Click on any part of this map to move to the equivalent part of the Full-Scale Dialect Map. (For now this only moves to the far left or the far right of the Full-Scale Dialect Map, so unfortunately it doesn’t work well for the middle portions, and you will just have to scroll over.)24-Aug.-2010
For many of the cities or towns on this map, you can listen to an audio or video sample of speech of a native (more specifically, someone who was raised there, though not necessarily born there, and whose dialect clearly represents that place). All of the cities or towns with a green center have such an audio or video sample that can be listened to (and a few of the ones with pink centers do also). I will continue adding new audio and video samples, so check back from time to time. So far there are over 800 samples listed, more and more of which are from contributors! Thanks! 20-Mar.-2012
The entire map is clickable, taking you to the list of samples for that state or province. Only those locations with green centers, and a few with pink centers, have a sample so far. If there aren’t any of these samples yet for a particular state or province, then it will not be clickable, since there is no data to go to! Place the mouse over a particular state or province to see if it currently has any samples. (The map guides, showing the meaning of all the colors, are on thetop rightandbottom leftof the map.)20-Mar.-2012
I discovered in late 2011 that much or all of the audio data upon which the atlas was based is now available on the Internet, on this website (select North American English Dialects). (Replaced bad link.) I will be adding samples from this site as I have time, marked as “ANAE info and audio”. Adj. 26-Jan.-2013
The following notes refer to numbers on the map, and show the corresponding section of the ANAE:
Numerous examples of both kinds of r-droppers are given in the audio samples below. This pattern is receding, so occasionally only much older speakers retain the r-dropping in a given location. These are surrounded on the map by a dotted green circle, and in the chart below will be indicated with the phrase “Older r-dropper:”. 3-Apr.-2010
I have added and adjusted a lot of the information on the map based on the following audio and non-audio data. - Rick Aschmann
In many places on this web page the pronunciation of a name or other word will be given after it. These pronunciation guides will have two forms: a phonemic guide between slashes / /, based on the Traditional Dictionary Pronunciation System (TDPS) that is found in many dictionaries, and a phonetic guide (providing the phonetic details) between square brackets [ ], based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). (Thanks, Maria Mikkonen![12])
However, I have included the phonetic guide as well, partly to give a more precise phonetic pronunciation of local variants, and partly because many have complained that they prefer the IPA or are familiar only with it. (I recently realized that to do this consistently, I also needed to include aspiration on voiceless consonants, which is conditioned by stress and word position. I have now added these, though I may have missed a few! I also realized that I had left off primary stress on many monosyllabic words, and have added these also, as well as making other adjustments to the phonetic spellings, in particular the phonetic realization of /r/. However, it would be impractical to represent all the fine detail, such as the rounding that many English consonants have, or the differences between “clear l” [l] and “dark l” [ɫ].) Adj. 14-Feb.-2013
These 16 vowels are listed below in the second column, with sample words shown in the first column. Those with a breve˘ over them, ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ, and ŏŏ, are those vowels that historically were short vowels in English (and still are in British English), while those with a macronˉ over them, ā, ē, ī, ō, and ōō, are those vowels that historically were long vowels in English (and still are in British English). In American English these vowels are no longer phonetically long or short, though the “short” ones tend to be phonetically lax, and the long ones tense. As a general rule the short/lax ones do not occur at the end of a word or syllable, only before a consonant; this rule has no exceptions in British English, though it does seem to have a few in American English. (The remaining Ordinary Stressed Vowels ä, ăə, ô, oi, and ou fit in more with the long/tense group in terms of their pronunciation, history, and distribution.) (See also the section How I Use the IPA (and how I don’t) for more discussion about this.) New! 4-Jan.-2013
The remaining columns show what happens to vowels before final r, showing the “R-colored” vowels used in most of North America, and showing the Southern System in the final column, representing the system used in much of the South, which does not have “R-colored” vowels.
If anyone finds that any of the symbols in the chart do not display properly on their web browsers, please let me know. Most of them are standard Unicode characters.25-Feb.-2011
Black: The black vowels are those which all Americans have as distinct vowels.
For some Southerners, especially those in third group, “four” may rhyme with “rawer”, in which case “four” would be /fôər/[fɒʊəɹ], and they would not actually have the /ȯr/ [oɹ] vowel.
The answer to this one is a bit less complicated, but again the answer is not based on the traditional English alphabet. Most English speakers have 24. (The /hw/[ʍ] sound, which is usually spelled “wh” in English, and which most English speakers no longer have, though I and many other older speakers do, and in certain regions nearly all speakers do, is really just a combination of /h/ followed by /w/, and was originally spelled this way in Old English.) Adj. 21-Dec.-2012
In stressed syllables (whether primary or secondary) all of the Stressed Vowels in the chart above can occur, but in completely unstressed syllables (weak syllables) in English a phenomenon called vowel weakening or neutralization occurs. As a result, most of the vowels in these syllables are weakened or neutralized to the vowel /ə/, and the rest of the vowels are weakened or neutralized to a very small group, listed under “Other Vowels that Can Occur in Weak (Completely Unstressed) Syllables” above. This vowel weakening is a characteristic of English in particular (though it does occur in other languages as well), but it does not occur at all in some languages, like Spanish, which makes it especially hard for English speakers to speak good Spanish or vice versa, since they are each always subconsciously trying to apply their own pattern to the other language. Adj. 22-Mar.-2013
We can see this weakening process in action in many groups of words in English. For example, “melody”, “melodious”, and “melodic” are spelled as if they should have the same vowel sounds, but in fact they do not, being /mĕlədē/[ˈmɛlədi], /məlōdēəs/[məˈloʊdiəs], and /məlŏdĭk/[məˈlɑdɪk]. The vowel in the second syllable has three pronunciations, two stressed and one unstressed (weak), and the vowel in the first syllable has two. Spanish has equivalents of these three words, “melodía, melodioso, melódico”, but unlike English, the vowels are pronounced exactly as they are spelled in IPA, with no changes at all in the vowel quality, even though the stress falls on a different syllable in each word. Adj. 22-Mar.-2013
So, just to see if you’ve got the idea, take the word “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, invented for the Walt Disney movie Mary Poppins. How many syllables does it have? Which syllables are completely unstressed (weak)? Which syllable has the primary stress? The answers can be found in the endnote.[18]Adj. 22-Mar.-2013
(Move the pop-up keyboard around if it gets in your way. You can also resize the box.) Adj. 11-Jan.-2013
When I show the pronunciation of a place, I try to always show how someone from that place would actually pronounce it. However, occasionally even the natives can’t agree. For instance, apparently most Chicagoans say /shĭkôgō/[ʃɪˈkʰɒˌɡo] or even /shĭkôgə/[ʃɪˈkʰɒɡə], but there are also many who say /shĭkŏgō/[ʃɪˈkʰaˌɡo], and the latter group may be growing. Keep in mind that all of these definitely have “cot”≠“caught”. I have always called it /shĭkŏgō/[ʃɪˈkʰɑˌɡoʊ], with a couple of slight vowel differences, since I don’t have an Inland North accent!
I have noticed that many people who use the IPA to show the pronunciation of place names on Wikipedia do several things that I have chosen not to do.
Another thing I find people doing is using British phonetic transcription to show the pronunciation of American place names. For instance, in the Lafayette, Indiana article the pronunciation is given as “/ˌlɑːfiːˈɛt/”. Now, in British English there truly are phonetically long and short vowels: “beat” is phonetically [ˈbiːt], where the vowel [iː] is phonetically long, whereas “bit” is phonetically [ˈbɪt], where the vowel [ɪ] is phonetically short. However, in nearly all North American English dialects, this is not the case: both “beat” [ˈbit] and “bit” [ˈbɪt] have vowels which are phonetically the same length, in spite of the fact that the first has what is traditionally called a “long e”, while the second has what is traditionally called a “short i”.Scottish English is like American English in this respect. In fact, the “/ˌlɑːfiːˈɛt/” pronunciation is wrong for both British and American English: in British it would usually be [ˌlɑːfɪˈɛt] or [ˌlɑːfiˈɛt], the [ɪ] or [i] being short because it is unstressed (weak), whereas in American English (at least in West Lafayette, Indiana) it would be [ˌlɑfiˈɛt]. Adj. 22-Mar.-2013
However, it seems to me that John Wells’s list above was not well selected to show contrasts in a similar environment. Instead, I would draw your attention to all of the words in blue below, all of which end in /t/, and most of which begin with /b/, and also to the words in dark red, which similarly show contrasts in other environments. Thus, my lexical sets would be the following: 1-Oct.-2010
She did this after interviewing me on her program in March of 2011, where I explained the need for more samples of this kind. To listen to the interview, go to www.cbc.ca/spark/2011/03/spark-142-march-27-30-2011, then scroll down till you see “YouTube Dialects Map”, or search for “YouTube Dialects Map” or “Rick Aschmann”. The interview can be heard by clicking the link below the paragraph.
