<p>My relatives are lifelong New Englanders (though not from Boston), and I’ve never heard bag pronounced anything like vague. Maybe in Boston the Irish influence got in there a bit, like Yiddish in NY? I DO notice a big difference in accents by generation. The real old-timey ones from my childhood had much less Kennedy-esque, Boston-style accents. Everything sounded softer, for lack of a better word. I particularly remember my great aunts and uncles saying “ay-yuh” instead of yes or yeah. It’s not all that dissimilar to the accents you can still catch in some of the old baymen out on the east end of Long Island. Who knows, maybe they came down from there.</p>
<p>I’ve always been fascinated by linguistics and diction, wish I’d taken the linguistics course they offered in college. Where we live in the Southeast there are tons of relos, and I’ll say something like “Do I hear Boston in your voice?” (Or Philadelphia, South Jersey, etc.) and they’re always so surprised as they haven’t lived there in forever but we always get laughing and talking about where we’re from. Went to see an MD the other day who had such a strong NY accent and when I asked him about it he said he left NY for Miami when he was THREE but his parents spoke that way so he does, too.</p>
<p>Rout, route, root.</p>
<p>Quiz indicated Philly for me and I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New Yawk. </p>
<p>While shopping in New Hampshire a couple of years ago, I overheard a mom telling her young daughter to stop talking like she’s from Brooklyn. I immediately piped up with “What’s wrong with being from Brooklyn?” Muttering “nothing, nothing,” she hustled her little one out of the store . . .</p>
<p>Don’t live there now, nor do I sound like I come from Brooklyn. Don’t know how it escaped me - I didn’t do it intentionally. Go figure.</p>
<p>Both quizzes indicated Midland for me. I agree with the asessment. I was born in Louisville. (My family and all of my acquaintances always pronounced it Loo -ee -vil. Loo -uh -vul really grates on my ears!) I lived in Lexington, KY as a teenager and I have lived in N. KY, just south of Cincinnati, for 30 years. I have the TV broadcaster accent. </p>
<p>A couple of people have asked about states that have appreciable differences in accent from one region to another. Kentucky is a good example. There are large regional differences. The Louisville and northern Ky regions are primarily midland. Eastern Ky has an Appalachian accent. Western Ky has a sort of southern accent and central Ky has a southern accent that’s different from the western region. I seem to recall hearing a linguist say that there are 7 distinct accents in the state.</p>
<p>I hear differences in the accents of my fellow Kentuckians not only due to where they grew up, but also due to what generation they belong to and what social class they are.
For example, my mother and her siblings pronounce egg as aigg (long a sound) instead of the more standard ehgg (short e sound). I pronounced it that way too as a child, then noticed that people on TV pronounced it differently. I altered my pronunciation sometime during childhood. I’ve heard older people in Cincinnati use the same pronunciation as my mom, but I’ve never heard it from younger people. </p>
<p>When I lived in Lexington I noticed that some people in the town seemed to affect a southern accent. (Most natives have a Midland accent.) It was seen as a mark of prestige to speak with a soft, southern drawl. I’ve heard some social climbers in the region actually change their speech from a Midland accent to a more southern accent for reasons of status.</p>
<p>In N. Ky, where I now live, I have noticed that not everyone sounds the same. Some people from lower socio-economic groups have a bit of an Appalachian twang. Some people, particularly those who’ve lived in Cincinnati, have a more nasal sound in their pronunciation of short a vowels. But, for the most part, people here use the “midwest, broadcaster” accent. </p>
<p>I’ve gotten a kick out of occasionally being told, “I knew you were from the South!” when I’ve told a northerner where I’m from. No real Southerner would ever think that I’m from the South. I do not have the slightest bit of southern accent.</p>
<p>In a vein similar to shoe vs sneaker, do any of you make a big distinction between hat and cap? </p>
<p>In the winter, I always said I was wearing a hat when referring to the knitted or fake fur objects I placed on my head. I never thought anything about that usage until I became a mom and I said I was putting a snowsuit and hat on my infant D in front of my MIL and FIL. They are Alabama born and bred. The first several times I said I was putting a hat on my D, they looked at me like I had two heads. MIL asked me if I was not going to put a CAP on D since it was very cold outside. I was confused because I thought that I had just said that I was going to put cold weather gear on her head! I eventually discovered that to my in-laws, there was a big difference between a hat and a cap. To them, a hat is something dressy that’s worn for ornamental purposes. A cap is either a knitted object worn for warmth or a baseball cap that’s worn for shade. They thought I was nutty for not knowing the difference!</p>
<p>I’m from New England. A cap would be a baseball cap and a hat is anything else. Here in North Carolina they call a knitted winter hat a toboggan. I had never heard that before. Up north a toboggan is a sled.</p>
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<p>How is the word “egg” pronounced where you grew up among other people your age?</p>
