatever accent they had when they moved to Alaska, or with a generic American TV accent.
Yep. Lived in Alaska for 7 years, and never could tell by vocal inflection whether someone was a native-born Sourdough of a fresh-off-the-plane tourist.
I grew up in Oregon and I had always heard that Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, etc. did not have a distinctive regional accent.
Just IMHO I’m not sure I agree anymore. In my experience working at a lumber yard in Portland, and listening to some of the Alaskan’s on deadliest catch (who claim that they grew up in Alaska) I think there is a distinctive “working class” white accent. I don’t think it’s anywhere near as strong as the comparable accent from Illinois, or Baltimore or Brooklyn, but I find it noticeable.
I don’t know where Palin came up with that cornpone accent of hers. She’s lived here since babyhood, so I have to believe it’s an affectation. There are those who affect a western drawl, which they think makes them sound more Alaskan, but it just makes them sound like transplants, of which we have mucho. My brother, sister, their six children and 15 grandkids all have lived here their entire lives, and none of them have an accent remotely like Palin exhibits. Maybe she got it from her parents.
Palin’s flat-A really screams like a combination of upper Minnesota/North Dakota and upper Rust Belt, specifically the nasal drone one encounters in Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo and Rochester. To my ears, it sounds like an outsider trying to imitate a slightly exaggerated Detroit or Buffalo “eyacksint” rather than speaking it as a native.
Well, there are a LOT of former mid-westerners living up here, and the Matanuska Valley (where Wasilla sits) was originally settled by farmers from MN and WI. Perhaps she picked it up while attending school with farmers’ kids. Her parents are from Idaho, I believe.