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I think I remember something about that also. I know here in Omaha the telecommunications industry employs over 50,000 people for 2 reasons: Early installation of fiber optic for Offutt AFB(Strat Com) and Omaha is thought to have very little regional dialect either(except for the call centers that employ people who say "yo what up homes....can I interest you in a vacuum cleaner this evening?". Now I don’t know how true that is for all of Nebraska though.....It gets really country.
I can't tell the difference between someone from Oklahoma and Texas. Perhaps I have a tin ear but they sound alike to me.
But then again, I don't regularly speak with people from either of those states, if I did, then perhaps I'd be able to make that distinction.
Same here. Also, I used to work with a guy whose accent I thought sounded TX/OK. Turned out he was from NW MO. (Sounded way different than the MO'ns I knew from St Louis and from the Bootheel.) Haven't heard enough to generalize on this, though.
I think I remember something about that also. I know here in Omaha the telecommunications industry employs over 50,000 people for 2 reasons: Early installation of fiber optic for Offutt AFB(Strat Com) and Omaha is thought to have very little regional dialect either(except for the call centers that employ people who say "yo what up homes....can I interest you in a vacuum cleaner this evening?". Now I don’t know how true that is for all of Nebraska though.....It gets really country.
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Originally Posted by j33
Every state has an accent, most likely multiple accents. The only people who do not have accents are people who are mute.
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Originally Posted by Duderino
There's definitely a NEPA accent. It's almost mid-western sounding, but there's a little twang to it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elcapitan
I think there was a linguistic study on this very topic. I remember the Pacific Northwest (Washington and Oregon) being the only states in the union with no determinable accent.
#1: DH is from Omaha. Not to say everyone from there talks like him, but he definitely has a midwestern accent as opposed to NY, Texas, etc. But it is an accent nevertheless. He says stuff like "shart" for short, etc, too like the people in St. Louis. Some members of his family have much more the northern midwest accent, and they have lived in Nebraska all their lives. I would have to say, on a scale of 1 - 10, they are at about a 9 1/2 for understandable. A lot of them say "where's he AT?", which drives me nuts!
#2 Yes, yes, yes and yes.
#3 Ditto. We moved there from the Pittsburgh area and it was very obvious.
#4 Many of those folks are transplants from somewhere else. My DD dated a guy from Seattle whose parents were from Minnesota. He had more of a Minn. accent. I have heard Californians are rather accent-less, but then that's an accent, too, isn't it?
In reality, I do notice that the only thing Midwesterners do is this sort of nasally whine on vowels that are in the beginnings of certain words: "candy" becomes "keee-yyyan-dee". Other than that, we speak correctly and everyone else ought to adapt
I think there was a linguistic study on this very topic. I remember the Pacific Northwest (Washington and Oregon) being the only states in the union with no determinable accent.
I'm from Oregon, and no one can figure out where I am from based upon my speech. But how can there be a lack of an accent?
I actually met someone from cali who really spoke with no discernable accent. It sounded kinda wierd, to tell you the truth. I guess you could say there is a standard accent, and all the others are variations of it. Agree with the Chicago accent as described by coldwine. Also "theet" for that, "bad" for bed, etc.
Oklahoma as well as Texas has different accents depending on what part of the state you are on. Southern and eastern Oklahoma have southern drawls, but central Oklahoma does not. Same with Texas in that southern drawls get less defined the farther west you go. The major metros (Houston and Dallas) have lost their drawls due to the influx of non-natives.
I thought the Oklahoma and Texas rivalry was a college football thing, between the Sooners and the Longhorns.
Do they dislike each other outside of football as well?
to my knowledge, yes (not "i'm going to blow your head off when I see you" type of hate, kinda like a yankees fan "hates" the red sox )
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