[jellybean80]

LOL! I get teased about it even when I go visit family in Ohio! Put it this way... We sound like most people on TV!

[Orwelleaut]

Originally Posted by jellybean80

LOL! I get teased about it even when I go visit family in Ohio! Put it this way... We sound like most people on TV!

Michiganders sound like Tim Allen, yes, but he is a MI native. To me, Tim Allen has an accent. Not a thick accent like Jerry Seinfeld (NYC) or Larry the Cable Guy (Southern), but a little bit of an accent just the same. Tim Allen does not sound like the typical news anchor. He has the "pirate with the head cold" version of the MI accent, or the non-nasal version of the MI accent. News anchors do not generally have a MI accent. Compared to MI, they speak a little more slowly, considerably less twangy, and without the nasal and/or gravelly voice tone. Tim Allen's MI sound and mentality, though, is so much of what makes Tool Time such as awesome show. Just as Drew Carrey sounds very Cleveland and his "Clevelandness", if you will, makes him especially entertaining, Tim Allen is very Michigan.

The only place that has an accent highly similar to MI is Western New York. Folks around Buffalo and Rochester speak a lot like Michiganders. The UP, WI, and MN have an accent quite different from MI below the Mackinaw bridge, an accent with strong German and Scandinavian influences. In WI, a MI accent from below the bridge will probably sound "Chicago" to natives.

[Orwelleaut]

Originally Posted by kazoopilot

Ohio DOES have a Southern accent. Cleveland and Toledo don't; but Cincy, Dayton, Columbus, and Athens certainly do! Try going to Chillicothe and Pomeroy and tell me that they don't have a Southern accent!

That is what I originally hinted at. Southern Ohio sounds plenty Southern to us folks up by the lakes. Southeast Ohio has a WV type sound. Columbus and Cincy both sound pretty Southern to me. What I find humorous is that, when I have travelled to MI, folks seem to think of all Ohioans as having a Southern Ohio type of speech pattern.

Ohio has many accents. Youngstown/Warren sounds a lot like Pittsburgh and Western PA. Cleveland and Ashtabula sound a little like Buffalo, but also a little like PA. Toledo sounds MI. Below Mansfield, though, I would agree totally that folks start sounding pretty Southern, except for over along the Ohio River North of I-70. This area sounds like Pittsburgh with a little Southern mixed in.

[Orwelleaut]

Originally Posted by Bydand

"Pahrk their cahr" is Boston and coastal Maine, NOT Michigan. Again, I have never heard a single person in Michigan (except my wife who was born and raised in the Boston area, and then only says it when really tired) pronounce it that way. As for "bee-ack", I haven't heard that anyplace I have been, for sure not around this State.

Grand Rapids IS pronounced GranD Rapids. I am there a couple times a month and have never heard anybody pronounce it "Grah" not even my sister and Brother-in-Law who live there. The others are either French or Indian names and as such are pronounced that way, and not Anglicized.

Dude, read my phonetic spellings, LOL!!! Boston would be "Pahk", with no letter "r". MI and Western NY have a very intense "r" in these words, sounding like "Pahrk" If you have this accent, though, you may not know what I am referring to. There used to be a commercial on Detroit area radio stations, back between 1999 and around 2002, in which a car dealer said "This Caahhrr is sold!!" If you are from MI, though, you may not hear an accent in these syllables, and, as a result, may think I am blowing smoke up your you know what with this

[northstar22]

Originally Posted by Orwelleaut

Michiganders sound like Tim Allen, yes, but he is a MI native. To me, Tim Allen has an accent. Not a thick accent like Jerry Seinfeld (NYC) or Larry the Cable Guy (Southern), but a little bit of an accent just the same. Tim Allen does not sound like the typical news anchor. He has the "pirate with the head cold" version of the MI accent, or the non-nasal version of the MI accent. News anchors do not generally have a MI accent. Compared to MI, they speak a little more slowly, considerably less twangy, and without the nasal and/or gravelly voice tone. Tim Allen's MI sound and mentality, though, is so much of what makes Tool Time such as awesome show. Just as Drew Carrey sounds very Cleveland and his "Clevelandness", if you will, makes him especially entertaining, Tim Allen is very Michigan.

The only place that has an accent highly similar to MI is Western New York. Folks around Buffalo and Rochester speak a lot like Michiganders. The UP, WI, and MN have an accent quite different from MI below the Mackinaw bridge, an accent with strong German and Scandinavian influences. In WI, a MI accent from below the bridge will probably sound "Chicago" to natives.

Tim Allen does not have an accent. None. At least none that I can hear. He sounds nothing like a "pirate with a head cold." Is that really what Michiganders sound like to those not from here? Arrrrgh *cough*!

Also, I know many people from Western NY, and they don't have an accent as far as I can tell.

[Michigansnowflake]

Tim doesnt have an accent cause he sounds like us!

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by BayAreaHillbilly

Speaking of Western accents (real ones, like mine, not the transplant influenced stew that is becoming dominant in the megacities), here are some dead give aways:

Or-raynge
Ad-vert-EYES-ment
Soda (never pop)
Ape-ricot (never Ayapricot)
Sayahmun (never pronounce the "l")
ChiL-Leh(somewhat exagerated pronunciation of the "l" and changing the single "l" into nearly a double "l")
San-TUH Ma-REE-uh

Some more ...

Enn-vell-lope (never ahn-vel-lope)
con-CRETE
WATT-er
"in" and "en" for "ing" ending
git (not get) - note - this is dying out, only true hard core westerners still say it this way

[h2obaby65]

This is a typical response from a central Fla. native. You can almost see the slanted eyes and shoulder shrug. Always have to be right. I never dreamed moving to this state would be such a nightmare, very confrontational, all these people,..unless your from the SOUTH! Then your a negative Yankee, They, the,"trying to act smarter than they are," Southern folk, are Hell Bent on gettin one up on us Northerners, "LAST ONE TO FL. PLEASE SHUT THE DOOR!" All this crap, visit their cities, blog posts, Ocalas, their runnin home buyers off! Whatever, like they've said themselves, ever seen, DELIVERANCE??

[momof11]

[quote=jeanniepep;5825561]I've lived in Michigan all my life, and people from Michigan ask me where I'm from because of my "accent!" LOL!! I know I'm a total mockingbird, I don't even realize that when I've been around people with accents (i.e. Canada, southern US, Hawaii) I start picking it up. I hope people don't think I'm making fun of them.quote]

I haven't lived here all my life (one year) but I do the same thing. I grew up in California with a West Virginia dad and an Oklahoma mom and extended family. I without realizing it start to match the accent I'm listening to. I have a friend from Texas and by the time I'm done with the conversation I've got a Texas drawl. He just laughs at me.

Our family is starting to pick up the Michigan accent. In California people are lazy with their vowels and we tend to talk too fast. Michigan punches the vowels but leans heavily on the A as in Apple sound. Hard consonants in the middle are softened so the predominant sound is the vowel. When I hear certain words, like cotton the two t's in the middle are ghosted.

[jellybean80]

Now that I think about it- I met Vince Vaughn in Las Vegas. The first thing he asked me was "where is that accent from"! LOL!