Why is the Chicago "Blaccent" More Southern than Boston/NYC/Philly's? (Harrisburg: low income, condos)

[marothisu]

Here's an article about the accents here, and the "blaccent", done by WBEZ. It touches on exactly what I said from the get go. When you have a ton of people coming from one area with one accent, and they all live together without much, if any, outside influence in accent, the accent will persist over time. It's very obvious and the thing with NYC and Philadelphia is that they were more exposed to outside influences in their own cities than you think and more than Chicago.

Curious City: WBEZ looks at the Chicago accent and African-American English | WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

[lakal]

Michelle Obama sounds like an average Chicagoan (of any race) to me. Some of these distinctive nasally vowels.

Lorraine Hansberry said it best in A Raisin in the Sun about the Chicago Blaccent, describing one of the main character's (Beneatha) accent:

H"er speech is a mixture of many things; it is different from the rest of the family's insofar as education has permeated her sense of English — and perhaps the midwest rather than the South has finally--at last--won out in her inflection; but not altogether, because over all of it is a soft slurring and transformed use of vowels which is the decided influence of the Southside."

[BajanYankee]

Originally Posted by lakal

Michelle Obama sounds like an average Chicagoan (of any race) to me. Some of these distinctive nasally vowels.

Michelle Obama sounds like she could be from anywhere to me. I haven't noticed anything particularly nasally about her accent. She speaks General American English to my ears, which is supposed to be closely related to a generalized Midwestern accent, which in turn is the "accent" adopted by most people in broadcasting and journalism.

General American - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I would say that I speak with a General American accent. Below is what I'd call a "nasally" accent. The interviews start at the 2:20 mark.


Why I Love Roxbury - YouTube

[nei]

Originally Posted by BajanYankee

Chicago is more densely populated than Philadelphia. It always has been. So I'm not sure if density plays a large role here.

It is bigger, more densely populated probably not. See the maps I made here:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/urban...risons-17.html

In the 50s, Philadelphia appears to be the second densest city in the country

[BajanYankee]

Originally Posted by nei

It is bigger, more densely populated probably not. See the maps I made here:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/urban...risons-17.html

In the 50s, Philadelphia appears to be the second densest city in the country

I was just talking about a strict city limit-to-city limit comparison.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by nei

It is bigger, more densely populated probably not. See the maps I made here:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/urban...risons-17.html

In the 50s, Philadelphia appears to be the second densest city in the country

Nice maps, and not going to debate this because it's off topic but it's hard to compare density amongst two non similar sized cities. Chicago has about 1.2 million more people than Philadelphia, which is something like 40% larger. I'd bet money that Chicago has more people living at a higher density than Philadelphia

[mas23]

to my knowledge, blacks in chicago did come into contact with europeans after moving out the black belt. The histories of chicago, NY and philadelphia are more similar than some people think.



Also, I believe Chicago recieved more African AMericans from the south during the Second Great migration, which would explain why The Chicago Black Accent sounds more southern Than The East Coast cities.

[BajanYankee]

Originally Posted by mas23

to my knowledge, blacks in chicago did come into contact with europeans after moving out the black belt. The histories of chicago, NY and philadelphia are more similar than some people think.

I don't know enough about Chicago history to speak on that one way or the other.

Originally Posted by mas23

Also, I believe Chicago recieved more African AMericans from the south during the Second Great migration, which would explain why The Chicago Black Accent sounds more southern Than The East Coast cities.

The black population in the Northeast also witnessed its greatest growth during the Second Great Migration.

Pennsylvania's black population went from 470,172 in 1940 to 1,016,514 in 1970. Between 1910 and 1940, its black population grew by about 280,000.

http://www.census.gov/population/www...0056/tab53.pdf

New Jersey's population went from 226,973 in 1940 to 770,292 in 1970. That's way more than the 180,000 increase during the First Migration.

http://www.census.gov/population/www...0056/tab45.pdf

New York went from 571,221 in 1940 to 2,168,949 in 1970. Even by 1960, before there was massive Carribean immigration, the black population had already grown by 300%. That dwarfed the 440,000 blacks that moved to the city during the First Migration.