<p>You’d think (well, I’d think, anyway) that kids would have the same accent as their parents. But they don’t. Mostly, kids will speak with the same accent as the other kids in their area. Consider-- probably most of us know immigrants who speak English with a foreign accent, and possibly with imperfect grammar. But their American-born children, even the littlest ones, speak perfectly accented English with native fluency and the local accent. And the same is true for native English speakers who move to another part of the US-- two Bostonians living in Charleston will have kids with southern drawls.</p>
<p>You also might imagine that kids would pick up accents from TV. But, clearly, that rarely happens, or regional accents in the US would be gone. As a fan of diversity in language and cuisine, I’m glad we still have local accents.</p>
<p>I agree that children do pick up the local accent. In my own case, I don’t really know when I altered my non-standard pronunciation of the word egg. I know it was sometime after starting first grade. I prorbably did alter my pronunciation because I heard others at school and in the neighborhood pronouncing it differently, rather than because I heard it being pronounced differently on TV. I’ve always been curious about where the aigg pronunciation for egg comes from. I’ve heard some older people in the N. KY / Cincinnati area pronounce it that way, too. Both the Louisville and Cincinnati areas have a high concentration of people of German ancestry. I wonder if that has anything to do with it???</p>
<p>I have cousins who grew up on Long Island with a dad from Louisville and a mom from Boston. They speak with a Long Island accent. My siblings and I found it very interesting to listen to them talk when we were growing up. Our uncle sounded “normal” to us, but our aunt and our cousins had “accents”.</p>
<p>My husband’s parents are from Alabama, but he grew up in N. KY. He has a midland accent, except for a couple of southernisms that he learned from his parents. My Ds and I find it interesting that we can tell when he’s on the phone with any his Alabama relatives - his speech changes. He says he’s not conscious of it, but the girls and I sure are! His speech becomes noticeably Southern.</p>
<p>These always surprised me:</p>
<p>[Mapleandmore.com</a> features NEW ENGLAND STYLE HOT DOG ROLLS LOBSTER BUNS](<a href=“http://www.mapleandmore.com/html/mapleandmore_com_features_new_.html]Mapleandmore.com”>http://www.mapleandmore.com/html/mapleandmore_com_features_new_.html)</p>
<p>They’re the best! Buttered and lightly toasted, they’re the only way to serve lobster rolls.</p>
<p>Yeah…I have a “midland accent” which means I have no accent (But, I’m from Southern Cal, so I don’t get this notion of calling it a “midland accent.”)…LOL</p>
<p>“You have a Midland accent” is just another way of saying “you don’t have an accent.” You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.</p>
<p>This one cracked me up…</p>
<p>Our next word is “horrible.” How does that first vowel sound?
It’s just like in the word “wh0re.”
It’s the same “o” sound as in “hot.”
Neither one</p>
<p>The first O in horrible is the same as the O in hot.</p>
<p>Watching Wheel of Fortune tonight…they were doing the show from Boston and had a local as a participant. Evidently the producers cautioned the guy he had to try extra hard when he picked the letter “R” --pronouncing it in a way that the national audience would understand him (not “ah”). The first time he picked “R,” he pronounced it something like “Awwaarrr” and Pat Sajak asked him if he had hurt himself pronouncing the letter.</p>
<p>LOL-- this thread topic rolls around in a thread about once a year. And its always funny!</p>
<p>From the Midatlantic states here and I pronounce “horrible, Florida, forehead and orange” like hahrible, farhead, Flohrida and ahrange. Get major grief from friends and nuclear family over this, but not from sibs who speak the same way.</p>
<p>My D, who was raised in New England is going to school in Maryland. At orientation she had the other kids rolling on the floor with her Boston accent. They kept trying to get her to say “wicked”.</p>
<p>I still have my accent and am convinced that unless I go for training I will probably never lose it. I am so happy my kids do not have it although there are some that say they could spot their New Jersey accent. I of course think they sound wonderful because they do not have the New York City accent. Its all about perception, I guess.</p>
<p>Anybody else drink out of a Bubbla? aka water fountain.</p>
<p>I was at a dinner party one night, casually chatting with someone. Someone else came up to me and said, “Are you from the Bronx?!” I stared at him, trying to figure out where he got that idea from considering I had not said where I was from to the first person I was talking to. I said, “No, why?” This person said, “Your accent!” It took me a few seconds to realize and then I smiled, “My dad’s from New Yawk.”</p>
<p>My friends do pick up my dad’s Queens accent. He says “I want to go somewheres” or “let’s eat afterwards.” These two drive me nuts because I hear it and therefore I type them in my papers… and MS Word tells me that adding “S” to afterward and somewhere is wrong!</p>
<p>I, of course, embrace my New Yawk accent by occasionally saying the “D” instead of the “T”.</p>
<p>Now, Boston. The first time I heard a real Boston accent was a colleague of mine in graduate school. He was born and raised in Boston. When he asked me about tickets one day. I was perplexed. He said “chawkey” tickets. Huh? Then he asked me if I remember my Facebook message. Oh, duh. HOCKEY tickets! Since then I’ve done my best to listen to him carefully for his patterns so I would be able to understand him immediately when we talk one-on-one.</p>
<p>That’s when I decided I did NOT like Boston accents. :)</p>