If you grew up in one particular place in Canada or the U.S., then I would very much like a sample from you. In particular, if you lived in one town for most of your childhood, in particular between the ages of 5 and 15, and speak like people from that place, then you should be a great sample. (That is, unless you tried to consciously change your accent after that: I know a gal who moved from the South to the Midland before her senior year of high school, and she was subjected to so much ridicule that she completely changed her way of speaking.) And obviously, if you moved around a lot throughout your childhood, then you won’t really work for my map.
You can do just a simple recording, like Nora did, as short or as long as you like, just telling a bit about yourself and where you grew up. Or, if you want to be quite thorough about it, or just don’t know what to say, I have prepared a version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (slightly expanded to include certain key words) that you can read. This way if I need to check a particular word to nail down the dialect of your hometown I will be able to. Either way, please be sure to say where you grew up, and if only for part of your childhood, from what age to what age.
All of your clips sent in like this will be labeled “(Self-recording for this site. Thanks!)” in the table below, so that will make them easy to find. 30-Mar.-2011
Note to Canadians: Nora points out that Canadians are currently underrepresented on the map. So, this is your chance to change that! Send in your samples!
Here you can hear audio samples of different local dialects. These are all found on the Internet:
As far as possible these have been restricted to people who were raised in the location, and in many cases have lived there nearly all their lives, and have presumably retained the local dialect, except where indicated. (For most of these people, their birthplace and life history can be found on en.wikipedia.org, or at the links provided.) Items in pink are doubtful as to whether they represent accurately the dialect indicated, or, in the case of the rejected samples at the bottom of the chart, definitely do not represent their local dialect. 1-July-2010
You may also notice that I prefer older people to younger people. This is simply because there has been a lot more dialect mixing among the younger generation than in previous generations.
| Person(s) | Location | State or Province | Source |
1 | Unnamed woman, tornado survivor | Albertville | Alabama | YouTube video Extremely pure example of Inland Southern! 19-Mar.-2012 |
2 | Bobby Edwards, country singer | Anniston | Alabama | YouTube video (Clearly Lowland, occasional “northern” long /ī/[aɪ] vowels) 16-Mar.-2010 |
3 | White male, student, born 1988 | Auburn | Alabama | IDEA audio (source) |
4 | U.S. representative Spencer Bachus | Birmingham | Alabama | YouTube video (Replaced bad link.) 31-Dec.-2011 |
5 | Bobby Bowden, football coach | Birmingham | Alabama | YouTube video |
6 | U.S. senator Richard Shelby | Birmingham | Alabama | YouTube video7-Nov.-2009 |
7 | White male, student, born 1980 | Brewton | Alabama | IDEA audio (source) This speaker does not drop r’s, suggesting that the younger generation no longer speaks Classical Southern. However, I visited Brewton in February of 2012, and spent quite a bit of time with an older gentleman who was born and raised there, and who does speak Classical Southern, and talked briefly with others who also do, making it clear that this is part of the Classical Southern area. 28-Mar.-2012 |
8 | Governor Robert Bentley | Columbiana | Alabama | YouTube video11-July-2011 |
9 | Charlie Hodge, Elvis associate | Decatur | Alabama | YouTube video30-Jan.-2010 |
10 | William Bradford Huie, journalist & writer | Decatur (Hartselle) | Alabama | YouTube video (Older speaker retaining Lowland Southern and r-dropping, although younger ones have apparently completely lost it!) 12-Dec.-2011 |
11 | Governor Jim Folsom, Sr. | Elba | Alabama | audio links30-Jan.-2010 |
12 | White male, student, born 1981 | Elberta | Alabama | IDEA audio (source) |
13 | Sam Phillips, record producer | Florence | Alabama | YouTube video30-Jan.-2010 |
14 | Ron Sparks, Alabama Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries | Fort Payne | Alabama | YouTube video |
15 | Randy Owen, country singer | Fort Payne | Alabama | YouTube video I could obviously have picked any of 100 other songs, but besides being a cool song this one clearly demonstrates his Inland Southern, also heard in this interview: YouTube video (His clip starts at 3:10.) 12-July-2011 |
16 | Steve Grissom, NASCAR driver | | Alabama | YouTube video (clip at 9:30) (more info) 19-Mar.-2012 |
17 | Sonny James Loden, country singer | | Alabama | YouTube video7-Nov.-2009 |
18 | City council meeting | | Alabama | YouTube video All speakers clearly Inland North! 7-Nov.-2009 |
19 | Charlie Louvin, country singer | | Alabama | YouTube video10-Mar.-2010 |
20 | U.S. representative Bud Cramer | | Alabama | YouTube video1-June-2009 |
21 | Butch Foster, salesman at the Carl Cannon auto dealership | Jasper | Alabama | YouTube video19-Mar.-2012 |
22 | Larry, salesman at the Carl Cannon auto dealership | Jasper | Alabama | YouTube video19-Mar.-2012 |
23 | White female, born and raised in Lanett | Lanett | Alabama | IDEA audio(source) 4-Sep.-2010 |
24 | Eugene Walter, writer | Mobile | Alabama | YouTube video7-Dec.-2009 |
25 | Robert Lightfoot, Marshall Space Flight Center director | Montevallo | Alabama | YouTube video10-Mar.-2010 |
26 | Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom, Jr. | Montgomery | Alabama | YouTube video |
27 | Robby Franklin, tornado survivor | Odenville | Alabama | YouTube video Short, but clearly Inland. 19-Mar.-2012 |
28 | Steve Patton, football coach | Oneonta | Alabama | audio (more info) |
29 | Tammy Wynette, country singer | Redbay | Alabama | YouTube video (Clearly Inland, though with some inconsistencies, which is not surprising, given that she grew up right on the border) 23-Feb.-2010 |
30 | Charlie Louvin, country singer | Section | Alabama | YouTube video |
31 | Jay Barker, football player | Trussville | Alabama | YouTube video |
32 | William Christenberry, artist | Tuscaloosa | Alabama | YouTube video (Classical Southern, occasional “northern” long /ī/[aɪ] vowels) 16-Mar.-2010 |
33 | Winton Blount, politician | Union Springs | Alabama | YouTube video16-Mar.-2010 |
34 | U.S. senator Mark Begich | Anchorage | Alaska | YouTube video |
35 | John Binkley, politician | Fairbanks | Alaska | YouTube video |
36 | Jake Metcalfe, politician | Juneau | Alaska | YouTube video |
37 | Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, V.P. candidate | Wasilla | Alaska | YouTube video (Starts speech at 4:43.) (Replaced dead link.) Sarah Palin talks like she’s from (northern) Minnesota! The original link, now dead, was sent in by Annie Wang (thanks!), but this search link shows the vast amount of discussion on this subject. On another web site it says she talks like she’s from Fargo, North Dakota (actually, like the people in the movie Fargo, actually filmed in Minnesota)! In fact, it turns out that the area of Alaska around Wasilla and Palmer is much more like the North Central dialect than it is like other Alaska dialects. [20] On the web site above linguist James Crippen describes this dialect as Mat-Su Valley English, after the Matanuska-Susitna Valley where it is spoken. James Crippen has now kindly provided me with information that allows me to set its borders fairly accurately. He says that it probably extends no further west than Willow, no farther northeast than Sutton, and is probably dying out in much of the area anyway, because of a continued influx of people from other parts of Alaska. So why do they talk like this? Because this area was almost entirely settled during the Great Depression by people from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan as part of a federal project. Historical info can be found in this Wikipedia article, and on this page sent in by contributor Susan Alexander. Thanks! 23-Apr.-2011 |
