The Chicago accent (Berwyn, Forest Park, Bridgeport: schools, live in, suburbs)

[SkylarkPhotoBooth]

Originally Posted by PILMAN

i did one of the accent tag videos a while back, no idea if i sound like someone from the city or not

https://youtu.be/Tee41DY24zs

in the south people say i have an accent while people up north say it sounds slightly southern influenced. I have lived in FL since 2002

I heard a couple of mildly Chicago-ish vowels, but for the most part your accent sounds pretty neutral, which would explain why it sounds southern to northerners and northern to southerners. (I've encountered the same thing...People in Texas think I sound like I'm from the north and people in Michigan think I sound like I'm from the south, presumably just because I lack either of those extreme accents.)

[personone]

Joe Mantegna and Gary Sinse also have good Chicago accents IMO, but it seems like an exact Chicago accent is hard to pin down because there are so many small variations.

[MassVt]

I'd use the late actor/ex-policeman Dennis Farina as a good example ....

[TheTimidBlueBars]

Originally Posted by lepoisson

That makes sense. It's pretty much the same deal anywhere. Educated people often lose their accent. Less educated people keep their accent.

Weirdly enough, it was while I was at college that I realized how noticeable my Chicago accent is. I went to school in a small town in Ohio, so people would sometimes comment on it and ask if I was from Minnesota or Michigan or Canada (I don't know how you get Canada).

That was also when I started really getting interested in linguistics and learning about different dialects, and when I started reading about certain features the upper Midwestern accent has (like our diphthongized short-a's and flat, fronted short o's) and studying my own pronunciations of words, I realized how non-standard my speech really was. It also made me notice when other students were from my general area - but you're right, most of them just sounded pretty regionally neutral.

[SkylarkPhotoBooth]

Originally Posted by TheTimidBlueBars

Weirdly enough, it was while I was at college that I realized how noticeable my Chicago accent is.

That's interesting, but I don't think it's weird at all! I think it's when people first leave home for any significant length of time (longer than a vacation), that they begin to notice their own accent in relation to that of people from other places. I find that the people who swear they have no accent (regardless of where they are from) have usually not lived very far from home for very long.

I'll go out on a limb and guess that your college was in central or southern Ohio, based on the fact that they identified you with Upper Midwestern states. If you had been in northern Ohio, I don't think your accent would have stood out as particularly unusual to them, since the accent around the Great Lakes share some significant similarities. When you get further south in Ohio, though, the accent has more in common with Kentucky and West Virginia, which is pretty different from Cleveland or Chicago.

[VA All Day]

Rarely hear the genuine Chicago accent but that nasal, vowel-elongating midwest accent seems to be prevalent everywhere. Granted, there are plenty of transplants with that annoying regionally neutral thing, but not sure how anyone could live here and not hear the accent.

Then again most midwesterners, no matter how strong their accent might be, claim they have none whatsoever. It's baffling.

[bostonguy1960]

I can hear a bit of what seems like a Chicago-area accent in Hillary Clinton...and she's well educated.

I assume she's been away from Chicago for a long time but it hasn't entirely diluted?

[andrew61]

Originally Posted by SkylarkPhotoBooth

I think it's when people first leave home for any significant length of time (longer than a vacation), that they begin to notice their own accent in relation to that of people from other places.

The only time I ever notice my own accent is when I record myself saying something, then play it back and listen to it.

[andrew61]

Originally Posted by bostonguy1960

I can hear a bit of what seems like a Chicago-area accent in Hillary Clinton...and she's well educated.

I assume she's been away from Chicago for a long time but it hasn't entirely diluted?

I can hear it too. But she's been known to adopt a Southern accent at times as well. I heard it in an old news clip from when her husband was governor of Arkansas, for example.

[SkylarkPhotoBooth]

Originally Posted by bostonguy1960

I can hear a bit of what seems like a Chicago-area accent in Hillary Clinton...and she's well educated.

I assume she's been away from Chicago for a long time but it hasn't entirely diluted?

Good point. Same goes for her husband's Arkansas accent.