I shouldn't be reading this thread. I just finished my linguistics class.

But anyway . . . FYI, speaking of US accents, look here:

Do You Speak American? (PBS)

The official US dialects are: West, North, Midland, South, Mid-Atlantic, and New England.

Personally, I'm kind of straddling the isogloss (ooh, a term from class) between Midland and South.

Our linguistics teacher showed us a really funny YouTube making fun of Pittsburgh, called "Pants n'at." :D

Woefully incomplete though, Massachusetts alone has at least four distinct accents. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont have a couple each. Connecticut, at least three, but I'm not sure there's more than one in Rhode Island.

This is pretty cool. It's an International Dialect Archive.

Dialect soundbites for anywhere in the world with regional dialects too. My regional sound bite is spot on.
http://web.ku.edu/~idea/index.htm

that's awesome, sky.

You beat me to the punch with that site, Sky! I spent at least an hour last night listening to different Midwesterners talk. I was trying to find someone that sounded like me and had a hard time with it. I think I should sound more like the guy from Hammond, Indiana since I was born and raised in that region, but I dont know.

The five boroughs of manhattan each have distinct sounds Bronx and Brooklyn most notably different. Then there's LI, Westchester, Upstate east, west, and central.

She might in general... but I do recall that Hebe says "pasta" like a Brit.

Thanks

It was fun!

The only thing that stuck out at me from they guy from Hammond as the pronunciation of Chicago.

I liked that site, and listened to some of them. I think I probably sound most like Ohio Six...but that chick can't read. ;)

It didn't seem to hit the extremes...such as my boyfriend from a thousand years ago who hailed from a farm in the middle of nowhere in Minnesota. I didn't find anything that had the accent those people have. And Cajun wasn't represented in Louisiana (or I didn't hear that one) because when I visited Cajun country I could barely understand what people were saying.

Then again, we never sound like we think we sound. When I hear my voice on a recording I think "nuh-uh, that's not how I sound."

Anyway, mon has heard me talk in real life, maybe she can chime in...I always thought I had a definite "midwest twang" but have been told my accent is pretty neutral.

I've never completely shaken my 1980s Valley Girl leanings, though. Totally.

She does, although she claim to say it American-style when with her friends :lol:

Yeah Ohio 6 is about right for me. But wow, couldn't they have found a speaker that was a tad more literate? She can't tell the difference between "comma" and "coma" and apparently has no clue what "ether" is!

How do Americans/Brits say "pasta?" Isn't it -- phonetically -- /pastə/?

My Brit friends say Paahss the Pasta, I say Pass the Paahsta.

So when you guys (Shawnee and Juni) say Ohio is it pronounced with the _o at the end or just an -ah sound? I say O- hi-o.

I know Oregon is pronounced all different kinds of ways.

My friend from Canada pronounces pasta 'pay-sta' and he goes to post a package not mail a package but otherwise there isn't much of an accent.

Nope, Ohio, with an o.

Now, there are some people who say Cincinnati or Missouri like Cincinnatah, Missourah. In fact my pastor at church this morning said "Missourah." Cracked me up. He's from New York. I think he tries to change his speech sometimes so he sounds local. Fail. :)

But, you've gotta know the correct way to pronounce Louisville, KY. Quiz: Short answer, let's hear it. ;)

Nerk, A-hai