38 | Wayne Salmans, realtor | Wasilla | Alaska | YouTube video Another good example of the original Mat-Su Valley English. 4-Mar.-2011 |
39 | Ralph Klein, provincial premier | Calgary | Alberta | YouTube video11-Jan.-2011 |
40 | Diane Sanbrandt, contributor | Consort | Alberta | YouTube video (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) 30-Apr.-2011 |
41 | Andy Devine, actor | Kingman | Arizona | YouTube video (Chubby guy with odd voice. Also plays Friar Tuck on Disney’s Robin Hood.) 1-Sep.-2009 |
42 | Carlos Nakai, Native American flutist | Flagstaff | Arizona | YouTube video26-Sep.-2009 |
43 | U.S. representative Ann Kirkpatrick | McNary | Arizona | YouTube video1-Sep.-2009 |
44 | Joan Ganz Cooney, Sesame Street creator | Phoenix | Arizona | YouTube video31-Aug.-2009 |
45 | Transportation Sec. Mary Peters | Phoenix | Arizona | YouTube video31-Aug.-2009 |
46 | Karen Womack Vold, rodeo trick rider | Phoenix | Arizona | National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum interview (Source suggested by archivist Laura Anne Heller. Thanks!) 30-Apr.-2011 |
47 | U.S. senator Dennis DeConcini | Tucson | Arizona | YouTube video31-Aug.-2009 |
48 | Rex Allen, western actor | Willcox | Arizona | YouTube video31-Aug.-2009 |
49 | Ernest Tsosie, Navajo comedian | Window Rock | Arizona | YouTube video (more info) 26-Sep.-2009 |
50 | Caroline Alfaro, massage student | Yuma | Arizona | YouTube video23-Sep.-2010 |
51 | Pamela Nacke, contributor | Damascus | Arkansas | Audio (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) Pamela clearly speaks Inland Southern (a more western variety), as expected, though she seems to be most consistent in her long /ī/[a] vowels in the reading of the Goldilocks story. 23-July-2011 |
52 | White male, born 1980 | DeVall’s Bluff | Arkansas | IDEA audio(source) |
53 | Johnny Cash, country singer | Dyess | Arkansas | YouTube video (Fixed wrong link.) This interview shows Johnny with his native dialect, which is hard to catch, since in both his songs and his interviews he often seems to suppress it. It is clearly Lowland. This song probably shows it best, though even here it is not as southern as the interview: YouTube video. 1-May-2012 |
54 | Bear Bryant, football coach | Fordyce | Arkansas | YouTube video |
55 | Tracy Lawrence, country singer | Foreman | Arkansas | YouTube video Thoroughly Inland except for the word “lifer”, which he pronounces the Lowland way, not surprising considering how close to the border he is! 16-Jan.-2012 |
56 | State senator Kim Hendren | Gravette /grăvĭt/[ˈɡɹævɪt] | Arkansas | YouTube video (Pronunciation found here.) Adj. 14-Jan.-2013 |
57 | U.S. senator Blanche Lincoln | Helena | Arkansas | YouTube video23-June-2010 |
58 | U.S. president Bill Clinton | Hot Springs | Arkansas | YouTube video13-May-2009 |
59 | Houston Nutt, college football coach[21] | Little Rock | Arkansas | YouTube video |
60 | Jerry Jones, Dallas Cowboys owner [21] | Little Rock | Arkansas | YouTube video |
61 | White female, born 1947, medical technician[22] | Little Rock | Arkansas | IDEA audio (source) |
62 | White male, born 1982, student | Palestine | Arkansas | IDEA audio (source) |
63 | Levon Helm, singer and musician | Turkey Scratch | Arkansas | YouTube video27-Nov.-2012 |
64 | Ben Rutledge, Olympic rower | Cranbrook | British Columbia | YouTube video |
65 | Ian Tyson, singer-songwriter | Duncan | British Columbia | YouTube video6-Sep.-2011 |
66 | Jay Hill, M.P. | Fort St. John | British Columbia | YouTube video6-Dec.-2010 |
67 | Nilesh Patel /nĭlĕsh pətĕl/[nɪˈlɛʃ pʰəˈtʰɛl], filmmaker | Prince George | British Columbia | YouTube video24-Jan.-2011 |
68 | Cam Clayton, student | Sechelt /sēshĕlt/[ˈsiˌʃɛlt] | British Columbia | YouTube video (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) 30-Mar.-2011 |
69 | Michael Bublé /bōōblā/[ˈbuˌbleɪ], big band singer, actor | Vancouver | British Columbia | YouTube video24-Jan.-2011 |
70 | Carey Price, pro hockey player | Anahim Lake | British Columbia | YouTube video, (more info) |
71 | Lori McCreary, movie producer | Antioch | California | YouTube video30-Apr.-2011 |
72 | Caitlin Flanagan, author | Berkeley | California | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 1-Nov.-2010 |
73 | Alex Skolnick, guitarist | Berkeley | California | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 1-Nov.-2010 |
74 | 37 year-old male, native Los Angelino, “half white and half American Indian”. Surfer. | Canoga Park | California | IDEA audio (source) (Sent in by M.M. Thanks!) 22-Apr.-2011 |
75 | Dave Brubeck, jazz musician | Concord | California | YouTube video (His clip starts at 5:40.) (more info) “On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. 14-Mar.-2012 |
76 | Lincoln Lageson, film and television producer | Crockett | California | National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum interview (Source suggested by archivist Laura Anne Heller. Thanks!) “cot”≠“caught”, but they are very close, as might be expected on the very edge of the dialect area, and “on” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”, though you have to listen very close to be sure! 30-Apr.-2011 |
77 | Don Hertzfeldt, short animated film maker | Fremont | California | YouTube video23-June-2009 |
78 | U.S. representative Jim Costa | Fresno | California | YouTube video25-Sep.-2010 |
79 | Chuck Poochigian, judge | Fresno | California | YouTube video25-Sep.-2010 |
80 | Jack Del Rio, pro football coach | Hayward | California | video“On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. 23-June-2009 |
81 | Conor Chinn, pro soccer player | La Jolla/lə hoiə/[lə ˈhɔɪə] | California | YouTube video11-July-2011 |
82 | Various | Livermore | California | audio links |
83 | U.S. representative Jack Kemp | Los Angeles | California | YouTube video (Clip starts at 1:39.) According to contributor M.M., Kemp “would be labeled as standard American/neutral accent by Californians themselves”. Contributor Shulamit Widawsky also does not consider him a representative sample. Even so, he clearly has “cot”=“caught”, and retains certain other distinctive California features. 3-June-2011 |
84 | John MacArthur, pastor | Los Angeles (various close suburbs) | California | YouTube video (Replaced bad link.) (more info) 16-Jan.-2012 |
85 | Kari Byron, Mythbusters host | Los Gatos /lŏs gătəs/[ˌlɒs ˈɡæɾəs][23] | California | YouTube video (more info) |
86 | Sarah Austin, alternative media | Mill Valley | California | YouTube video23-June-2009 |
87 | White female, twenties, born 1981, student. Dialect typical of age group. | Mission Viejo | California | IDEA audio (source) (Sent in by M.M. Thanks!) 22-Apr.-2011 |
88 | Kenny Roberts, Sr., motorcycle racer | Modesto | California | YouTube video (more info) 25-Sep.-2010 |
89 | Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder | Mountain View | California | YouTube video (more info) As with several other clips, I had not listened as clearly as I should have, and thought that “cot”=“caught” for him, but it does not! “On” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 22-Sep.-2010 |
90 | Frank Chin, writer | Oakland | California | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. “Cutting edge”: that is, peculiar and slightly crude. 2-3 minutes are enough! 23-June-2009 |
91 | U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese | Oakland | California | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 13-June-2009 |
92 | “Crash Holly” (Mike Lockwood), “pro” wrestler | Pacifica | California | YouTube video25-Sep.-2010 |
93 | Bill Martin, weatherman | Paradise | California | YouTube video (more info) (Suggested by Noah Zimmerman. Thanks!) 10-Mar.-2011 |
94 | Clint Eastwood, actor | Piedmont | California | YouTube video (Replaced clip.) “On” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 31-Dec.-2011 |
95 | Ashley Parker Angel, pop singer | Redding | California | YouTube video25-Oct.-2010 |
96 | Jeff Sutherland, Jeff’s Star Talk | Richmond | California | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. (more info Replaced bad link.) 10-May-2011 |
