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Westerner92: I'm guessing Oklahoma, Kansas, or western Missouri. Am I close?
You're kinda close. Just out of curiosity, what makes you guess that?
I'm wondering if the California replies for me are because it sounds like a California-specific accent or because it's more neutral like is common there.
You're kinda close. Just out of curiosity, what makes you guess that?
I'm wondering if the California replies for me are because it sounds like a California-specific accent or because it's more neutral like is common there.
You appear to have the so-called "pin-pen merger," which occurs in the areas marked with red dots on this map. Aside from this feature, however, your speech sounds more Midland than Southern, so I'm hesitant to place you somewhere like Texas or Arkansas. I know there are outliers with the merger in Colorado, but you used the 'broad A' sound in "Nevada" rather than the short A, which is pretty common in most of the West. But maybe you just go against the flow?
I guess southern Nebraska is a possibility too...?
You also have a particularly high/tense vowel in "-ing" sequences, which I heard all the time from my friends in Missouri. But I've heard it in California as well, so that doesn't really help me narrow things down.
I'm sure you probably already know from the other posts in the forum, but what do you think of my accent, Verseau? You seem to know a lot about this stuff.
Your speech is a very clear example of a northern Minnesota accent, flyingwriter. I think it's great - I don't get to hear the accent that often. Even though you may think you sound 'neutral,' at least compared to some of your fellow Minnesotans, I assure you that there are considerable differences between your accent and General American English. Which is a good thing, IMO - I love diversity.
Aside from the typical Upper Midwestern features, there are a few things that really scream "central/northern MN." One is the "o" sound you commented on. The articulation involves the tongue well retracted in the back of the mouth with the lips fully rounded. There is no 'offglide,' which is a technical term for when the tongue moves or 'glides away' at the end of a vowel. This offglide is normal for the majority of English speakers, but not in your area, quite possibly due to Scandinavian influence.
Another distinct feature is your pronunciation of the "ow" sound in words like "down." This vowel is called a diphthong because it is actually composed of two vowels that blend together: "ah" and "oo." In your case, both the "ah" and "oo" sounds are pronounced with the tongue particularly far back in the mouth. When they 'blend' together, they almost sound like "oh," so that your "loud" may come across as "load" to the rest of us.
The so-called "cot-caught merger," rendering pairs like don-dawn, hock-hawk exactly the same, also separates much of Minnesota from the rest of the Midwest. However, many other Americans also have this merger, myself included (it's regular in northern New England and eastern Massachusetts).
flyingwriter, very Minnesota, which is influenced by the Canadian accent, I think. And also, your imitation of other accents, yeah, not so much, I can still detect the MN-accent, lol. The CA accent you did, that's more of a subculture accent of CA, which is surfer/skateboarder/pothead. I hope that isn't your perception of general CA, yikes.
Lifeshadower, I'm detecting a faint accent from somewhere in Asia, are you Asian?
Fillmont, completely neutral as neutral can be, I thought he was from SoCal; I've heard, perhaps I'm mistaken, that the no-accent is also dubbed the Hollywood accent, as in film and television.
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