And Illinois exhibited the same trend. A lot of blacks during the First Migration (an increase of about 220,000) and a lot more during the Second Migration (about 1.05 million).

http://www.census.gov/population/www...0056/tab28.pdf

So it's not that blacks in New York City or Philadelphia are necessarily further removed from the South than blacks in Chicago.

[reppin_the_847]

One interesting thing to note is that Atlanta may in some ways be the new Black Mecca. It is the southern metropolis that is probably very likely to attract African-American transplants from both Chicago, NYC and other northern cities (ie. Detroit, etc.) in addition to the neighboring southern states. It's a fairly quick flight from most of the northern cities as well.

Even culturally, observe shows such as the Real Housewives of Atlanta and the sheer amount of African-American film productions, hip hop labels, rappers and R&B acts that call Atlanta home and you can see why it can pull northern blacks back to the south. The area's milder weather, less extreme segregation & lower cost of living certainly helps as well.

Going back to the original topic, however, I'm not sure how many of the blacks of West Indian descent in NYC would consider moving to a southern city like Atlanta.

[DAS]

Originally Posted by BajanYankee

Again, most blacks in the Northeast are descendants of American slaves. I'm just wondering why the blacks in the Northeast largely adopted the regional dialect common among whites whereas blacks in Chicago did not.

And I don't think immigration has much to do with it. Not everyone lives in Brooklyn. There are also a lot of black people in East Trenton, Camden, Paterson, Reading, Allentown, Chester, etc. And there aren't too many West Indians in those places.

Hi BajanYankee, nice to communicate with my fellow NYer on the Chicago forum. I love this forum also. I love the city also.

I think it is a combination of things that are the reason Blacks in the NE don't have as much of the Southern accent. One is that most Blacks with southern heritage that migrated on the east coast came from east coast southern states. They migrated from Virginia down to Florida. Most did not come from states west of the east coast states.

As other posters pointed out Blacks that migrated to Chicago and other midwestern cities come from different states more in the midwest southern states like TN, AK, MS. We don't have to many descendants of people from these states in NYC.

The other thing is that there were Blacks, in NYC especially that were there from the time that slavery was in NYC, so the Blacks from the south moved and lived near these Blacks. I'm sure that the Blacks that were in NYC already had northern accents. I don't think there was slavery in Chicago. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Many Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and ethnic Whites started migrating to NYC after 1880. They lived in the same places. The Blacks from the South, the Spanish and English speaking Caribbeans started mixing up from that time forward. So many AA's in NYC are mixed from 100 years ago or more. They would adopt a speech pattern that they can all understand.

However unless the Black person in NY is mixed with an Ethnic White they usually don't have that classic NYC accent most people hear in the movies. Most NYC Blacks sound like JayZ, Alicia Keys, LL, if they are older probably like Cicely Tyson from Harlem and Caribbean descent. Or like Leslie Uggams AA from Harlem. While NY is segregated, unlike other cities people moved around more in their daily lives. People work and go to school outside of their neighborhood, they hang out in other areas growing up. I'm sure people in Chicago do to, but in NYC our transit system operates 24 hours so there is possibly more coming and going. Even back in the 1950's our Doo Wop groups were mixed Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Whites singing in the same groups. I don't know if the rest of the country had that much mixing pre-civil rights era. That doesn't mean we didn't have racial problems but people were willing to make money together in all walks of life.

One poster mentioned Black home owning areas of NYC that were AA, and BajanYankee corrected that they are Caribbean areas. They were mostly AA prior to 1980-1990, but now most AA's have left NYC and the homes are now owned by Caribbean Blacks. Some areas like Carnarsie and Flatbush went straight from White to Caribbean. NE Bronx was White to half and half, and now mostly all Caribbean.