97 | Lynn Anderson, country singer & equestrian | Sacramento (Fair Oaks) | California | National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum interview (Source suggested by archivist Laura Anne Heller. Thanks!) 22-Apr.-2011 |
98 | Suzanne Somers, actress | San Bruno | California | YouTube video25-Sep.-2010 |
99 | Rex Walheim, astronaut | San Carlos | California | YouTube video23-June-2009 |
100 | Dana Carvey, comedian | San Carlos | California | YouTube video23-June-2009 |
101 | Cathy Scott, author | San Diego | California | YouTube video“pin”≠“pen”, but “any”, “many”, etc. are pronounced “inny”.26-Sep.-2009 |
102 | Jolene Blalock, actress | San Diego | California | YouTube video“pin”≠“pen”. Replaced bad link. 4-Mar.-2011 |
103 | Jerry Brown, attorney general, etc. | San Francisco | California | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. Older |
104 | Pat Brown, governor | San Francisco | California | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. |
105 | U.S. senator Dianne Feinstein | San Francisco | California | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. |
106 | Benjamin Bratt, actor | San Francisco | California | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 28-Sep.-2009 |
107 | U.S. Transp. Sec. Norman Mineta | San José | California | YouTube video13-June-2009 |
108 | Alicia Silverstone, actress | San Mateo | California | YouTube video“Cot”≠“caught”, “on” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”, but not clear when she moved from San Francisco! 25-Sep.-2010 |
109 | Merv Griffin, television host | San Mateo | California | YouTube video“Cot”≠“caught”, “on” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”.13-June-2009 |
110 | Brad Lewis, movie producer | San Mateo | California | YouTube video, video Oops! Thought had “cot”=“caught”, but “cot”≠“caught”, “on” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 25-Sep.-2010 |
111 | Heather Fargo, former mayor of Sacramento | Stockton | California | YouTube video25-Oct.-2010 |
112 | Ed Rollins, campaign consultant | Vallejo | California | YouTube video23-June-2009 |
113 | Eric Willett /wǐlĕt/[wɪˈlɛt], snowboarder | Breckenridge | Colorado | YouTube video (more info) 21-Dec.-2010 |
114 | Rich “Goose” Gossage, pitcher | Colorado Springs | Colorado | YouTube video |
115 | Ace Young, singer | Denver | Colorado | YouTube video26-Sep.-2009 |
116 | U.S. representative Tom Tancredo | Denver | Colorado | YouTube videoOlder |
117 | State representative Randy Fischer | Fort Collins | Colorado | YouTube video26-Sep.-2009 |
118 | U.S. representative Scott McInnis | Glenwood Springs | Colorado | YouTube video26-Sep.-2009 |
119 | Dalton Trumbo, film director | Grand Junction | Colorado | YouTube video26-Sep.-2009 |
120 | Rebecca Dussault, extreme athlete | Gunnison | Colorado | YouTube video7-Dec.-2009 |
121 | Colleen Piatt, grocery store owner | Hasty | Colorado | video & info (Sent in by Kirk Sniff. Thanks!) She is definitely a native, according to contributor Kirk Sniff. He is not sure about Ralph Hogue, and Ralph’s pronunciation suggests that he might be from somewhere more south and east, since he has more secondary features of Inland Southern, though not technically Inland Southern based on his long /ī/[a(ɪ)] vowels. 21-Sep.-2011 |
122 | State senator Kenneth Kester | Cañon City /kănyən sĭtē/[ˈkʰænjən ˈsɪɾi] | Colorado | YouTube video Oops! I had listed him as being from Lamar, but this web site gives the straight scoop! 21-Sep.-2011 |
123 | Scott Elarton, pro baseball player | Lamar | Colorado | YouTube video11-Jan.-2011 |
124 | Kory Sperry, pro football player | Pueblo /pwĕblō/[ˈpʰwɛbloʊ] | Colorado | YouTube video21-Sep.-2011 |
125 | Drew Dix, Medal of Honor winner | Pueblo | Colorado | video & info Oops! For some reason I had listed him as having “pin”≠“pen”, but in listening again I find that he has “pin”=“pen”, just lke the other samples from the Pueblo area! 21-Sep.-2011 |
126 | State representative Wes McKinley | Walsh | Colorado | YouTube video |
127 | State representative Andrew Roraback | Goshen | Connecticut | YouTube video (more info) (Sent in by Darren Farrington. Thanks!) 24-Jan.-2011 |
128 | State representative Joe Courtney | Hartford | Connecticut | YouTube video (clip at 2:51) 3-Apr.-2010 |
129 | Katharine Hepburn, actress | Hartford | Connecticut | Older r-dropper: YouTube video Drops r’s beautifully, but clearly local, not Mid-Atlantic, since she follows the Providence pattern, with “cart”=“cot”. 3-Apr.-2010 |
130 | Ken Sullivan, Director of utilities | Jewett City | Connecticut | YouTube video Clearly drops r’s, though only partially. 3-Apr.-2010 |
131 | U.S. senator John Warner | Washington | D.C. | YouTube video (Older speaker retaining Lowland Southern and r-dropping, although younger ones have apparently completely lost it!) 5-Oct.-2010 |
132 | Governor Ruth Ann Minner | Milford | Delaware | YouTube video |
133 | Kevin Mench, pro baseball player | Newark | Delaware | YouTube video19-Feb.-2011 |
134 | Barbara Delledonne, concerned citizen | Wilmington | Delaware | YouTube video (Sent in by Joseph DeSebasco. Thanks!) 14-Apr.-2011 |
135 | State representative Nick Manolakos | Wilmington | Delaware | YouTube video (Sent in by Joseph DeSebasco. Thanks!) 14-Apr.-2011 |
136 | City council member Kevin Kelley | Wilmington | Delaware | YouTube video (Sent in by Joseph DeSebasco. Thanks!) 14-Apr.-2011 |
137 | Mayor John Land | Apopka | Florida | video & info (Older speaker retaining Lowland Southern, although younger ones have apparently completely lost it!) |
138 | Gregg Allman, rock singer | Daytona Beach | Florida | YouTube video26-Aug.-2009 |
139 | Bill France, Jr., NASCAR executive | Daytona Beach | Florida | YouTube video (His clip is at 1:38.) (Replaced dead link.) 10-Feb.-2011 |
140 | Jonathan Cohn, author & journalist | Fort Lauderdale | Florida | YouTube video23-July-2009 |
141 | Tom Petty, rock singer | Gainesville | Florida | YouTube video26-Aug.-2009 |
142 | Marty Raybon, country singer | Jacksonville | Florida | YouTube video7-Nov.-2009 |
143 | Donnie Van Zant, country singer | Jacksonville | Florida | YouTube video (more info) 30-Jan.-2010 |
144 | State rep. Leonard Bembry | Jasper | Florida | YouTube video26-Aug.-2009 |
145 | Danny Lipford, TV handyman | Marianna | Florida | YouTube video5-July-2010 |
146 | Michael Wynne, USAF Secretary | Melbourne | Florida | YouTube video24-Oct.-2009 |
| U.S. senator Bill Nelson [24] | Melbourne | Florida | YouTube video23-June-2010 |
147 | Roy Sekoff, Internet journalist | Miami | Florida | YouTube video23-July-2009 |
148 | Judge Alex Ferrer, TV judge | Miami | Florida | YouTube video (His clip really starts at 1:45) 20-Mar.-2012 |
149 | Ron Dermer, Israeli politician | Miami Beach | Florida | YouTube video23-July-2009 |
150 | Lauren Brooke, “pro” wrestling interviewer | Orlando | Florida | YouTube video26-Aug.-2009 |
151 | Wilma Burgess, country singer | Orlando | Florida | YouTube video26-Aug.-2009 |
152 | Clint Daniels, country singer | Panama City | Florida | YouTube video26-Aug.-2009 |
153 | David Eckstein, pro baseball player | Sanford | Florida | YouTube video |
154 | Emilie Richards, author | St. Petersburg | Florida | video & info23-July-2009 |
155 | Lynne Koplitz, comedienne | Sarasota | Florida | YouTube video23-July-2009 |
156 | Will Kirby, TV doctor | Tallahassee | Florida | YouTube video26-Aug.-2009 |
157 | U.S. representative Kathy Castor | Tampa | Florida | YouTube video23-July-2009 |
158 | Kyle Minor, author | West Palm Beach | Florida | YouTube video23-July-2009 |
159 | Jerry Reed, country singer | Atlanta | Georgia | YouTube video12-June-2010 |
160 | Art Williams, billionaire | Cairo /kārō/[ˈkʰeɪˌɹoʊ] | Georgia | YouTube video (Replaced bad link.) (Speech starts at 2:50) more info9-Mar.-2012 |
161 | Lari Goss, southern gospel singer | Cartersville | Georgia | YouTube video (more info) 4-Sep.-2010 |
162 | Mallory Hope, country singer | Cohutta /kəhŭtə/[kʰəˈhʌɾə] | Georgia | YouTube video Inland! 1-Nov.-2011 |
163 | Zac Brown, country singer | Cumming | Georgia | YouTube video23-July-2011 |
