CringeFest 7: I don't have an accent

>> Despite this, I can hear a Wisconsin accent in the first sentence or two. We Reno-ites sometimes poke gentle fun at them for having an accent, even though they often think they don't... <<

Can Reno-ites also pick out a Washington accent?

↑ Guest, that is a very good question. To an untrained ear, there's too little difference between the dialects, so out of 100 people, 99 would not be able to hear any difference.

Actually, I have to admit that I myself for the longest time did not see the English here as being accented or different from standard NAE (not General American, as I really did not have a concept of there being a specific variety or set of varieties called such per se). Rather, I only saw the speech amongst white people here in terms of registers rather than dialect/accent. While I did perceive much of the speech by TV newscasters, for instance, as sounding somewhat artificial and unfamiliar, I perceived it merely in terms of register rather than actually being fundamentally different from speech here. Likewise, while I did perceive a very large difference between how I spoke at home, particularly with my sister, and with friends outside of class and how I spoke in class at school, I perceived such merely in terms of register alone rather than also in terms of local dialect versus local variation upon GA. Only people away from here in Milwaukee or speaking AAVE had accents in my mind, with the speech here being basically the reference point from which the rest of English was seen.

The above likely really encompasses how the average white southeastern Wisconsinite today perceives English in general, and in particular English here in southeastern Wisconsin. As to them the speech here is the very reference point from which English as a whole is seen, of course they themselves are not accented, and any variation they see here is not in terms of "accent" or like. This is further compounded by how English here is not really openly deprecated relative to English elsewhere in North America, and no outside prestigious speech varieties are really openly pushed upon people here, so any differences in prestige with respect to speech amongst white people here are purely seen purely as internal differences in register. Hence when they actually hear other North Americans refer to their speech as being accented, of course they find the idea very strange, as their own speech is the very definition of being "accentless" in their own minds.

However, the above is by no means a universal mindset here in southeastern Wisconsin, even though it is extremely common here. Many who are more aware of life outside this little corner of North America are definitely aware that we here in Milwaukee do speak differently from other North Americans, and such is not merely in terms of their being "accented" and us being "accentless". For such individuals, the fact that we do speak differently from other North Americans is not seen as a bad thing but rather as part of us having our own identity distinct from the rest of North America, as something to be proud of rather than as something to deprecate.

In Seattle, most people have a very similar mindset. Everyone here believes that we have no accent, and that newscasters all across the continent strive for *our* accent. Unlike other places where Midwestern speech is cited as the standard, everyone here believes that it is Northwestern speech that is completely unaccented. Most people here are rather unfamiliar with Midwestern speech, as it's an awfully long way away. Some people can pick out the NCVS accent, which is strongly associated with Chicago. Most people here if they hear a strong NCVS accent, will ask if the person is from Chicago. I don't think that many people associate the NCVS with any other place, even say, Minneapolis for example. People with the NCVS sound "nasal". Some people know that Minnesota has very round o's, but that's about it--and it's not that noticeable to us, because we have fairly back and rounded o's as well. I don't know anyone here that can distinguish any sort of subdivisions of the West. We assume that everyone in the West speaks the same way--especially nearby Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. Most people don't notice subtle pronunciation differences like -ag raising, or the vowel used in -or words. The Canadian shift and the California shift also go completely unnoticed. General American accents found in the Midwest also go unnoticed as being any different from the accent here, as we can't tell whether someone is cot-caught merged or not. The presence or absense of Canadian raising is also unnoticed to most people here. A few people will notice strong raising of /aU/ though. Most people don't associate Canada (British Columbia) with a distinct accent, or notice any differences there. Most Seattle natives are really bad at hearing accents, because of the great distance you'd have to drive until the accent changed enough to have enough differences to pick up on (Texas or North Dakota), that you wouldn't simply ascribe to being idiolectal differences. Also since we have transplants from all over the West and Midwest here, as well as lots of people with mixed accents, we're exposed to a great deal of variation, and thus tests like whether a speaker had or lacked say, -ag raising would fail.

I like Tuscon accent, or lack of it.

I like Tucson accent, or lack of it.

>> (such as the non-merger of /ɛŋ/ in "penguin" and "Genghis Khan") <<

Hmm. I don't understand. Are you trying to say that Penguin and Genghis have different vowels? To me they are [p_heNgw@n] and [geNg@s].

They would have different vowels if you were one of those people who say "pen-gwin". To those of us who say "pang-gwin", they have the same vowel.

>>>> (such as the non-merger of /ɛŋ/ in "penguin" and "Genghis Khan") <<

Hmm. I don't understand. Are you trying to say that Penguin and Genghis have different vowels? To me they are [p_heNgw@n] and [geNg@s].

They would have different vowels if you were one of those people who say "pen-gwin". To those of us who say "pang-gwin", they have the same vowel.<<

To repeat, what I meant is that in the dialect here, the shift of /ɛŋ/ to [e(ː)ŋ] never affected the words "penguin" and "Genghis (Khan)", and thus did not participate in the merger of /æŋ/, /ɛŋ/, and /eɪ̯ŋ/.

Does Las Vegas has an accent?

>> Does Las Vegas has an accent? <<

Duh. But it's almost indistinguishable from the accent in Seattle, Portland, Ketichikan, Boise, Helena, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Albuquerque.

-Seattle, Portland, Ketichikan, Boise, Helena, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Albuquerque.-

Many people from Seattle, Portland, Boise, Helena, LA, San Diego and San Francisco do have an accent (Californian/Canadian shift and/or Canadian raising, and rounding of General American /A/ in some speakers)

Guest, everyone has an accent.

Western Canadians can easily be recognized, frequency of rounded realizations of /A/ is higher than in Toronto or Windsor: father [Q], doll [Q], concert [Q], mom [Q]. And in Atlantic Canada, [A] is almost always used, sometimes even as a fronted vowel [a], as in Newfoundland: concert [a], doll [a], mom [a], call [a]...

''When Bostonians produce [Q] in the /oh/-class word Boston, it is a typical realization of their merged phoneme /o = oh/. But Providence listeners, who themselves pronounce Boston with [O], identify the ambiguous vowel with the wrong phonemic category of their own dialect, /ah = o/, imitating [Q] as [A] (Moulton 1990: 129).
Likewise for the word Providence: speakers from MA who use [Q] in this /o/-class word are amused to hear RI’s [A], and overreact, equating it with their own [a] (that is, /ah/). ''

STABILITY AND CHANGE ALONG A DIALECT BOUNDARY:
THE LOW VOWELS OF SOUTHEASTERN NEW ENGLAND
Daniel Ezra Johnson

>> Western Canadians can easily be recognized, frequency of rounded realizations of /A/ is higher than in Toronto or Windsor <<

Perhaps...but not by other cot-caught merged people. Even the few that have learned about the c-c merger still have trouble hearing the difference between [A] and [Q] (and even [O]).