Accent Expert Gives a Tour of U.S. Accents - (Part 2) | WIRED

hi eric singer again dialect coach i'm doing a map tour of north american accents if you missed part one check it out here i'm starting part two from the south picking up where we left off we were talking about rhodic accents where the r sound is always pronounced in the piney woods belt but down in the southern part of louisiana this is one of the few areas that's still pretty reliably non-rhodic even though many historically non-rhodic areas of the south have gotten their oils back this one's hanging on this is also one of the places in the south the appalachians and ozarks or a few of the others some parts of texas will you still hear a sound words like which what where you also get f for final th sounds here is in both bath something i think is really interesting is that there used to be a non-rhodic pronunciation of nice words in the south so words like nice early work used by black and white southerners alike that was a kind of a diphthong hey nice it's actually pretty similar to that old-fashioned new york city today toy street vowel sound you can still hear it in some african-american speakers in louisiana today though it's mostly gone otherwise before moving on let's circle back to florida so megan can tell us about the cuban spanish influence in miami hello again this time i'm in miami the latinx population in the u.s is 18.5 percent of the population but within that we're a very diverse group of people before we get into miami english i just want to make it clear that not every speaker of miami english is latinx not every latinx person in miami speaks miami english and the same goes for new york latino english and the same will go for chicano english in the southwest when we get there we are not a monolith and neither are the varieties that we speak and that's because these varieties are influenced by different spanishes so just like the english-speaking world has different varieties so does the spanish-speaking world there's so many different varieties of spanish there's mexican spanish there's cuban spanish there's puerto rican spanish there's dominican spanish there's all these other spanishes there are all these varieties and they all have different features and we just don't have time to get into that miami english is influenced by cuban spanish like take a look at this map cuba is very close to miami one remarkable feature of miami english is the dark l if you recall from new york the dark l is in words like pole and ball in miami english you'll hear that dark l in places where you wouldn't hear it in other varieties listen to the l in this native speaker clip that's what i love about our language language language and about miami okay back to eric thank you megan okay back to louisiana so there's a well-known new orleans accent that sounds similar to new york accents in some ways it's called yat which comes from the phrase where y'at which means how are you it's so similar to new york accents in some ways it's a bit of a mystery even some really weird little things like bad and back not having the same vowel sound i got a bad back new orleans had a similar mix of immigration to new york in the 19th century but also very close shipping ties to new york city so contact is likely part of the explanation too of course we can't leave louisiana without talking about cajun the cajuns were a french-speaking people originally came down to louisiana from nova scotia some still speak cajun french but you can hear the influence french had on cajun accents in english in the rhythm and the melody the way it has a tendency to stress the final word or syllable in a phrase and also in the way final consonant sounds can get assimilated sort of shlooped up into the sound before them so that hand could just be hang rent can just be rent hemi during there so continuing west to texas now one thing that sets a lot of texans apart from other southerners is that there's a lot less goose fronting so the tongue stays further back through that whole vowel sound instead of coming forwards so if i go from say somewhere in the carolinas and head west and talk about blue moons and soup spoons i'll start off with very fronted goose valves blue moons and soup spoons but they'll get less and less fronted the further west i go blue moons and soup spoons blue moons and soup spoons when i cross the mississippi i don't have very fronted gooseballs anymore but by the time i'm in texas blue moons and soup spoons it's not coming forward hardly at all now now one thing that separates the eastern part of the state from the western part is how far the price smoothing goes remember when we talked about how piney woods baled accents have full-on price smoothing so it affects ride and right live and life we'll see that kind of full-on version in western and central texas all those words are smoothed out just like that but in the eastern part it's only on words like high ride and live words like right and life will have a diphthong why is it this way well again because of the history of settlement patterns the white people who settled in the western part in the great plains part of texas the western and central parts mostly came from tennessee and the appalachians full price smoothing areas as we head up into oklahoma i'm going to turn it over to kalina newmark again hello again oklahoma is a home to nearly 40 native american nations including the cherokee and the comanche before jumping into the local native american dialect features here in oklahoma i'm going to share a little bit about the history of native american english native american english is also known as a res accent a reservation accent it occurs in first nations and native american communities across the united states and canada regardless of whether or not a heritage language is spoken native american english is often identifiable because of its prosity sometimes it's described as monotone other times it's described as sing-songy within oklahoma community members describe native american english both ways and that makes sense there are different varieties within the state in western oklahoma the anadarko accent has been described as monotone contrast that with cherokee english in eastern oklahoma which is more sing-songy sometimes we can forget where we come from you know what with that let's go back to eric on the map tour thank you kalina quick stop in the ozarks where we can hear some accents that are real close to southern appalachian accents a little bit different goat val and some others but real close in a lot of ways which is because again of settlement patterns the original european settlers of the ozarks came from southern appalachia and we hear some of those same constructions like a going and a hunting as well as a lot of shared specific dialect words now up in chicago and in fact in the whole great lakes area we have one of the most significant ongoing changes happening anywhere in the english-speaking world today it's called the northern cities shift or the northern cities vowel shift and it may be the biggest change in english pronunciation anywhere since the great vowel shift right up to and through shakespeare's time now it's a change shift which is kind of a merry-go-round of changes here's how it goes so in most accents of english the vowel sound in words