# Question about accents? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 6, 2008, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268 "2008-05-06T06:45:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2008, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/21 "2008-05-07T03:35:09Z")
[QUOTE=CookingWithGas] [Baltimorese](http://www.seigle.net/baltimorese.html). [/QUOTE] 😃 Excellent! You’re missing a couple, though. _Paramour_, noun. A gas-powered device used to cut the grass. “I got a new paramour. It’s a Lawn Boy.” _Winder_, noun. Pronounced with a short ‘i’. The glass openings in houses though which one can see out. “I warshed the winders today.” ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2008, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/22 "2008-05-07T05:53:08Z")
[QUOTE=diggleblop] I can do a perfect southern accent with absolutely no flaws in any word. I have no idea how I do it, because I live in Maryland and we have no accents. [/QUOTE] The reason why you can do a “perfect southern accent” is because you are southern. Ever hear of the Mason-Dixon Line? Well, you live \*\*\*south \*\*\*of it. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2008, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/23 "2008-05-07T06:10:31Z")
[QUOTE=panache45] The reason why you can do a “perfect southern accent” is because you are southern. Ever hear of the Mason-Dixon Line? Well, you live \*\*\*south \*\*\*of it. [/QUOTE] I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that, when **digglebop** claimed the ability to do a perfect southern accent, this was not intended as “Wow, isn’t it amazing that I can perfectly imitate the way I normally, naturally speak?”. There are any number of reasons why the claim is likely silly, but Maryland’s location relative to the Mason-Dixon line isn’t one of them… ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2008, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/24 "2008-05-07T12:29:45Z")
diggleblop, are you going to return to this thread or are you going to be a drive-by poster? How do you know that you can do a “perfect southern accent?” Is this based strictly on your own evaluation of your accent or is it based on someone else’s evaluation? What qualification does that person have for juding the quality of accents? What part of the South is the accent you claim to be capable of doing based on or is it just a generic southern accent? Can you do other accents different from your own? Until such time as you answer these questions, we’re wasting our time speculating on what your claim means. ---
**Author:** ![diggleblop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ac91a4/32.png) [@diggleblop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/diggleblop)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2008, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/25 "2008-05-07T17:22:37Z")
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] diggleblop writes: \> How do I know how to speak perfect…uh…southern? Some people are good at picking up accents. Some people think they are good at picking up accents but really aren’t. Until such time as your attempt at a Southern accent is evaluated by someone qualified to do so, there’s no point in answering this question. The fact that you identify it as simply a Southern accent without specifying just where in the South makes me suspicious. [/QUOTE] Well, the people who hear me speak it are from Tennessee and they say I sound just like them. And for those stating Maryland DOES have accents, I was implying SOUTHERN accents. I mean after all, the question was initially about SOUTHERN ACCENTS so I took it as most of you would know that I was talking about Marylanders not having SOUTHERN accents. I know Baltimore people have accents, southern Marylanders have a weird accents and so do westerners. I’m saying that we don’t have a southern accent. ---
**Author:** ![diggleblop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ac91a4/32.png) [@diggleblop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/diggleblop)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2008, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/26 "2008-05-07T17:27:14Z")
[QUOTE=BwanaBob] Maryland - the state where people pronounce “Baltimore” as “Bolmer” has no accents. :dubious: [/QUOTE] No they don’t. Not where I live. [QUOTE=panache45] The reason why you can do a “perfect southern accent” is because you are southern. Ever hear of the Mason-Dixon Line? Well, you live \*\*\*south \*\*\*of it. [/QUOTE] I know where the state is geographically. We in Maryland DO NOT have southern accents. You people are a tough crowd. I told you in the original post that people from Tennessee like to hear me mock a southern accent on the rare occasions that I see them. I can speak a perfect Tennessee accent. ---
