Are regional accents going the way of the eight-track?

[raccoon]

Seems to me many under-30's don't have much of a regional accent.

Anybody else notice this?

[geardaddy]

1. Not here in MN.

There are still quite a few younger folks with the regional accent, dontcha know, ja.

[raccoon]

2. That's good to hear. Sounds like Garrison Keillor?

Or more pronounced?

[geardaddy]

3. Nope, Garrison doesn't really have the accent.

It's more like some of the characters in the movie Fargo. Not the over the top ones, though.

[raccoon]

4. I'll have to see the movie. nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. No, but if you remember when Butch Thompson was on the show

he had it.

When I first moved back to Minnesota in 2003, I went to visit my 90-year-old great aunt. After living on the East Coast and West Coast for a total of 28 years combined, I no longer have a real Minnesota accent, although I can fake one.

Well, I tried to talk to my great aunt, who is hard of hearing, and we just weren't communicating. In desperation, I tried the Minnesota accent, one feature of which is emphatically pronounced consonants, especially the r's and l's. Once I did that, she understood me perfectly. :-)

[Odin2005]

5. In my experience only rural young Minnesotans like myself still have the accent...

...to a significant degree. The only element of upper-Midwestern speech I hear to a significant degree among folks my age is the rounded long O ("Minnesooooohta")

[shenmue]

6. No. I don't think so at all.

I haven't noticed any major changes.

[junkiebrewster]

7. The South

Here in the south, accents seem to be fading somewhat in urban and suburban areas. For example, I have been told I have no southern accent, except for saying the occasional "y'all". (I grew up in a mid-sized city.) Well, I also tend to get one when I'm drinking. :beer:

The rural areas still have pronounced accents.

As far as losing accents down here, I have two theories, between which the truth may lie. One is that television and movies lead to the loss of regional accents. The second is the migration of people to the suburban and urban South from other areas has diluted the accent.

[movie_girl99]

8. I grew up in Dallas

and people ask me all of the time if i'm from California. I have noticed quite a few of my friends that are My age have much more of a southern drawl than I do. I'm not sure why because both of my parents do too.

[ailsagirl]

10. From what I've read-- no. I just finished watching "Do You Speak

American?" and, according to it, the accents are not going by the
wayside, though first generation speakers of certain dialects are
not surviving (which is always sad to lose a dialect). I also read
that the largest linguistic group in the US is the southern dialect.

[Odin2005]

11. Accents aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

In fact in many areas (the Great Lakes area, California, and the Southeast) the accents are diverging from the "standard midwestern" accent.

http://www.pbs.org/speak/ahead/change/

A common misconception about American English is that it is following a single path of change under the irrepressible, homogenizing influence of mass media. The opposite is actually the truth: Language is far too resourceful and social structure far too complicated to follow any single path.

I'm a 22yo who grew up near Fargo and I have a stereotypical Upper-Midwestern "Minnesohhhhta" accent.