5 US States

But newscasters sound the same everywhere. //
Not true, local newscasters don't sound the same

>>Isn't the Wisconsin accent closer than a Michigan accent though?<<

Which Wisconsin accent? Someone from southeastern Wisconsin is far more likely to sound like a Lower Michigander than someone from northern Wisconsin, but someone from northern Wisconsin is far more likely to sound like an Upper Michigander. On that note, people from northern Wisconsin are almost certainly far more likely to sound like Canadians (and on that note, Minnesotans) than people from southeastern Wisconsin, which speak in a far more Inland North-type fashion.

How much would a .ca accent stick out in .wi.us? Would the average person notice or comment on it?

People could probably tell that you are not from here, but that would be just about it. (But then, I at least am able to pick out people from Chicago or even Kenosha from people from Milwaukee...)

What is the biggest difference between Milwaukee and Kenosha speech? I lived in Kenosha, but I did not seem to notice the differences at the time. As for Michigan, I lived there as well, and did not sound at all out of place in suburban Detroit. Is it because Milwaukee speakers use a softer version of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift?

Actually, the main thing that I can tell is that my mother (who is from Kenosha) has somewhat different prosody and intonation (it's hard to exactly explain) from people from Milwaukee, and has [ɑ] in the place of [ɒ] far more than people from Milwaukee, who will only have the former instead of the latter occasionally. (And the fact that "yah" [ja(ː)] is not used by people from Kenosha, with her having only picked it up once she moved to Milwaukee.)

So does that mean she pronounces "caught" like "cot"?

Actually, no, because she pronounces "cot" like [ˈkʰaʔ(t)] while she pronounces "caught" generally like [ˈkʰɑʔ(t)] (as opposed to most people here, who pronounce it like [ˈkʰɒʔ(t)]).

Would a Canadian, on the other hand think that a Wisconsin accent sounds different, or would they perceive it as a Canadian accent, or would they immediately think it was an American accent?

Southeastern Wisconsin dialects would probably come off as sounding similar to eastern Canadian dialects but with strange vowel qualities (due to the NCVS, a lack of a cot-caught merger, and weird phonemicized extensions to Canadian Raising), strange vowel lengths (due to degenerate allophonic vowel length), and lots of other strange phonological characteristics (such as uvular rhotics, l-vocalization, and plenty of elision and assimilation); it should be noted that it has practically no particularly "American" features not present in eastern Canadian dialects other than the lack of a cot-caught merger.

Have you ever been to Ontario? Has anyone ever commented on your accent? Or do you put on a perfect Ontario accent because you're a linguist? I bet that wouldn't be too difficult for you to do. I'm from Oregon, and I've been to Ontario a couple of times. I've also been to Milwaukee. For some reason to me people from Milwaukee sounded just like people from Chicago. Ontario sounded very similar to here in my opinion, but every 20th word or so in the conversation, the accent slipped through. It seems to be just certain words that their accent seems to slip through. It's similar to the way that people from some parts of Washington sound (usually from way up north). They usually sound the same as here except for a couple of words. They sound very similar to people from Ontario, in my opinion. Anyway, almost no-one commented on my accent, although I could pick out several differences. They said "sorry" as "SOrry", whereas we say it just as "sorry". They say "bag" as "bayg", whereas in Oregon it's "bag". Also their o's were different. Sort of like in the movie Fargo. I didn't hear the "eh" very much though. I'm going down to Toronto next week. It's weird--they're located south of us, and even though their summer temperatures are exactly the same as here, it feels rather cool here, but unbearably hot there. I can't figure that one out. The only time you can go outside without being in an air conditioned car is in the early morning, or late at night. Well, hopefully it won't be too bad next week.

Have you ever been to Ontario? Has anyone ever commented on your accent? Or do you put on a perfect Ontario accent because you're a linguist? I bet that wouldn't be too difficult for you to do. I'm from Oregon, and I've been to Ontario a couple of times. I've also been to Milwaukee. For some reason to me people from Milwaukee sounded just like people from Chicago. Ontario sounded very similar to here in my opinion, but every 20th word or so in the conversation, the accent slipped through. It seems to be just certain words that their accent seems to slip through. It's similar to the way that people from some parts of Washington sound (usually from way up north). They usually sound the same as here except for a couple of words. They sound very similar to people from Ontario, in my opinion. Anyway, almost no-one commented on my accent, although I could pick out several differences. They said "sorry" as "SOrry", whereas we say it just as "sorry". They say "bag" as "bayg", whereas in Oregon it's "bag". Also their o's were different. Sort of like in the movie Fargo. I didn't hear the "eh" very much though. I'm going down to Toronto next week. It's weird--they're located south of us, and even though their summer temperatures are exactly the same as here, it feels rather cool here, but unbearably hot there. I can't figure that one out. The only time you can go outside without being in an air conditioned car is in the early morning, or late at night. Well, hopefully it won't be too bad next week.

I have been to Ontario a couple of times, but no one there commented on how I spoke due to my primarily talking to other people with me from Wisconsin. I have heard people from Ontario speak in speech samples though, and at least one person from Ontario I know of reacted to my speech samples like most other NAE-speakers do (that is, that they sound quite foreign). Most of my information on English in Ontario, however, is from reading about English dialects, but the speech samples I have heard of such have been largely consistent with what I have read about such. That is, in many ways, Ontario English seems to be simply a rather conservative NAE dialect with few major differences from General American aside from Canadian Raising, vowel raisings before /g/, and a strong tendency to monophthongize tense mid vowels, with the only other really notable progressive feature being the cot-caught merger and a number of seemingly off pronunciations of individual words.

As for the dialect here in Milwaukee, yes, it is very close to the dialect in Chicago, the point that most people not from the general area likely would have problems telling the two apart. However, the two are not identical, and people from both Milwaukee and Chicago can tell when people are from the other. The primary readily-apparent differences are the prosody and intonation of the two differ, with Milwaukee dialect having much stronger variation in vowel length and pitch and Chicago dialect being much "flatter" overall, and there are also notable differences in vowel quality, particularly of historical /æ/ and /ɔː/, due to Milwaukee dialect having weaker NCVS than Chicago dialect. Also, Milwaukee dialect seems to have more "Canadian"-like pronunciations of certain words such as "sorry" than Chicago dialect (as many people from Milwaukee have [ˈsɔːʁi(ː)] or [ˈsɒːʁi(ː)] for "sorry" while most people from Chicago seem to only have [ˈsɑːʁi(ː)]).

(Oh, I should have noted in particular that the typical "target" NCVS realization of historical /æ/ in stressed syllables in Chicago is [i̯æ] but in Milwaukee is [ɛ], even though certain individuals here may also have [i̯ɛ̞] or [i̯ɛ] in stressed syllables as well. I actually for some reason have adopted [i̯ɛ̞] or [i̯ɛ] in stressed syllables, but that is not typical for people from Milwaukee, for whom having a most extreme realization of [ɛ] and a more typical one of [ɛ̞] in all syllables is more usual.)

(Actually, the above is not always true for me, as I seem to *never* use such an onglide after non-sibilant coronals, as in that often pronounce "that" as [ˈdɛʔ] but never as *[ˈdĭ̯ɛ̆ʔ] while I may often pronounce "cat" as [ˈkʰĭ̯ɛ̆ʔ] rather than [ˈkʰɛʔ].)