[Theoria]

Fascinating stuff.

Also:

What Kind of American Accent Do You Have?[FR]

[Salamander]

What American accent do you have?

Your Result: The South

 

That's a Southern accent you've got there. You may love it, you may hate it, you may swear you don't have it, but whatever the case, we can hear it.

[byrony]

I look at the map and I’m reminded of the bio-chemical warfare map in The Andromeda Strain (the original, not the horrible remake).

[raybbr]

Got to read later. For now, I live in CT. The worst part of the dialect here is changing the double t into a grunt. Button becomes bu'in (insert guttural grunt).

Also something become "sun'in". It's like listening to complete illiterates. I correct my sons all the time. They picked up from their peers.

[Pinkbell]

I have a Midland accent which makes sense cause I grew up and live here.

[Oratam]

I've noticed a shift in stress on certain syllables in hyphenated words and two-word phrases. It's pretty early in the morning so I'm not firing on all cylinders. The only one I can remember now is the word "red-light." I've always heard it pronounced with equal stress on each word. Now, I hear young people say things like "Go to the first RED-light and turn left."

Maybe I'm being a bit picky but it really sounds odd to me.

[Yardstick]

*bump*

[the invisib1e hand]

Where’s the locus of ebonics, geographically and politically.

[BfloGuy]

Very interesting. I have witnessed the city vs. rural dichotomy. I noticed while living in Buffalo that vowels were gradually shifting -- the most jarring to me was pronouncing "vague" to rhyme with "bag."

Living now, 40 miles south of the city in a rural area, there is none of that going on. To the point that people from Buffalo are much more easily identified by their speech than even a decade ago. Fascinating.

And, yes, Buffalonians are overwhelmingly Democrats. Down here registration is about 60-70% Republican.

[rmlew]

The test confuses proper Manhattenite with Inland North. I suppose that both are influenced by English and Dutch and are district from Brooklynese, but no one takes me for a upstate hayseed.