164 | Bill Elliott, NASCAR driver | Dawsonville | Georgia | YouTube video |
165 | Josh & Dana Shields, southern gospel singers | Flintstone | Georgia | audio (source) 30-Sep.-2010 |
166 | Luke Bryan, country singer | Leesburg | Georgia | YouTube video23-July-2011 |
167 | Lewis Grizzard, humor columnist | Newnan (Moreland) | Georgia | YouTube video An excellent example of Classical Southern. 20-Mar.-2012 |
168 | Col. Joe Jackson, Air Force pilot | Newnan | Georgia | YouTube video His speech is rather variable; it tends to sound more Classical Southern towards the end. 20-Mar.-2012 |
169 | Alan Jackson, country singer | Newnan | Georgia | YouTube video He is clearly Lowland Southern, with no apparent r-dropping in spite of being on the edge of the Classical Southern region. YouTube video In this song he sings consistent Lowland Southern, with no apparent r-dropping. YouTube video In this song he mixes Inland and Lowland; it seems to me that the only word he seems to drop the r in is “southern”. 23-July-2011 |
170 | U.S. president Jimmy Carter | Plains | Georgia | YouTube video7-Dec.-2009 |
171 | U.S. First Lady Rosalynn Carter | Plains | Georgia | YouTube video7-Dec.-2009 |
172 | Sonny Seiler, famous dog owner | Savannah | Georgia | YouTube video26-Nov.-2009 |
173 | Hinton Mitchem, Alabama state senator | Watkinsville | Georgia | YouTube video (more info) 7-Dec.-2009 |
174 | U.S. senator Mike Crapo | Idaho Falls | Idaho | YouTube video |
175 | Dale Harwood, saddle maker | Soda Springs | Idaho | YouTube video (more info) 30-Nov.-2010 |
176 | State Sen. Gary Gorby | Anna | Illinois | YouTube video22-July-2009 |
177 | Buddy Ebsen, actor | Belleville | Illinois | YouTube video31-Aug.-2009 |
178 | Tommy Johnagin, comedian | Benton | Illinois | YouTube video8-Jan.-2011 |
179 | Bill Grammer, Country Singer | Benton | Illinois | YouTube video8-Jan.-2011 |
180 | Various residents | Brookport | Illinois | YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 16-Feb.-2010 |
181 | Shawn Watson, football coach | Carbondale | Illinois | YouTube video |
182 | Alison Krauss, country singer | Champaign | Illinois | YouTube video12-Nov.-2010 |
183 | Richard M. Daley, mayor | Chicago /shĭkôgə/[ʃɪˈkʰɒɡə] or /shĭkôgō/[ʃɪˈkʰɒˌɡo], minority /shĭkŏgō/[ʃɪˈkʰaˌɡo] | Illinois | YouTube video (See How I Use the IPA for a discussion of the pronunciation of this city.) 10-Feb.-2011 |
184 | George Gobel, comedian | Chicago | Illinois | YouTube video1-Jan.-2010 |
185 | Dick Van Dyke, actor | Danville | Illinois | YouTube video Replaced dead video link! 11-Jan.-2011 |
186 | James Loewen, sociologist | Decatur | Illinois | YouTube video12-Nov.-2010 |
187 | U.S. president Ronald Reagan | Dixon | Illinois | YouTube video (more info) 19-Oct.-2010 |
188 | Jimmy Kite, NASCAR driver | Effingham | Illinois | YouTube video11-Jan.-2011 |
189 | Matt Hughes, mixed martial artist | Hillsboro | Illinois | YouTube video Role model: “I want my kids to look at me and do as I do, say as I say.” 11-Jan.-2011 |
190 | Jerry Barber, pro golfer | Jacksonville | Illinois | YouTube video :34-1:12 11-Jan.-2011 |
191 | Transportation Sec. Ray LaHood | Peoria | Illinois | YouTube video31-Aug.-2009 |
192 | D. A. Weibring, golfer | Quincy | Illinois | YouTube video |
193 | John Spring, mayor of Quincy, IL | Rock Island | Illinois | MSNBC video, NPR audio (Sent in by Y.I. Thanks!) 24-June-2010 |
194 | Mayor Timothy Davlin | Springfield | Illinois | YouTube video9-Jan.-2010 |
195 | Bob Woodward, reporter & author | Wheaton | Illinois | video & info (scroll down to video) 9-May-2011 |
196 | Alan Baumler, author | Wheaton | Illinois | YouTube video (Speech starts at 2:25) (Sent in by Alan Baumler. Thanks!) 16-Dec.-2011 |
197 | Bill Gaither, southern gospel singer | Alexandria | Indiana | YouTube video |
198 | Orville Redenbacher, popcorn producer | Brazil | Indiana | YouTube video(Kinda short, but “pin”=“pen”!) 1-Mar.-2010 |
199 | Jamie Hyneman, Mythbuster | Columbus | Indiana | YouTube video25-Sep.-2010 |
200 | Larry Bird, pro basketball player | French Lick | Indiana | YouTube video Southern Indiana speaks Lowland Southern! I had heard this for a long time, and have been looking for samples, and finally found one. Believe it or not, Larry Bird’s nickname is “The hick from French Lick”! 4-Sep.-2012 |
201 | Gary Nabhan, ethnobotanist | Gary | Indiana | YouTube video15-Dec.-2010 |
202 | Don Williams, astronaut | Green Hill | Indiana | YouTube video (His clips: 17:55-19:15 and 20:15-21:38) This seems to be the top left corner of the “pin”=“pen” area! 2-Feb.-2011 |
203 | Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel | Evansville | Indiana | YouTube video20-Jan.-2010 |
204 | Mayor Tom Henry | Fort Wayne | Indiana | YouTube video16-Feb.-2010 |
205 | U.S. senator Richard Lugar | Indianapolis | Indiana | YouTube video6-Feb.-2010 |
206 | State representative Jackie Walorski | South Bend | Indiana | YouTube video11-Jan.-2011 |
207 | Sam Kooiker /kwākər/[ˈkʰweɪkɚ], mayor of Rapid City, South Dakota | Boyden | Iowa | YouTube video (his clip starts at 0:30) (more info). New! 9-Mar.-2013 |
208 | Dean Schwartz, ceramic artist | Cedar Rapids | Iowa | YouTube video Both his /ou/[aʊ] vowel and his /ō/[oʊ] vowel are so far back that I initially thought that Cedar Rapids was above the bite-bout line and above the pink dots, even though the ANAE had put it below those lines, but on listening again I realize that they are just barely below them! 21-Dec.-2010 |
209 | Donna Reed, actress | Dennison | Iowa | YouTube video24-Jan.-2011 |
210 | Pamela Gorman, politician | Des Moines | Iowa | YouTube video1-Nov.-2010 |
211 | Dayton Duncan, producer | Indianola | Iowa | YouTube video1-Nov.-2010 |
212 | Dr. William Lane Craig, theologian | Keokuk | Iowa | YouTube video |
213 | Phil Vischer, co-creator of VeggieTales | Muscatine /mǔskətēn/[ˌmʌskəˈtʰin] | Iowa | YouTube video21-Dec.-2010 |
214 | Mike Johanns, Nebraska governor | Osage | Iowa | YouTube video28-Oct.-2011 |
215 | Mayor Dale Uehling | Ottumwa /ətǔmwə/[əˈtʰʌmwə] | Iowa | video & info (Sent in by Kevin McMillin. Thanks!) 2-Feb.-2011 |
216 | Carol Morris, Miss Universe 1956 | Ottumwa | Iowa | YouTube video |
217 | Everly Brothers, rock singers | Shenandoah | Iowa | YouTube video When these guys sing, they use a clear Inland Southern accent (e.g. YouTube video), but when they speak, as in the interview above, it’s clearly Iowa. The one southernism they have is that “pin”=“pen”, but this is also from this part of Iowa, as seen by the following sample. 12-July-2011 |
218 | Charlie Haden, musician | Shenandoah | Iowa | YouTube video. 12-July-2011 |
219 | U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower | Abilene | Kansas | YouTube video I found this better clip of him, and realized that he has “cot”≠“caught”! His brother (below) does too. Even so, I would like to find other samples from Abilene to confirm this, since it makes the lines twist quite a lot! 18-Nov.-2011 |
220 | Milton Eisenhower, university president, War Relocation Authority director | Abilene | Kansas | YouTube video. 18-Nov.-2011 |
221 | Mark Schultz, contemporary Christian singer/songwriter | Colby | Kansas | YouTube video6-Jan.-2012 |
222 | Archbishop Charles Chaput /shəpōō/[ʃəˈpʰu] | Concordia | Kansas | YouTube video I had not listened as clearly as I should have, and thought that “cot”=“caught”, but it does not, thereby providing a bridge to Hays and Plainville! 18-Sep.-2010 |
223 | David A. R. White, actor, producer | Dodge City | Kansas | YouTube video (Replaced bad link.) 6-Jan.-2012 |
224 | Chuck Reed, mayor of San Jose, CA | Garden City | Kansas | YouTube video |
225 | Victor Ortiz, boxer | Garden City | Kansas | YouTube video |
226 | John L. Allen, Jr., Journalist | Hays | Kansas | YouTube video18-Sep.-2010 |
227 | Various locals | Hugoton /hyōōgətən/? [ˈhjuɡətən]? | Kansas | YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 3-Dec.-2009 |
228 | Billy Drago, actor | Hugoton | Kansas | YouTube video3-Dec.-2009 |
229 | Scott Heim, novelist | Hutchinson | Kansas | YouTube video |
230 | Ed Asner, actor | Kansas City | Kansas | YouTube video |
