America has dialects too

[castledangerous]

Baltimore accents are also different from anywhere else in the state, very distinctive. Perhaps it's the Irish influence, it's named after Baltimore, County Cork, after all. I can pick out several distinct accents within Maryland, even though I'm not a native. I've lived here a long while, though.

From Wikipedia:

"The city is named after Lord Baltimore in the Irish House of Lords, the founding proprietor of the Maryland Colony. Baltimore himself took his title from a place in Bornacoola parish, County Leitrim and County Longford, Ireland.[11] Baltimore is an anglicized form of the Irish Baile an Tí Mhóir, meaning "Town of the Big House",[12] not to be confused with Baltimore, County Cork."

[macwilkin]

At my last "real" job, we had a tech support hotline that answered calls from all over the U.S. One tech support guy was an older Scot with fine accent, and another was from Maine. One day, a third person answered the line. The caller said he'd already called in once and spoken to "the foreign fellow," so he got transferred to the Scot.

You guessed it. . . he'd been speaking to the "down Mainer"!

Bert and I were workin' on the tech support hotline...

Todd

[Downix]

At my last "real" job, we had a tech support hotline that answered calls from all over the U.S. One tech support guy was an older Scot with fine accent, and another was from Maine. One day, a third person answered the line. The caller said he'd already called in once and spoken to "the foreign fellow," so he got transferred to the Scot.

You guessed it. . . he'd been speaking to the "down Mainer"!

ayuh, we do sound like weah from anothah country.

Actually my accent has blended over my years of moving, having some of my Maine and New Hampshire overtones mixed with Michigan, New York and Florida.

[davedove]

ayuh, we do sound like weah from anothah country.

Actually my accent has blended over my years of moving, having some of my Maine and New Hampshire overtones mixed with Michigan, New York and Florida.

The dialects are all blending through a combination of factors: mobility of the population, mass communications, etc. However, it is a slow process and the more remote an area, the more pronounced the dialect.

It's amazing how much speech patterns can vary over a small area. I was raised in the lower portion of Illinois (near St. Louis), and our accent is different from that of the most southern part, the central part, and definitely different from Chicago.

[macwilkin]

The dialects are all blending through a combination of factors: mobility of the population, mass communications, etc. However, it is a slow process and the more remote an area, the more pronounced the dialect.

It's amazing how much speech patterns can vary over a small area. I was raised in the lower portion of Illinois (near St. Louis), and our accent is different from that of the most southern part, the central part, and definitely different from Chicago.

Also, dialects can magically come back in certain circumstances; my mother-in-law, for example, immediately picks up her South Louisiana dialect around my wife's brother and other folks from Louisiana.

Regards,

Todd

[Phogfan86]

Being from Kansas, we have no idea what you all are talking about. We keep getting told that our accent is the one that broadcasters aspire to: the no-accent accent.

When I worked in Wisconsin, I noticed three distinctly different accents from Milwaukee alone, especially the south side where they end every sentence in, "hey?" "So whaddya think of my plan, hey?"

[beloitpiper]

Also, dialects can magically come back in certain circumstances; my mother-in-law, for example, immediately picks up her South Louisiana dialect around my wife's brother and other folks from Louisiana.

Regards,

Todd

This happens to me as well. When I was in Ireland, my roommates were all from the East Coast, mostly from Boston. One day, we were at a pub, and I see a guy wearing a Wisconsin sweatshirt. I go to talk to him, and all of my roommates told me how thick my accent became when 'the Sconnies' got together.

[slohairt]

My favourite American accent is the Boston accent. In Boston, khakis are two different things: 1) pants you wear and 2) what you start your car with!

[sathor]

I called a place in Cali once, expecting (in all honesty) some kinda Indian speaking person on the other line. The voice on the other side threw me, I knew the accent, I could even replicate it, but not place it. I finally asked, and found out it was the Lancaster PA accent. How he got to CA, I'll never know....

[davedove]

I have noticed that we in the States also seem to be able to understand the different accents better (accents, not languages), probably because we are a nation of immigrants.

When I was in the Army, in the clinic there was a Sergeant from Puerto Rico and one of the people working for her was from Korea. I had no problems understanding either of them, but they had a real hard time talking to each other.