**Author:** ![herownself](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8baadc/32.png) [@herownself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/herownself)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2008, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/27 "2008-05-07T22:04:09Z")
Acktcherly, when I moved to Balmer for college (from Chicago, where we speak with no accent), I expected a southern accent. There was distinctly not one. There is a local Baltimore accent, hon. And regional pronunciations. I can’t remember anymore who drinks soda and who drinks pop and where they drink it, but I got it wrong the first time I asked for it in Baltimore. But not a notable southern accent. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2008, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/28 "2008-05-07T23:38:26Z")
[QUOTE=herownself] Acktcherly, when I moved to Balmer for college (from Chicago, where we speak with no accent) [/QUOTE] The problem with announcing a pet peeve is that everyone mock-indulges in it just to annoy you from then on. 🙂 > [@](#): > > There is a local Baltimore accent, hon. And regional pronunciations. I can’t remember anymore who drinks soda and who drinks pop and where they drink it, but I got it wrong the first time I asked for it in Baltimore. Of course, the “pop”/“soda” distinction is one of word choice, not accent or regional pronunciations. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2008, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/29 "2008-05-07T23:54:41Z")
[QUOTE=diggleblop] You people are a tough crowd. I told you in the original post that people from Tennessee like to hear me mock a southern accent on the rare occasions that I see them. I can speak a perfect Tennessee accent. [/QUOTE] It’s conceivable; you might be observant enough around your Tennessee relatives that you can imitate the accent very well. But it’s also conceivable, and even more plausible, that you (and your relatives, as well) have inflated your perception of how “perfect” your Tennessee accent is; people can be surprisingly unobservant about speech, even their own. It’d be nice to see it put to a test. Supposing you and some Tennessee locals went to Tennessee strangers (or, better yet, linguists with training in and familiarity with this area, though that would be a lot to ask for) and asked them, with some incentive, to guess who the non-native-Tennesseean was, from hearing you read some sample passages; if you passed that, then there’d be a bit more reason to believe your claim than just “My family finds it amusing when I imitate them”. We can put you the test in some other ways too. Put yourself into Tennessee speaking mode, and see if you can figure out: do “Mary”, “marry”, and “merry” get pronounced the same or differently in Tennessee? How about “cot” and “caught”? Do “furry” and “hurry” rhyme? Out of “on”, “gone”, “John”, and “lawn”, what rhymes? How do “pen” and “pin” compare? “Feel and fill”? “Wine” and “whine”? Do “mirror” and “nearer” rhyme? Put yourself through the wringer with a questionnaire like this (a linguist better informed than me could probably design a good one for your particular situation) while paying attention to your imitation of a Tennessee accent, and have your Tennessee relatives go through one _independently_ (i.e., no discussing answers until after you’ve both completed it), and then see, more objectively, just how word-for-word flawless your emulation really is. The results would be interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/30 "2008-05-08T00:37:05Z")
**Indistinguishable** , Add, “Do _flower_, _flour_, and _floor_ all sound the same?” My mother grew up in Richmond, Virginia and she, just like all our other relatives in that burg, pronounces all three of those words identically. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/31 "2008-05-08T01:35:20Z")
[QUOTE=herownself] Acktcherly, when I moved to Balmer for college (from Chicago, where we speak with no accent), I expected a southern accent. There was distinctly not one. [/QUOTE] I moved from Balmer to Ann Arbor to go to college and found no accent from the townies(although I had to learn what were _pop_, _dealing girls_, and _bogue_). ---
**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/32 "2008-05-08T01:48:55Z")
[QUOTE=diggleblop] We in Maryland DO NOT have southern accents. [/QUOTE] Depends on where you are in Maryland. As I mentioned in the thread that **Wendall Wagner** linked to, parts of MD have a very southern feel, including the way they speak. Rural Baltimore County, and Harford, Cecil and Kent Counties have plenty of people with what could be called ‘southern accents.’ There are certain places in the eastern shore where people speak with a southern accent. Trust me; I spend a lot of time in these areas. Sometimes, you’d swear you were in the Deep South. Just out of curiosity, where in Maryland do you live? I’d love to know where it is in Marylander that people have no accent. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/33 "2008-05-08T02:12:42Z")
