Does Washington state have a regional accent? (Seattle, Vancouver: campus, cities)

[PS90]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

Well, it really missed the mark for me, though it did get the correct state: California. It pegged me as being from a couple of locations in SoCal, and Santa Rosa. At least Santa Rosa is within the greater Bay Area, where I'm from.

My guess is that the test is based on contemporary usage, which can shift from usage a generation or two or three ago, depending on the subject's age. Or perhaps my usage reflects some deeper ancestry from the Napa/Sonoma area, rather than where I grew up--Berkeley. That would raise the question of what is more influential in someone's speech: family environment, or peers, school, social set/s over years. But one of the determining vocab items was something I picked up from books, not from conversational usage, so -- go figure.

I agree. It is a "just for fun", non-scientific test, after all. Mine was as accurate as it could possibly have been, but I did answer a lot of the questions with the bottom answer, which was something like "I have no word for this".

[Seacove]

Originally Posted by PS90

I agree. It is a "just for fun", non-scientific test, after all. Mine was as accurate as it could possibly have been, but I did answer a lot of the questions with the bottom answer, which was something like "I have no word for this".

I got California and I've never lived there. And I've never heard anyone say Warshington, that would get my attention immediately.

It named three cities in the south as "least like". Is that where they are saying "water bubbler"?

[Count David]

Originally Posted by Seacove

I got California and I've never lived there. And I've never heard anyone say Warshington, that would get my attention immediately.

It named three cities in the south as "least like". Is that where they are saying "water bubbler"?

I believe that is a Wisconsin thing.

[Seacove]

Originally Posted by David Aguilar

I believe that is a Wisconsin thing.

Thanks, no wonder, it sounds like an art installation.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by Seacove

Thanks, no wonder, it sounds like an art installation.

lol! Yeah, or a fancy garden fountain of some sort.


It was an interesting quiz. Thanks for posting it, PS90.

[MarciaMarshaMarcia]

I took that test before when it came out a couple of years ago & it pretty much nailed where I'm from, at least the state & general area...but so did 2 schoolboys in the Lake District of England!

Re "Warshington"...I have lived in this state for over 5 years & traveled over most of it, & have never heard anyone, native born or otherwise, say it that way in any part of the state. In fact, the only person that I ever heard pronounce it that way was my spouse, before we moved here, & he lived in San Diego only since toddlerhood, & doesn't pronounce other words strangely. I remember telling him that there was no "r" in Washington & that he should work on it before we moved here if he didn't want strange looks.

[josie13]

We moved around a lot when I was very young, but I was primarily raised on the SF Peninsula. That quiz pegged my regional accent as San Francisco/Santa Rosa/Fremont, which is fairly accurate. I think that's amazing, considering that both my parents came from outside the USA and had some marked pronunciation quirks and vocabulary choices of their own.

I've lived in the Seattle area for years now, yet I've never heard one person say "Warshington." I remember a nun in grade school in California who always ordered us to go to the "warshroom" and "warsh" our hands, but she was from the Midwest.

We all said "drinking fountain," too. On that subject, what a shock it was to move to the Seattle area and find outdoor drinking fountains relatively hard to come by, especially on school campuses. Maybe because pipes can freeze here in the winter?

[ShadoAngel]

I've lived in the Seattle area for years now, yet I've never heard one person say "Warshington." I remember a nun in grade school in California who always ordered us to go to the "warshroom" and "warsh" our hands, but she was from the Midwest.

I wonder if that's where it came from. The only place I heard "Warshington" was rural, eastern Washington. A lot of those farmers came from the midwest, including my kin - some from Wisconsin and others from Minnesota. I wonder if it's a left-over quirk that subsequently died out in the midwest, but lived on among older residents in places they moved to (like Washington) and is now on the way to dying out there as well?

[TheTimidBlueBars]

I've heard one of my friends from Washington state (Puyallup/Yelm/Shelton) speak, and I wouldn't call his accent totally standard American. It sounds kind of Canadian with a bit of Upper Midwest.

[dtuba]

Well, I took the silly quiz and it said I was either from Salt Lake City or Seattle. I'm actually from Southern Oregon originally, which is I guess more or less equidistant from both of those cities- so maybe it's not so silly after all?

Anyway, I still maintain that there are no accents in WA. There are no accents in all of the Western US, until you get to the Plains states.