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Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KodeBlue
Have you noticed that blacks in DC and Chicago have a very similar accent?
Also just in general I have family in Detroit, Cincinnati and other parts of Midwest, to me all of there accents come across with a SLIGHT hint of not necessarily southern, but country twang compared to DC.
The northeast and Midwest are growing more slowly than the sunbelt. Because newcomers are coming at a slower rate, they aren't arriving fast enough to change the culture and their kids tend to become assimilated. Beyond that, most of the newcomers tend to be immigrants. Because the north received the bulk of the immigrants in the previous waves, its culture had already evolved in such a way that made it more open to them, which in turn hastens assimilation. Immigrants are less of a culture shock when they have already been coming for generations, as was the case in northern cities, rather than when they are coming to a land populated by long settled stock as is in the south.
FYI, Northerners have no idea what a "country accent" is. Southerners are constantly making references to it, and I still haven't the slightest idea how it's any different from a Southern accent.
How many 20-somethings these days do you hear with thick regional accents? None I've ever heard, honestly.
It seems like regional accents started dying out with the Baby Boomers, and have faded ever since. Even here in Minnesota, the only people who have the stereotypical accent (especially in the Twin Cities metro) are people over age 55 or so.
I work with a bunch of younger Millennials (kids born in the 90s) who are all Minnesota natives who can't even pronounce words the normal Minnesotan way. They all say "bahg" instead of "bayg" (bag), "ex-PAIR-ih-mint" instead of "ix-SPEAR-mint" (experiment), and "Cul-low-RAH-doe" instead of "Cahl-low-RAD-doe" (Colorado). The accent is slowly being eroded away due to influences from mass media and entertainment, as is the case all over the country.
people still have regional accents, when I left New England for College, people made fun of the way I said aunt (aunt not ant)(B)room (ruum, not rewm) mom (mum, not mahm), and most things with 'r's.
Certainly dialects are still prevalent. I say carriage for shopping carts, bureau for dresser, cellar for basement, frappe for milkshake, rotary for traffic cirle etc, and almost everyone I know does.
How many 20-somethings these days do you hear with thick regional accents? None I've ever heard, honestly.
It seems like regional accents started dying out with the Baby Boomers, and have faded ever since. Even here in Minnesota, the only people who have the stereotypical accent (especially in the Twin Cities metro) are people over age 55 or so.
I work with a bunch of younger Millennials (kids born in the 90s) who are all Minnesota natives who can't even pronounce words the normal Minnesotan way. They all say "bahg" instead of "bayg" (bag), "ex-PAIR-ih-mint" instead of "ix-SPEAR-mint" (experiment), and "Cul-low-RAH-doe" instead of "Cahl-low-RAD-doe" (Colorado). The accent is slowly being eroded away due to influences from mass media and entertainment, as is the case all over the country.
In other words, the North is becoming more Western and the South is becoming more Northern?
Also just in general I have family in Detroit, Cincinnati and other parts of Midwest, to me all of there accents come across with a SLIGHT hint of not necessarily southern, but country twang compared to DC.
Is your family originally from the Carolinas too? 3 of mine are from the Raleigh area and one is from southern Virginia.
Black regional accents are largely tied to the patterns of the Great Migration. Black people in Chicago are more likely to have roots in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee....places with deeper southern accents. There's a lot of coming and going of relatives especially with the time on her tradition of black kids going down south for the summer (because working parents couldn't watch them). Black people came to DC primarily from VA and the Carolinas. Black people on the west Coast are usually from Texas and Louisiana. This gives us that Snoop Dogg accent.
True, it's like depending on what state that they ended up in, they seem to have traveled due north from their original state except Louisiana and Texas, which tended to move out west.
There are more of us. The same is true to a certain extent on the global scale. You can go to remote corners of the globe and find Americans. There we are. We also export our culture at a much faster clip than we import things from others.
The South is more fragile because it doesn't have enough critical mass. It also isn't the seat of our media and entertainment industries. So the North (and California) control the culture.
Black regional accents are largely tied to the patterns of the Great Migration. Black people in Chicago are more likely to have roots in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee....places with deeper southern accents. There's a lot of coming and going of relatives especially with the time on her tradition of black kids going down south for the summer (because working parents couldn't watch them). Black people came to DC primarily from VA and the Carolinas. Black people on the west Coast are usually from Texas and Louisiana. This gives us that Snoop Dogg accent.
Don't forget that black people also came to DC from Maryland. Charles county was over 60% black in 1860 and it fell to 20% by 2000 (though the black population has rapidly increased in recent times). Prince George's County, MD was 57% black and Montgomery county was nearly 40% black at the time. Calvert and St. Mary's counties were also majority black.
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