From Southern drawl to Midwest normy to California cool, the United States is made all the more colorful by its abundance of local accents. A region’s accent can be as emblematic as its cuisine and history, and they give an exciting new flavor to the plain old English we use every day. No matter how formulaic Hollywood has tried to make local accents, there’s still something special about hearing a sweet Southern grandma say, “Well bless your heart, suga'” or a wise-cracking New York uncle telling you to “Fuh-ged-about-it!”
Are Local Accents Dying?
As an integral part of our self-identity, most people in the US rightly take a bit of pride in how we speak. That’s why hearing that our region’s accent is disappearing can spark a touch of concern on a very personal level. Before we get started on our linguistic journey across the Red, White, and Blue, we need to make sure that we’re not just chasing ghosts. Has mass media saturation homogenized our way of speaking? Has the internet just made us all speak in memes?
Fortunately, most of today’s linguists recognize that these concerns are generally overstated and that a “cultural panic” tends to pop up with every new wave of technology. The internet is not making us all talk the same, just as cable TV didn’t really change our parents’ accents and the old-timey radio didn’t change our grandparents’. These worries arise whenever we’re faced with significant technological change, case in point, the recent hysteria that Alexa and Google Home devices would soon have us all constantly speaking loudly and overenunciating, as we’d subconsciously been trained to do by our โrobo-masters.โ
Big tech and the internet have not endangered our individual accents, and platforms like YouTube and TikTok have done a phenomenal job of celebrating and showcasing local accents, encouraging viewers to appreciate (and occasionally laugh at) how different we can all sound. It’s also important to remember that accents, like all language, are living, growing things. New technology and shifting populations will change regional accents, just as they always have. The Cajun Creole of today is not the same as it was 100 years ago, but that doesnโt mean it doesnโt have the same spice.
Ample Accents
With 50 very different states and one of the most diverse populations in the world, there is plenty of variety in how the US talks. For this series, we’re going to touch on not just local pronunciations, but regional slang and dialects so that we can really show off all the country’s linguistic eccentricities. Please note that this is just a tiny sample of some of the US’s wide range of accents, but some that we feel showcase the country’s remarkable ways of speaking.
California Accent
Southern Accent
Pacific Northwest Accent
New England Accent
Midwestern American English
Hawaii English and Pidgin
Native American English
New Orleans And Cajun English
New York City Accent
Boston Accent
General American Accent (โNeutralโ)
African American Vernacular English
Radio/TV Voice
Sports Announcer Voice
YouTuber Voice
