Accent Expert Gives a Tour of U.S. Accents - (Part 2) WIRED

[Uncle Joe]

[doc03]

1. Where I live in Eastern Ohio we speak more

Pittsbughese. You can pick up the lake accent from Cleveland immediately. South of I70 a few miles you start getting a southern accent.

[wnylib]

3. Oh yeah. I remember that southern accent

in Ohio, south of I70 from when I lived in Cleveland. One summer we took a tour of Ohio's mound sites, all the way down to Portsmouth and Cincinnati. But long before we got to the southern border across the river from Kentucky, we heard the southern accent. My husband was surprised, but I wasn't because my father had some friends at his job who had come from southern Ohio.

[wnylib]

2. I recognize a few of these sounds from places where

I have lived, or from people from other regions than mine, but some don't fit the pattern of location and timing that he described.

The great vowel change in the Great Lakes area is not the same in my experience as the one he described. I grew up in Erie, PA. I had cousins living in Buffalo, just 2 hours away to the east of us, but a different state. They had what we used to call a "western NY twang." It was identical to his description of "hot" sounding like "hat." But that was in the 1950s. It has pretty much disappeared from the area now but he says that it has spread throughout the Great Lakes region. I haven't noticed that except some parts of Wisconsin.

I pronounce "don" like "dawn" which he says comes from southern NJ but everyone I knew in Erie said it the same way I do. I didn't know there was another way to say it until I moved to Cleveland, just 2 hours away from Erie to the west in a different state. People in Cleveland said they knew I was from Erie because of how I say "don" like "dawn."

[MyOwnPeace]

4. Well, OK, that's ONE way to lose an afternoon!

Absolutely fascinating! Just finished 'part one' after going back SEVERAL times to work on hearing the minute differences as he's describing.
Coming from an area that SO many readily identify (Pittsburgh) - I don't understand why the rest of yinz can't tawk rite!