Is there a Detroit accent? (Muskegon, Harvey: homes, schools, live in)

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Detroit is part of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.

The Erie Canal stretched from Albany to Buffalo ... it was but the beginning.

The Vowel Shift stretches from Upstate NY to somewhere west of Lake Michigan. Where it grades into the flatter sounds of the northern high plains is a hair splitting exercise but you get the idea.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by Bitey

Detroiters speak with a lower Great Lakes accent, the most common example being a "Chicago" accent. Natives of Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Erie, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse all speak with a similar accent.

"Pop" for soda, spoken something like "Po(ah)p"

Vowel shift ....

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by Geo-Aggie

There are most definitely accents outside of the Northeast and South. People often ask where I'm from, based on my accent (it's a bit more "country" then you'd probably assume from reading my posts) - but I also notice an accent among Michiganders too (and not just Yoopers) - it's pretty much exactly as slowlane3 said, it's a vowel shift. The words I notice it most obviously in are:

Gosh ("Gash")
Hat ("Heht")
Gas ("Gase")

Seriously, nobody says, "Oh my Gash" outside of the Great Lakes region, we instead say "Oh my Gawsh" - Now I will admit it's not nearly as noticible as accents you'd find in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic or South - sometimes I can barely understand people from the South, but it's obvious for someone who didn't grow up here, probably just as obvious as my "country" accent is to people here.

Also one I hear all the time which isn't so much accent, but rather dialect, is "Ash-phalt" - there is no second H in asphalt, it's said exactly how it's spelled, but it's cool, I add an H to picture ("pitcher") and it has taken me a long time to get to the point where I drink "milk" instead of "melk"

conCRETE
Chileh
o-range (second syllable rhymes with range as in on the range)
advertisement is spoken "adverteyesment" not "advertessment"
apricot is spoken "ape-ricot" not "ayahprpicot"
Conkurd not Connnn-corrrd.
Oar-gun not Oh-ree-gahn
etc

I can always pick out fellow Westerners especially fellow Southwesterners ...

then I corral 'em!

[Republic of Michigan]

Originally Posted by BayAreaHillbilly

Detroit is part of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.

The Erie Canal stretched from Albany to Buffalo ... it was but the beginning.

The Vowel Shift stretches from Upstate NY to somewhere west of Lake Michigan. Where it grades into the flatter sounds of the northern high plains is a hair splitting exercise but you get the idea.

Dialects of Michigan | IDEA International Dialects of English Archive

There is actually great variation in speech patterns in the Metro Detroit area. While it is part of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, there are several other speech patterns in the region.

The southern suburbs of Detroit collectively known as downriver have a mild southern inflection based on historical migration patterns.

The African American population of Detroit speak in a particular dialect, again with some southern influences.

Moving on to other speakers of the region, there are several other prominent speech patterns. One is as I mentioned before which is the nasal "Chicago" accent (Governor Snyder has this accent)

There is also a sizable population with a generic non-nasal accent which intermingles with speakers of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.

In the West Bloomfield area, there is a slight East coast accent among the Jewish population.

Recently, there has developed a first generation English accent spoken by the large population of people of Middle Eastern descent. This dialect is actually reshaping the regional accent of the area. It is not nasal at all, and it marked with accentuation of vowels, as well as a rising at the end of sentences.

[DoggieMatic]

Detroit certainly has a vernacular.

I knew when I'd occasionally start to add "ass" to the end of a word that it was time for me to get the hell out of the city.

[JDuke]

Lived in Detroit area for 47 years. Recently moved to Arkansas and believe me, everyone here smiles every time I talk. So I guess we have an accent. Maybe our accent is the lack of an accent?

[peter_midnight]

I thought the Detroit accent was the Tim "The Toolman" Taylor grunt:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V9YZ7C88iU

Coincidentally, I was in an automotive plant in Adrian and I heard guys say more power and grunt just like Tim. I laughed so hard and thought to myself, Wait, this is REAL?

[newdixiegirl]

Originally Posted by Bitey

Detroiters speak with a lower Great Lakes accent, the most common example being a "Chicago" accent. Natives of Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Erie, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse all speak with a similar accent.

Nailed it. That's what I call it, too.

[gabrielle1995]

Originally Posted by Bitey

Black accents are a different animal altogether. Much of the industrial Midwest's black population has roots in Mississippi, Alabama, and to an extent Arkansas, and generally speaking the black population in these cities have kept a lot of that region's accent and speech patterns as a way of reinforcing social and cultural unity in places where they weren't exactly welcomed with open arms.

So I guess I should clarify that WHITE natives of these cities speak with what is generally thought of as a "Chicago" accent but is really a regional lower Great Lakes accent.

white Chicagoans do not have any southern speech in Detroit, but go to Chicago a lot( have many friends there). in my opinion, Chicago people sound similar to Detroiters and have a lot of northern shift to there speech.

[Indentured Servant]

Originally Posted by Bitey

Black accents are a different animal altogether. Much of the industrial Midwest's black population has roots in Mississippi, Alabama, and to an extent Arkansas, and generally speaking the black population in these cities have kept a lot of that region's accent and speech patterns as a way of reinforcing social and cultural unity in places where they weren't exactly welcomed with open arms.

So I guess I should clarify that WHITE natives of these cities speak with what is generally thought of as a "Chicago" accent but is really a regional lower Great Lakes accent.

I agree with the bold in the paragraph, but diverge with you from there. That southern influence of speech has been preserved primarily from one phenomenon....and that is segregation. The Midwest is one of, if not the most, segregated regions in the country. The top 20 most segregated cities in the nation are saturated with Midwest/Great lakes area cities.

Segregation creates isolation and so when the great migration of blacks brought millions to various northern cities, they, via segregated environments, became little southern enclaves. There was little cultural immersion that would dissipate southern dialect and vernacular, if not accent. Words like "fixin to" or "finna" are still common, as well as the use of the contraction for "you all" Y'all or Yaw, as well as, ending a sentence with a preposition (for example: "Where are the other post at"? or "What time it is"?).

In regards to accent, Chicago and Muskegon, Michigan blacks have the most country sounding accents. Detroiter's, black, don't sound as country.