'Merica

Ah! America; the land of the free!

The United States of America possesses various regional accents and not just the typical Californian accent that we probably hear the most. Today I will explore the accents that are the most common to hear, but keep in mind that these are only generalizations, for there are numerous accents that can exist in each state. 

East coast
The Mid-Atlantic accent is known to be heavy and dominant, such as in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Unlike general Americans, these people tend to pronounce the r only before a vowel, but other than that you can’t really hear it in certain words. For example, the word card in a New York accent would sound like “cads”. New Yorkers tend to really exaggerate and stretch their vowels. They would also replace the th as in there with a d.

West coast Some people believe the Standard American English comes from the West coast, such as California, Washington, and Oregon. Like almost every North American accent, they have the habit of pronouncing their t’s as d’s. Another thing that I have noticed from the accents in the Mid-West, for example Minnisota, when they talk, it seems like their mouths are stretched really wide while pronouncing their vowels, unless for the vowel o which makes it sound short.

Southern
I never really thought there were different southern accents until recently. I have discovered that some sound really thick while others are barely noticeable. Also, there are many southern accents that will pronounce the r, but there are others where it is silent. Although, there is one thing for certain that most have the habit of using y’all in almost all their sentences, which stands for “you all”. The standard southern accent focuses more on emphasizing the vowels to make them longer.

I know it’s not easy understanding the different pronunciations through reading rather than hearing it so I put up a clip below that may help. You may recognize the woman, Amy Walker, from a video I have posted in a previous blog post. She is extremely talented in mimicking a variety of accents and even teaches lessons to others who are open to learn her ways.

Sources:

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-do-a-new-york-accent

O Canada

“Us, Canadians, we don’t really have an accent.”

Oh, but yes, we do!

We don’t notice it because we’re used to it. It is expected of people to only notice other accents apart from their own. To be quite honest, I had to do a bit of research to know more about the Canadian accent because even I, had difficulty recognizing my own accent apart from others.

Even though it was the British that were one of the first to explore our country, the Canadian accent is very similar to the typical American accent. Perhaps it’s the fact that we’re neighbours, but we do have our differences. What are the differences you may ask? Well generally speaking, Canadians are known to pronounce the “ou” differently in certain words such as “about” and make it sound like “aboot” or “aboat”. 

This resembles the Scotland dialect, as well as the Geordie accent from Northern England. Another thing is the pronunciation of the letter ‘Z’ as “zed” is more common here than “zee” like the way our fellow American neighbours pronounce it. Apparently, we also pronounce words like “milk” and “miss” differently to make it sound like “melk” or “mess”. Weird, eh?

This brings me to my next point. Why do Canadians say “eh”? Where does it come from? It is not sure where the famous expression originated from but we do know for a fact that it is part of our dialect. It is just a different, and a more polite, way of saying “huh”.

On the other hand, our accent isn’t the same throughout the entire country. The Maritimes, Quebec, and other areas that have a high population of French speakers have more of a Europian accent when it comes to speaking English due to the influence of their native language being French.

The first time I truly grasped the concept of the Canadian accent was when I saw Russell Peters’ stand up performance talking about it on Youtube. It was the funniest thing I have ever seen because it was so true, but a little too exaggerated of course. Check it out it by clicking here. (Warning: Coarse Language).

I must say I am guilty of some of these previous pronunciations and I have heard others say it as well, but I think most people exaggerate it way too much when imitating our accent. Next week I would love to explore the various accents throughout the United States so stay tuned!

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_English

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eh