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At this point I have spent half my life in Chicago and the 2nd half in Wisconsin. We were traveling in Southern Indiana. I heard a couple talking....He said I don't care if their car plates say Wisconsin...she is from Chicago. However I am from the north side of Chicago. Definitely different pronunciations. Never called a living room a 'frunch room' etc. My parents expected us to speak well.
You know, I think that someone with a harsh "lower-class" accent being taught to speak with a posh accent to move up in the world would make for a very entertaining movie or Broadway musical. Maybe someone such as a girl selling flowers on a street corner. I wonder if anyone has thought of doing that?
Pygmalian perhaps? I think most widely-spoken languages have a mish-mash of regional dialects and accents. Many languages have a gap between the well-educated spoken language vs. the slang or more common day language. English just seems to have a bigger variety of these things than most languages, since it #3 in the world for first language speakers, slightly behind Spanish. Adding to the language soup is the fact that the USA is a melting pot of immigrants from every country on the planet - it's part of the reason that English is continuously changing and other languages pick up more and more English words.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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I spent my first 40 years in California, the remainder since in Washington state. The only difference is that down there we said Soda, here more people seem to say Pop. I currently work with people from Alaska, Chicago, Atlanta, ad California (3) and none (all millennials) have an noticeable difference in their speech. In our neighborhood we have people from India, China and Tunisia, all with distinctive accents, but people from other parts of the USA seem to have lost theirs, or adapted well to the west coast and lack of accent.
When DH went to the University of Iowa he had a roommate from southern Iowa. The roommate and all his friends used the phrase "Ah reckon so."
My sweet farm boy from northern Iowa thought that was pretty backwards. But of course where he came from you not only hauled oats and beans, you also hauled people! "I'll haul Grandpa and Grandma to church next week."
Being from the Midwest I didn't think I had any accent at all until I traveled. Some kids in Texas made fun of me for saying "oil" for "awl." My Chicago cousins laughed when I said, "Aunt" for "Ant." And many people in the Pacific Northwest thought I was a Norwegian immigrant. (Which I was - twice removed. LOL)
My big bias? There aren't many around anymore but whenever I hear someone who sounds like dey yoost got offa dah b-oh-t my head snaps around and I'm all ready for a handshake.
My negative bias? Anybody who uses the word "classy" ain't.
I grew up in the Chicago area, never thought I had a Chicago accent, and never thought my parents or family did either. I thought we had a generic midwestern accent. I lived for almost a decade in Minnesota. I noticed the Minnesota accent to an extent but it was largely a couple of phrases. Then I moved to North Carolina. When visiting home, all of a sudden, everyone sounded like "Superfans" from SNL. So, probably true that I have a Chicago accent even if I can't hear it.
At this point I have spent half my life in Chicago and the 2nd half in Wisconsin. We were traveling in Southern Indiana. I heard a couple talking....He said I don't care if their car plates say Wisconsin...she is from Chicago. However I am from the north side of Chicago. Definitely different pronunciations. Never called a living room a 'frunch room' etc. My parents expected us to speak well.
Just reminded me of "that scandalous Wallis woman" who called her royal husband, "The Juke." Now that's classy. Heh.
When I went into basic training in the USAF, I was told by several people that I had a "southern drawl". Ifrom lived in California from birth to 54 years old, so that was pretty funny. Now that I live in the south, people instantly peg me as from California, so I guess it's relative to where you are and where the listener is from. My mom was born in CA (as I was) but her parents were from Tennessee and Missouri, so maybe I have some generationally absorbed a bit of a drawl?? Interestingly in TN, there is a dialect here we refer to as "country" (as opposed to "city"). If you ever watch the show Moonshiners, then you've heard it, and the show sees fit to provide subtitles to the speech of those with TN country accents. I understand them perfectly, but DH says he's glad for the subtitles as he has no idea what they're saying. I even use a lot of the colloquial words and phrases they use, and I have all my life. When speaking with locals here, I find myself slipping into a bit of a TN "city" accent, though I never lived here until age 54.
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