diggleblop writes: \> You people are a tough crowd. Of course we’re a tough crowd. You’ve been here long enough to know that. We’re the Straight Dope Message Board and we don’t allow people to get away with incorrect statements or bad arguments. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/34 "2008-05-08T02:55:58Z")
[QUOTE=Monty] **Indistinguishable** , Add, “Do _flower_, _flour_, and _floor_ all sound the same?” My mother grew up in Richmond, Virginia and she, just like all our other relatives in that burg, pronounces all three of those words identically. [/QUOTE] Color me confused. The first two are the same but not the third. I don’t think your test question would hold for all Southern accents. Can’t speak for Richmond. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/35 "2008-05-08T03:01:15Z")
[QUOTE=BiblioCat] There are certain places in the eastern shore where people speak with a southern accent. Trust me; I spend a lot of time in these areas. Sometimes, you’d swear you were in the Deep South. [/QUOTE] Funny you should say that. I was flipping through TV channels the other day, and came into the middle of a movie set among a community of oystermen. (Don’t remember the name of the film.) For a long time I was assuming the movie must be set in Apalachicola, Florida (an area with which I’m familiar). The accents and the culture felt very Southern. And then something in the dialogue revealed the characters to be Marylanders. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/36 "2008-05-08T03:40:45Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I thought Maryland is the South. :mad: Them’s fightin’ words! > [@diggleblop](#): > > No they don’t. Not where I live. You don’t get it. There is no such thing as not having an accent. That state of affairs does not exist. There is not a single person in the history or future of humanity who is free of an accent. > [@spoke-](#): > > I don’t think your test question would hold for all Southern accents. Few of them would, I bet. The point is to find out how different the OP’s imitation of Tennesseean (or whatever) is from the natural version. ---
**Author:** ![Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a9a28c/32.png) [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oslo_Ostragoth)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/37 "2008-05-08T04:35:49Z")
[QUOTE=liberty3701] Also, the South is very linguistically diverse. North Carolina alone has at least four dialect areas. The [Atlas of North American English](http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/NatMap1.html) delineates the South based on the monopthongization of /ay/. [/QUOTE] Cool chart. I can’t make out what the legend is supposed to impart, but the placement of the lines of division agree with my personal experience. I’m not sure that a West Texas should be classified as Southern, but I guess you have to start somewhere before getting into specifics. p.s. I had an aunt from Pittsburgh. Wow, did she have a distinctive accent! ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/38 "2008-05-08T05:57:05Z")
[QUOTE=Oslo Ostragoth] Cool chart. I can’t make out what the legend is supposed to impart, but the placement of the lines of division agree with my personal experience. I’m not sure that a West Texas should be classified as Southern, but I guess you have to start somewhere before getting into specifics. p.s. I had an aunt from Pittsburgh. Wow, did she have a distinctive accent! [/QUOTE] If I understand correctly that Laura Bush and my mother in law are speaking a West Texas dialect, then it sure sounds Southern to me. Not Scarlett O’Hara south, of course, but you know, I mean, _country_. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/39 "2008-05-08T08:17:39Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] Color me confused. The first two are the same but not the third. I don’t think your test question would hold for all Southern accents. Can’t speak for Richmond. [/QUOTE] I know for a fact that it’s not the same for all accents in Dixie. I also know that for the part of Richmond where my mother grew up, all three words are pronounced the same. I was just adding an interesting (to me) data point to **Indistinguishable** ’s test. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268/40 "2008-05-08T08:20:42Z")
[QUOTE=Monty] I also know that for the part of Richmond where my mother grew up, all three words are pronounced the same. [/QUOTE] Are they all three kind of like “Flar?” Or “Flah”? I can imagine that. -FrL- [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-accents/448268.md?page=3)