like uh cat bag what we call the trap vowel is something like ah right we make it with the tongue cupped down low and towards the front of the mouth like this ah okay ready for this here's the first move in the northern cities chain shift this vowel unit moves up in this direction so it's pronounced with a little bit tenser tongue and sounds like cat bag up here put the cat in the bag now that leaves an open space in terms of available vowel real estate where that trap vowel used to be now it turns out that vowel sounds like to space themselves out in their mouths they abhor a vowel vacuum if you will and so what happens is that the lot vowel which you know normally lives back here your tongue cupping low down in the back for an open ah sound moves forwards towards where trap used to be so in chicago it's not a hot pot it's a hat pat now those are just the first two moves in the chain shift the thing about a chain shift is each move makes the next one happen so trap moving up higher pushes the dress vowel back in the mouth so words like bed next sound like bud next and then the vowel sound that was back there to begin with the ah sound and strut bus lucky has to move back further boss lucky so now cot sounds like cat bat sounds like bat bet sounds like butt and butt sounds like bought pretty dramatic shift this whole area around the great lakes is affected by the northern cities shift though not every part of it has it to the same extent beside chicago it's strongest in syracuse rochester buffalo and detroit let's head over to saint louis here's nicole there's a feature in african-american english in places like st louis and memphis called the near square nurse merger or our centralization if you know the song by the rapper nelly hot and her you have seen an example of this it is her for here or our essentialization and you can also hear it in this clip girl i told you i need to get my hair done her done her done okay let's go back to eric thank you nicole can we talk about minnesota for a minute you know people from minnesota often complain about overbroad stereotypical minnesota accents just going too far two really identifiable features of that are monothongle a and o in your face and goat vowels but you know there are definitely places in minnesota michigan wisconsin and yep fargo north dakota where you can still hear some pretty pronounced accents with some really monophthong a and o vowels now but even in much less pronounced accents from this region there will still be a bit of that you'll also still get this fairly closed oral posture so there's a contrast between lips that are pretty mobile and move around a lot and a jaw that stays pretty fixed in place now let's stop over in the dakotas and i'll hand it off to kalina hi again from the traditional homelands of the lakota dakota and dakota peoples continuing on our conversation at native american english i'm going to talk about two shared features one timing and rhythm and two intonation and pitch in regards to timing and rhythm native american english is syllable timed where syllables are more uniform and even in length you can hear that feature in this clip you see a piece of trash you pick it up for the second feature intonation and pitch the stress syllable starts lower rather than higher and i would watch them in this clip from the movie smoke signals this actor is speaking in a native american english accent you can hear that on thomas here hey thomas there are several theories of where this dialect came from one theory is that it developed because of native american boarding schools established in the late 19th and mid-20th century native american boarding schools were designed to assimilate native american children into white society they did this by forcibly removing native american children from their families and communities and forbidding them from speaking their languages at the time of european contact in north america there were approximately 300 distinct indigenous languages since then 113 of these languages have been lost and many more are in danger as fewer and fewer native american children are learning our languages despite all of this we have created a dialect of english that is uniquely ours a dialect that helps us to create and recreate our identities as native american people let's go back to eric for the next stop on the map tour thank you kalina quick detour to iowa so remember that online that runs through new jersey where above it most people say on rhymes with dawn and south of it most people say on rhymes with dawn and it runs right along a really major dialect boundary between the north linguistically speaking and the midlands and it runs through all of these states and through iowa too now people don't necessarily think of iowa having a lot of dialect variety but here's a major division right here so sioux city and cedar rapids are above the online so most people in those places say on and des moines is below it so most people there will say on all right so heading west now over towards the rockies you know one of the things we start to hear in the mountain west generally is ing endings pronounced as in so playing going singing the whole western part of the country so these 11 states is usually considered one big dialect area now that's not to say that there aren't any differences of course there are but broadly speaking it's one area with a lot of common features there just hasn't been enough time for really distinctive features to develop over here here's something interesting in some utah accents though some front vowels get lowered before l sounds so we get milk for instance the word sail might sound like cell is this milk on cell you'll also hear mount in and but in mountain and button a lot in utah especially among younger speakers with just a pure glottal stop for that t sound in the middle of the word it's not the only place in the u.s that does that not at all but apart from some california speakers it seems to be the only place in the west where you hear those pronunciations we're going to end this segment here please join us for part three where we'll pick up in sunny southern california you

Channel: WIRED

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Keywords: erik singer, accents, erik singer accent expert, wired accent expert, accent expert wired, southern mississippi accent, miami english, utah accent, wired accents, erik singer usa accents, american accents, american accent wired, wired american accents, american accents part two, american accents part 2, accent expert gives a tour of u.s. accents (part 2), us accents, accent breakdown, all american accents, all us accents, wired us accents, us accents wired, wired

Id: IsE_8j5RL3k

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/DizzyJupiter]

I fucking love watching this guy; his talent and knowledge is memorizing!

[u/manofruber]

These are very cool and I hope there's at least two more to go.

I really wanted to see more of Texas since it's such a big State with multiple accents inside from different ethnic groups.

[u/uglyzombie]

Where’s part one?

[u/DannyLumpy]

These are so good! I honestly wouldn't even mind if each part were twice as long.

[u/Gcarsk]

His accent changing is so ridiculously smooth. I need more parts to this series.

[u/cj2211]

Megan has vocal fry (3:50min in) in her voice