Father Mother, sister Linda , is that Oh, that happens, Um, in some coastal places like coastal Texas. Where you say? I don't know if I'm on go clock Washington water when they hear a word like Washington that it's actually a word that there was an R in it. And over time, Okay, so you may know her from Tiktok. That is Florida linguist. Her videos are all about accents and how we all talk. This is really fascinating stuff, So we wanted to bring her on and talk about whether or not and this is an ongoing debate. Whether or not there is a Northwest. Accent Paula VanLandingham. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. Good to have you Good morning. All right, So first things first. Does the Pacific Northwest have an accent? The answer is always that everyone has an accent . But there are some parts of the United States that have fewer of the features that you can pick out, so it's passes for standard, So you know if it's not Eastern , if it's not very northern, like Farago, if it's not Southern than people sort of think it's Oh, it's just standard American. English which in general, it is, but there are some features that are not necessarily unique Northwest. But it is a part of what makes it sound like a Pacific Northwest accent. Okay, so give us some particular characteristics of a Northwest. Accent. Right So you know as American English moved across the continent, there were some changes in vowels over time in history and with population, So when you had the original colonies, um there was a difference between the word. Cut sleep on a cot and caught a U G. H T. As in Qatar, cold caught a ball and on the Eastern Seaboard that original vowel like caught was more pronounced like the British English court. Over 400 years in New York, it became caught caught ball and then Boston's like, quote, right? And as the population moved across all that territory and the population stand out the game of telephone Broadened out those differences. So when you have, you know, 89 million people present time in the city of New York, you can have 50 different dialects within a few square miles. The entire state of Washington has Just under that population for the entire state and crossing the Rockies and all of that distance broadened out something that was really specific on the East Coast. So now in the Pacific Northwest, they call it the cot. Caught merger. It's the same vowel now, so if somebody would say I caught the ball, and then I slept on a cot, same vowel, right , you get to the Midwest, it begins to be caught Cat. And then you get to the East Coast and you might get caught and cat different. So I've been listening to you guys all morning and from meteorology. Two news. Several of you have been saying things like Talk walk a little bit. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but instead of talk walk, and it's still very standard American, but you can tell that's the Northwest. It's not the South. It's not the far Great Lakes. It's not the East. And that's what positions you guys. I'm saying. You guys, That's my northern as identifiably Northwestern. You fooled her because Liz is Liz is a goner. Michigan can you do that? Can you hear it? And I've listened to you and I was like, okay north of the 40th parallel, maybe up to the 45th. East of the 1/100 . Okay And so I had you in a in a corner of about Iowa to northern Illinois. So I was closes its southern Michigan . Yes You're good. My gosh. Pretty good. Okay so magician. Wow Okay. We were talking about kind of an anomaly out here. Some people around here, including Brian's dad say Washington When it went up, Why is that? So Just like I was saying that as we moved from the colonies across the entire continent, all of that immigration began to mix between A British accent , which would be what we call non Roddick know our sister Bridget. Ton right? And then you get a million Irish people coming to the United States and about the mid 18th century, including out to Washington state to But the Midland accent where all of that Irish mix was coming in on top of a British accent. You have British people who might have been saying we're going to go to war. General War Shillington and when Irish speakers who definitely are erotic accent and will say Irish worse, my car wash. They heard an R in the word and applied it to other words like well. We're going to war, and that's general Washington. That's right. And then, as those populations moved across the United States, they brought that to Washington State named after General Washington, right And of course you had with the gold rush the railroad expansion . All of that that happened in the Northwest. A lot of Irish were there to pronunciation there. So that is why you get people saying and extrapolating that to I have to wash my car. The wash my hands because it was originally Paula, You are delightful to I feel like I could listen to these accents all day, but I want to ask you, Fred Armisen went on Conan in 2020. I hope we have time to ask this really quick. He did this thing called the Seattle accent, and we were wondering if we could get your thoughts on this clip. If you think. What do you think of this? Okay Can we watch this? Seattle is a very presentational accent. Seattle is very It's like they're presenting you. Yes There all the time. My wife is from Seattle. And we go there all the time to see her parents and yes, your exact Aptly right. They always act like they're showing you a new car. They bought a little every word is like a little gift. Yeah and then going down. So what ? So is that? What would you call that An accent isn't Is he talking about something that you identify with here? What What That is, is that there are some people whose linguistic tradition of where they live. Has a certain flavor to it. And in this case, the Pacific Northwest is a bit of a good storyteller. So teachers are good at this. Lawyers are good at this where they and so our broadcasters So this is something where When you're speaking, you're creating a picture. So when you say in the morning I wake up and I have my coffee and you're painting the picture of what the story is. People who are more monotone are are not highlighting certain pieces of the story, and so they might have a kind of more mumbled accent and then do it is very much and it's a very different style. So it's just a habit of the kind of presentational storytelling That is appreciated in the Northwest . So that's what comes out as part of the accent. Wow There you go. You are. I wish we had like 30 or 40 more minutes with you like I really your I'm obsessed with your so good. We love you, Paula. Thank you so much. Alright. Well now you'll be listening to yourselves all day all day all day and again If people want to find you on Tiktok, what is it? It's flirty linguists or, like Italy. But Fleur and then underscored D E and then linguist, linguistic anthropologist. So that's the play