231 | Wantha Davis, jockey | Liberal | Kansas | YouTube video (Her clip starts at 3:40) (more info) She’s back! For a long time this web site was offline, and the video was unavailable, but both are now available again! This is very good, because she is one of only two samples for Liberal, which is the only clear case of Inland Southern in Kansas. 27-Oct.-2011 |
232 | Kasey Hayes, bull rider | Liberal | Kansas | YouTube video Slightly inconsistent on his long /ī/[a(ɪ)] vowels, but clearly Inland South. (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 24-Jan.-2011 |
233 | Caucasian male | Oskaloosa | Kansas | IDEA audio (source) |
234 | Darren Bousman, film director | Overland Park | Kansas | YouTube video |
235 | U.S. representative Jerry Moran | Plainville | Kansas | YouTube video18-Sep.-2010 |
236 | Marlin Fitzwater, former White House press sec. | Salina | Kansas | YouTube video |
237 | Mitch Holthus, football announcer | Smith Center | Kansas | YouTube video I replaced the video I had with this one which is much better, and realized that “cot”≠“caught” for him. This opens up the narrow bridge to Hays and Plainville, which makes more sense. 15-Nov.-2011 |
238 | Martina McBride, country singer | Sharon | Kansas | YouTube video Replaced bad link. 31-May-2011 |
239 | Andy McKee, guitarist | Topeka | Kansas | YouTube video |
240 | U.S. senator Pat Roberts | Topeka | Kansas | YouTube video6-Jan.-2012 |
241 | Jason Crabb, southern gospel singer | Beaver Dam | Kentucky | YouTube video11-July-2009 |
242 | Jimmy Wolford, singer songwriter, descendant of the feudin’ McCoys | Belfry | Kentucky | YouTube video (first clip at 1:00, but reappears throughout) 30-Apr.-2010 |
243 | County schools personnel | Benton | Kentucky | YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) Oops! This video has been removed. In any case, I now suspect that Benton is very much a mixed area (which should not be surprising seeing the complexity of the map in that area), since I had a conversation with a native, and she definitely spoke Lowland Southern. 27-Oct.-2011 |
244 | Jason Lambert, web entrepreneur | Bowling Green (Scottsville) | Kentucky | YouTube video (more info) 11-July-2009 |
245 | David Williams, Kentucky Senate president | Burkesville | Kentucky | YouTube video11-July-2009 |
246 | Loretta Lynn, country singer | Butcher Holler (officially Hollow) | Kentucky | YouTube video, YouTube video, I have finally decided that for Loretta, “cot”≠“caught”. The problem is that she is inconsistent: In both an early and a recentversion of “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, she always says /dǒtər/[ˈdɑɾɚ], using exactly the same vowel sound as in “lot” later on in the song, never /dôtər/[ˈdɒʊɾɚ], the typical Southern pronunciation. This was what made me think that she had “cot”=“caught”, along with the fact that she grew up very close to the “cot”=“caught” area. However, even in this song she uses /ô/[ɒʊ] in the word “all”, but /ǒ/[ɑ] in the word “holler”, both before /l/, so she clearly has the phoneme contrast. Similarly, in this early version of “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)”, the word “ought” is clearly /ǒt/[ˈɑt], not /ôt/[ˈɒʊt], but in the same song there are clear cases of /ô/[ɒʊ] in “’cause” and “caught”. 26-July-2012 |
247 | Gatewood Galbraith, politician | Carlisle | Kentucky | YouTube video (more info) 22-Aug.-2009 |
248 | A whole slew of people at a political rally | Columbus | Kentucky | dead link: YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) (Oops, this video has now been removed! Anyone have another one from Columbus?) Hard to evaluate, but several who say they are definitely locals are clearly Inland Southern, including the guy from between Bardwell and Berkley, the lady standing with her husband, and the man with his wife and two babies. 25-Nov.-2009 |
249 | John Michael Montgomery, country singer | Danville | Kentucky | YouTube video, YouTube video13-May-2009 |
250 | Billy Ray Cyrus, country singer | Flatwoods | Kentucky | YouTube video This is a key sample: Clearly Lowland, though occasional words sound Inland. “Cot”≠“caught”. (more info) 30-May-2011 |
251 | Brice Long, country singer | Hopkinsville | Kentucky | YouTube video20-Jan.-2010 |
252 | Gerald Crabb, southern gospel singer | Horse Branch | Kentucky | YouTube video (more info) The pattern of Inland and Lowland Southern in Kentucky is so peculiar, and seems to be getting more so! New! 25-Apr.-2013 |
253 | Ernie Brown Jr., turtle man | Lebanon | Kentucky | YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 16-Feb.-2010 |
254 | “Lardo Moron”, bluegrass artist | Lexington (Loradale) | Kentucky | YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) Lowland Southern, but with occasional lapses into Inland on a few words, like “right”. Compare these with the Little Rock samples. 26-Nov.-2009 |
255 | “Burley Moron”, bluegrass artist | Lexington (Nicholasville) | Kentucky | YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) Like the previous, but with a few more Inland lapses, which we would expect, since he’s from slightly closer to the dialect line. 26-Nov.-2009 |
256 | Brian Littrell, pop singer | Lexington | Kentucky | YouTube video22-Aug.-2009 |
257 | Silas House, author | Lily | Kentucky | video & info (Sent in by Amanda Warren. Thanks!) 9-May-2011 |
258 | U.S. senator Mitch McConnell | Louisville | Kentucky | YouTube video |
259 | white male, born 1933, retired farmer | Marion | Kentucky | IDEA audio (source) |
260 | Kevin Skinner, America’s Got Talent winner | Mayfield | Kentucky | YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 26-Nov.-2009 |
261 | Heather French Henry, Miss America 2000 | Maysville | Kentucky | YouTube video7-Dec.-2009 |
262 | Tim Farmer, TV outdoorsman | Maysville | Kentucky | YouTube video“Cot”≠“caught”, personally confirmed by Tim, thanks! I had thought he sounded more like “cot”=“caught”. (more info) 30-May-2011 |
263 | Kevin Denney, country singer | Monticello | Kentucky | YouTube video1-June-2009 |
264 | Dottie Rambo, southern gospel singer | Morganfield | Kentucky | YouTube video11-July-2009 |
265 | W. Earl Brown, actor, singer | Murray | Kentucky | YouTube video (No need to listen to all of it!) 11-July-2009 |
266 | Darrell Waltrip, NASCAR driver | Owensboro | Kentucky | YouTube video12-June-2010 |
267 | U.S. senator Wendell Ford | Owensboro | Kentucky | YouTube video (more info) 11-July-2009 |
268 | Bobby Green, NASCAR driver | Owensboro | Kentucky | YouTube video (clip starts at 3:30) 31-Dec.-2011 |
269 | U.S. senator and former governor Julian Carroll | Paducah | Kentucky | YouTube video |
270 | Dr. Herbert Anderson, M.D. | Paducah | Kentucky | audio link & info9-May-2009 |
271 | Ron Hagan, flood fighter | Paducah | Kentucky | YouTube video (His clip starts at 1:18.) (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 11-Jan.-2011 |
272 | Patty Loveless, country singer | Pikeville | Kentucky | YouTube video20-Jan.-2010 |
273 | Joe Isaacs, bluegrass musician | Pikeville (Big Hill) | Kentucky | YouTube video (more info) 9-Sep.-2010 |
274 | Merle Travis, country singer | Rosewood | Kentucky | YouTube video18-Oct.-2010 |
275 | Bill Monroe, Bluegrass singer | Rosine | Kentucky | YouTube video6-Feb.-2010 |
276 | Adam Crowe, web entrepreneur | Russellville | Kentucky | YouTube video (more info) 11-July-2009 |
277 | Tim Elkins, dairy producer | Smiths Grove | Kentucky | YouTube video18-Dec.-2010 |
278 | Joseph Boudreaux, alligator hunter | Abbeville | Louisiana | YouTube video Cajun English! 23-June-2010 |
279 | James Carville, political commentator | Carville | Louisiana | YouTube video The town was named after his grandfather. Excellent example of Cajun English, though not quite as strong as some of the others. New! 25-Apr.-2013 |
280 | Jerry Lee Lewis, Rock singer | Ferriday | Louisiana | YouTube video30-Jan.-2010 |
281 | Mayor David Camardelle | Grand Isle | Louisiana | YouTube video12-June-2010 |
282 | Lynne Spears, mother of Britney Spears | Kentwood | Louisiana | YouTube video9-Jan.-2010 |
