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Location: Detroit's eastside, downtown Detroit in near future!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by flyingwriter
Ya, but what about (black) people from Novi, or Livonia or Portage?
its not that many black people in Novi or Livonia and I've never met any or been to Portage to know but many of the ones in Novi and Livonia are originally from Detroit and sound no different. Now G Rapids do sound a little different that us. Its not "that" noticable though.
Location: Detroit's eastside, downtown Detroit in near future!
2,053 posts, read 4,392,349 times
Reputation: 699
Quote:
Originally Posted by DAMEN VII
well im a black male from chicago and if u think we sound country then you couldn't have been to places like memphis,arkansas, mississippi,etc..
i got fam in memphis and we don't sound NUTHIN a like..like some one said before, we may have a mild southern twang or whatever, but you can find that all over the country..its cats out east in D.C and baltimore that sound country as hell..but i notice that blacks on the west coast tend to sound real proper..
my ex from LA and the onlything that stuck out for her as far as how i spoke was how i pronounced "car"..
a lot of Chicago people sound similar to MS people and AR. We always tease our cousins there saying they sound like "educated mississippi folk" lol. Of course blacks in the midwest don't sound as country as the ones in the south but you can def tell where our influence comes from. Many people in Detroit sound like watered down GA or MS people to people from the eastcoast. My dad columbian friend from NYC always used to talk about how country we sound as well as his black friend from DC. and yea some DC and Baltimore people sound country. Westcoast people don't sound that country unless they are from like an innner city.
well im a black male from chicago and if u think we sound country then you couldn't have been to places like memphis,arkansas, mississippi,etc..
i got fam in memphis and we don't sound NUTHIN a like..like some one said before, we may have a mild southern twang or whatever, but you can find that all over the country..its cats out east in D.C and baltimore that sound country as hell..but i notice that blacks on the west coast tend to sound real proper..
my ex from LA and the onlything that stuck out for her as far as how i spoke was how i pronounced "car"..
I'd have to agree. Most blacks I hear around the Twin Cities sound pretty Southern (y'all, fixin', I ain't, she don't, pinny, etc) but when I am down South, the blacks sound MUCH more country/rural to me. I think everyone's speech evolves when they move to other places, although it's a long transition for most.
The funny thing is that the black coworkers I work with think I sound southern and I grew up in the burbs of chicago. I say I have a chicago accent and a southern twist to it lol.
I think it is a racial thing a combination of how your parents/older family talk, the neighborhood people talk, and then regional influences outside of your direct area.
People say Cleveland has a northern accent but that's not really the whole area or all the people. Same with Detroit and Chicago. In the mostly white and more high class areas, yes it is more northern and proper. But go to the hoods and barrios it's a different story. It depends how much of the influence their is for what the accent will be, blacks bring more of a southern accent and dialect with slang, hispanics bring faster talking with some spanish mixed in.
Go to the Eastside of Cleveland, South/Westside Chicago, most of Detroit, there's some southern mixed in. As time goes on it's more mixing in and becoming more northern. In Cleveland there's a noticeable difference between people over/under 25 in the hoods. The younger talk much more northern and proper compared to the older.
For some reason, no matter what city your in theres still black people that sound country. I've even ran into some black folks in New York that say things like "yall". I agree with the Chicago reference though there are some people in that city that sound like they could be from Georgia or something lol.
The difference comes in large part in where they or their older relatives came from. The origins of Chicago's black population is deeply rooted in Mississippi, which was historically a non-rhotic region, which is where the "not pronouncing the r's" thing comes from. But yeah, that's mostly a black thing around here. The "white" Chicago accent (or Great Lakes accent if you will) is one of the most rhotic in the English language.
On the other hand the Cleveland blaccent, like Detroit, manifests a strong midwestern tendency couched in the traditional black dialect. IMO, Detroit and Cleveland are barely distinguishable.
^^ LOL, yeah, the house R. Kelly grew up in didn't have a porch, it had a "pawch." That sounds so weird in a city where people otherwise pronounce their "r's" so hard that it practically shatters glass. The house I grew up in had a porrrrrrrch by God.
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