283 | Lenis Guillot /lĭnĭs gēŏt/[ˈlɪnɪs ˈɡiˌɑt], witness | Lafayette /lăfēĕt/[ˌlæfiˈɛt] | Louisiana | YouTube video Cajun English! 14-Feb.-2011 |
284 | Deborah Chauvin, profession unknown | New Orleans (Ninth Ward) | Louisiana | I have arranged the following New Orleans speakers in a graduated sequence ranging from almost pure New York City to pure Lowland Southern. No two of them are at the same point in the sequence! Even so, I have not separated the last four into separate dialects, pending further data to determine how large an area talks like the Garden District: YouTube video (Her clip is at the beginning of this video.) Not Southern at all, and sounds very much like New York City, though impossible to tell in this short clip whether “had” rhymes with “bad”, whether “father” rhymes with “bother”, or whether “pin”=“pen”. However, clearly “on” rhymes with “Dawn”, which is not like NYC. 24-Nov.-2012 |
285 | “dem two beautiful girls” (self-description) | New Orleans (Irish Channel) | Louisiana | YouTube video (Their clip starts at 5:25, and finishes the video.) They sound very much like New York City, hardly Southern at all, but they are Lowland Southern as far as their long /ī/[a(ɪ)] is concerned. Clearly “pin”≠“pen”! Favorite quotes: “When I want to talk proper, I will”, “Look at dem two beautiful girls, if dey’d shut deir mouts dey’d be great”. 24-Jan.-2011 |
286 | Mayor Mitch Landrieu | New Orleans (Broadmoor) | Louisiana | YouTube video Clearly Lowland Southern, but with many NYC features, “pin”≠“pen”, and he pronounces “father” as [ˈfɑəðə], just like NYC, but pronounces “Thompson” as [ˈtʰɑmpsən], again just like NYC! Thus he evidently has the father-bother distinction, and it is likely that the preceding speakers do also. 14-Mar.-2012 |
287 | Billy Delle, radio host | New Orleans (Gentilly) | Louisiana | YouTube video He is the narrator. (He kindly let me know that he grew up in Gentilly. Thanks!) (Clips: 0:58-1:15, 4:12-4:35, 5:46-5:56) Clearly Classical Southern, with “pin”=“pen”, but /ô/ = [oə], like NYC, and with more other NYC features than Harry Connick. (End credits: YouTube video, his clip is at 0:43.) (more info) 24-Jan.-2011 |
288 | Harry Connick, Jr., jazz composer & singer | New Orleans (Lakewood) | Louisiana | YouTube video (Replaced bad link.) (He speaks first at 1:52) Clearly Classical Southern, with “pin”=“pen”, but /ô/ = [oə], like NYC. However, he does not drop all of his r’s that do not precede vowels. One anonymous contributor from New Orleans said, “I would say that Harry Connick Jr. sounds more like New Orleans black than New Orleans white (probably from hanging around all those jazz musicians growing up!), so you really should not use him as a representative of the white New Orleans accents.” I would say this is certainly true, but only partly: he still has lots in common with the other white speakers listed here. 24-Nov.-2012 |
289 | Roger Villere, Republican Party State Chairman | New Orleans (Metairie) | Louisiana | YouTube video Essentially the same as Harry Connick. (Sent in by Ben Trawick-Smith. Thanks!) 31-May-2011 |
290 | Older gentleman, upper class | New Orleans (Garden District) | Louisiana | YouTube video (His clip starts at 1:40 and again at 2:35.) Clearly the most classic of Classical Southern, “pin”=“pen”, with no NYC features at all, /ô/ = [ɒʊ], like most southerners. My favorite quote: “I just don’t think people from the Garden District have any accent” 24-Jan.-2011 |
291 | Jimmie Davis, country singer & governor | Quitman | Louisiana | YouTube video23-July-2011 |
292 | Kix Brooks, country singer | Shreveport | Louisiana | YouTube video31-May-2011 |
293 | Tim Sample, humorist | Boothbay Harbor | Maine | YouTube video (Sent in by Ken Homer. Thanks!) 4-Mar.-2011 |
294 | U.S. senator Susan Collins | Caribou | Maine | YouTube video8-June-2009 |
295 | Ellis Paul, folk singer | Fort Kent | Maine | YouTube video8-June-2009 |
296 | Jeremy Van Dyne, lobsterman | Matinicus Island | Maine | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
297 | Ed Muskie, politician | Rumford | Maine | YouTube video2-June-2009 |
298 | Michael Merchant, “Out of the Wild” volunteer | Tenants Harbor | Maine | YouTube video (Sent in by Kathy Villarreal. Thanks!) He only drops about half of his droppable r’s (the ones not preceding a vowel), but otherwise has a typical Eastern New England accent. (more info) The previous site says he is from Hampden (right next to Bangor /bănggôr/[ˈbæŋɡɔə]), but he actually grew up in Tenants Harbor before high school. 25-July-2011 |
299 | Ty Babb, lobster fisherman | Tenants Harbor | Maine | YouTube video (Sent in by Jill Miller. Thanks!) He is very similar to the previous. Apparently r’s are creeping into the dialect here! 6-Jan.-2012 |
300 | U.S. senator Barbara Mikulski | Baltimore | Maryland | YouTube video19-Feb.-2011 |
301 | Various politicians[25] | Baltimore | Maryland | YouTube video |
302 | State senate president Mike Miller | Clinton | Maryland | YouTube video (Older speaker retaining Lowland Southern, although younger ones have apparently completely lost it!) 11-Jan.-2011 |
303 | Chris Rice, Christian singer | Clinton | Maryland | YouTube video11-Jan.-2011 |
304 | Frank Nethken, politician | Cumberland | Maryland | YouTube video Interesting character! This is also the northernmost example of Southern! 4-Nov.-2010 |
305 | Alex Coblentz, contributor | Frederick | Maryland | YouTube video (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) Pretty solid East Midland, though I was at first in some doubt about whether “pin”=“pen”, but I believe he does distinguish! 16-Dec.-2011 |
306 | Chris Shank, state House Minority Whip | Hagerstown | Maryland | YouTube video |
307 | Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio, state Delegate | Neavitt | Maryland | YouTube video |
308 | Frank Perdue, chicken producer | Salisbury | Maryland | dead link: YouTube video This was one of his early ads, before his handlers eradicated much of his Southern accent. Tidewater raising is also clearly heard. (His clip is at 2:30-3:00.) (This link has been removed, which is unfortunate, since it was the only one of its kind that I have found.) 12-Aug.-2010 |
309 | Various residents | Smith Island | Maryland | YouTube video, YouTube video9-Sep.-2010 |
310 | Mary Ada Marshall, cake maker | Smith Island | Maryland | YouTube video9-Sep.-2010 |
311 | Thomas Menino, mayor | Boston (Hyde Park) | Massachusetts | YouTube video Excellent example! New! 25-Apr.-2013 |
312 | Unnamed city counselor | Boston (Medford) | Massachusetts | YouTube video (Sent in by Bryant Garrigus. Thanks!) This is a much better sample of a Boston accent than JFK or Powers below. 2-Apr.-2011 |
313 | Alyssa McBride, contributor | Boston (Chelsea) | Massachusetts | Audio (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) Alyssa is consistent as a systematic r-dropper more than 95% of the time. 28-Nov.-2011 |
314 | U.S. president John Fitzgerald Kennedy | Boston (Brookline) | Massachusetts | YouTube video, YouTube video, YouTube video (Replaced dead link for second video.) He only lived in Boston until the age of ten, and then spent most of the remainder of his youth outside the state (see Wikipedia), and as a result, though he does have a very definite systematic r-dropper dialect, he is not really a good example of a Boston accent, as contributor Bryant Garrigus has pointed out, especially in his pronunciation of the /ä/ vowel in words like “father” and “park”, which he pronounces more like New York City, though some of his other vowels are closer to Boston. 2-Apr.-2011 |
315 | Dave Powers, JFK special assistant | Boston (Charlestown) | Massachusetts | YouTube video (more info) Powers, on the other hand, lived his entire youth in Charlestown, but even so, his pronunciation of the /ä/ vowel in words like “father” and “park” is more like JFK than it is Boston, as contributor Bryant Garrigus has pointed out. 2-Apr.-2011 |
316 | Rick Starbard /stärbərd/[ˈstabəd], school committee candidate | Boston (Lynn) | Massachusetts | info and video (His first clip starts at 12:10, with more throughout the video.) (Sent in by Shirley Tessler. Thanks!) 25-Mar.-2011 |
317 | Walter Brennan, actor | Boston (Lynn) | Massachusetts | YouTube video (His clip starts at 5:45.) Originally I had posted this YouTube video as a sample for Walter Brennan. However, contributor Shirley Tessler wrote: “I looked at the YouTube video of Walter Brennan that you provide as an example of a Lynn Massachusetts dialect. Lynn is my home town. Although Mr. Brennan was born in Lynn, he is speaking as an actor in that YouTube video in a dialect of an unschooled farmer from Texas (or similar location very far from Lynn Mass). I suggest that you no longer point to the Walter Brennan video, since it is not a true example of a Lynn dialect.” My initial reaction on her comments was, “No way! He sounds very Eastern New England to me!” That’s because the vowels he uses in words like “farm” and “on” are so ENE as to be unmistakable. No place else in the world are those vowels pronounced precisely that way! Anyone from outside of ENE who knows accents would immediately know he is ENE. In fact, after I started this map, I thought, “Now who was that old actor whose accent I remember so vividly from when I was a kid? He was clearly ENE. Let’s see... He played in ‘The Tycoon’, I remember.” And that’s how I found him. However, I didn’t initially find a clip from ‘The Tycoon’, but posted the second clip instead. However, in listening again to that clip, I realized that Shirley was partly right: in that clip he is trying to do some kind of western farmer accent, but he is doing a very bad job of it: his ENE features keep bleeding through. Even so, certain words, like “about”, do not have ENE vowels at all. I eventually found the first clip, which is from ‘The Tycoon’, and shows a more accurate accent. But check out the clip of Rick Starbard above, for an even better sample for Lynn. 25-Mar.-2011 |
318 | Peter Marciano, youngest brother of pro boxer Rocky Marciano | Brockton | Massachusetts | YouTube video He seems to keep a few more “droppable r’s” than Rocky, but otherwise his accent is pure Eastern New England. I had found a nice clip of Rocky himself, but it has been removed, and I can’t find any others! 7-Apr.-2011 |
319 | State senator Gary LeBeau | Easthampton | Massachusetts | YouTube video30-Nov.-2009 |
320 | Emeril Lagasse, celebrity cook | Fall River | Massachusetts | YouTube video24-Oct.-2009 |
321 | Gary Kitmacher, spacecraft designer | Pittsfield | Massachusetts | YouTube video (He talks for the first six minutes of the clip.) (more info) Linguist and Pittsfield native R. Locke wrote in to say that Gary Kitmacher really is representative of Pittsfield, and that James Ruberto is not. He also sent in the Turk Wendell clip below. I am glad, since Ruberto’s accent had really messed up my map! Pittsfield is now firmly back in the Northwestern New England area. 20-Apr.-2011 |
322 | Turk Wendell, pro baseball player | Pittsfield | Massachusetts | YouTube video (Sent in by R. Locke. Thanks!) 20-Apr.-2011 |
323 | June Foray, voice actress for animated films | Springfield | Massachusetts | YouTube video (Her clip starts at 0:57.) 30-Mar.-2012 |
324 | Dr. Timothy Leary, LSD advocate | Springfield | Massachusetts | YouTube video (Replaced dead link.) 7-Apr.-2011 |
325 | Abbie Hoffmann, radical activist | Worcester | Massachusetts | YouTube video |
326 | Verne Troyer, actor | Centreville | Michigan | YouTube video16-Feb.-2010 |
327 | Dan Severn, “pro” wrestler | Coldwater | Michigan | YouTube video16-Feb.-2010 |
328 | Nancy Skinner, politician | Detroit | Michigan | YouTube video7-Nov.-2009 |
329 | Josiah Middaugh, extreme athlete | East Jordan | Michigan | YouTube video ( more info) 7-Dec.-2009 |
330 | State senator Tom Casperson | Escanaba | Michigan | YouTube video29-Dec.-2010 |
331 | U.S. president Gerald Ford | Grand Rapids | Michigan | YouTube video23-June-2010 |
332 | Coach Tom Izzo | Iron Mountain | Michigan | YouTube video |
333 | Jason Babin, pro football player | Kalamazoo | Michigan | YouTube video16-Feb.-2010 |
334 | Larry Page, Google co-founder | (East) Lansing | Michigan | YouTube video25-Sep.-2010 |
335 | Cathy Guisewite, cartoonist of Cathy | Midland | Michigan | YouTube video7-Nov.-2009 |
336 | Jake Cinninger, musician | Niles | Michigan | YouTube video16-Feb.-2010 |
337 | Joe Marutiak, OPEIU union member | Owosso | Michigan | YouTube video (Sent in by Dave Marutiak. Thanks!) 11-Jan.-2011 |
338 | Terry O’Quinn, actor | Sault Ste. Marie | Michigan | YouTube video6-Feb.-2010 |
339 | Rob Capriccioso, American Indian journalist | Sault Ste. Marie | Michigan | YouTube video6-Feb.-2010 |
340 | Paul Colson, George Risser, Celeste Colson, Adam Rasmussen, Amy Dietzler | Angle Inlet | Minnesota | audio & transcript These folks talk like Minnesota, not Canada! 29-Dec.-2010 |
341 | Joseph Jagunich, miner’s son | Buhl | Minnesota | audio & info (Sent in by Adam Jarvi. Thanks!) 25-Mar.-2011 |
342 | Mayor Don Ness | Duluth | Minnesota | YouTube video1-May-2010 |
343 | Mildred Opacich, miner’s wife | Duluth | Minnesota | audio & info (Sent in by Adam Jarvi. Thanks!) Though apparently born and raised in Duluth, she seems to have a strong Iron Range dialect, or else this is simply the accent she learned from her immigrant parents. 16-May-2012 |
344 | Anthony Vidmar, miner’s son | Ely /ēlē/[ˈili] | Minnesota | audio & info (Sent in by Adam Jarvi. Thanks!) 25-Mar.-2011 |
345 | Josephine Scander, miner’s daughter | Hibbing | Minnesota | audio & info, audio & info (Sent in by Adam Jarvi. Thanks!) 25-Mar.-2011 |
346 | Tammy Faye (Bakker /bākər/[ˈbeɪkɚ]) Messner, controversial Christian television personality | International Falls | Minnesota | YouTube video29-Dec.-2010 |
347 | Chris Sukalski /səkôlskē/[səˈkʰɒlski], dairy producer | Le Roy/lēroi/[ˈliˌɹɔɪ] | Minnesota | YouTube video13-Jan.-2011 |
348 | Jesse Ventura, politician & “pro” wrestler | Minneapolis | Minnesota | YouTube video (Suggested by Y.I. Thanks!) Also YouTube video (replaced bad link), being interviewed by Dennis Miller: talk about two extremely distinct accents! And points of view! 24-Jan.-2011 |
349 | Brian Burke, Toronto Maple Leafs manager | Minneapolis (Edina) | Minnesota | YouTube video“cot”≠“caught”, but the difference is minimal. This is not unusual for the Western North. 16-Mar.-2010 |
350 | U.S. senator Amy Klobuchar /klōbəshär/[ˈkʰloʊbəˌʃɑɹ] | Minneapolis (Plymouth) | Minnesota | YouTube video (Sent in by Annie Wang. Thanks!) 27-Sep.-2010 |
351 | Will Steger, arctic explorer | Minneapolis (Richfield) | Minnesota | YouTube video23-Feb.-2011 |
352 | Governor Tim Pawlenty /pəlĕntē/[pʰəˈlɛɾ̃i] | St. Paul | Minnesota | YouTube video (Sent in by Annie Wang. Thanks!) 4-Sep.-2010 |
353 | “The Lovelace Family”, southern gospel singers | Burnsville | Mississippi | YouTube video12-June-2010 |
354 | Don Wildmon, founder, American Family Association | Dumas | Mississippi | audio (If anyone has a better audio or video link for Mr. Wildmon, please let me know.) 30-Jan.-2010 |
355 | Shelby Foote, historian | | Mississippi | YouTube video Amazing historian, and his accent is so perfectly Classical Southern! However, I had accidentally marked him as being from Greenville, Alabama instead of Greenville, Mississippi. The latter is a bit more surprising, since it is outside of the general Classical Southern area. 28-Oct.-2011 |
356 | U.S. senator Trent Lott | Grenada /grənādə/[ɡɹəˈneɪdə] | Mississippi | YouTube video (According to the following, Trent Lott moved to Pascagoula in his early teens, but I am assuming that his accent was already set by then: more info) 19-Feb.-2011 |
357 | The Unity Four, southern gospel singers | Iuka /īyōōkə/[ˌaɪˈjukə] | Mississippi | YouTube video (more info) 21-Sep.-2011 |
358 | Tommy Hamill, kidnap victim | Macon | Mississippi | YouTube video (more info) I don’t quite know what to do with this guy. He seems to be mostly Lowland, but has a few words that are clearly Inland, like “might,” “wife,” “life.”) According to my theory, Noxubee County should be a Lowland area, since it had a high percentage of slaves before the Civil War. New! 8-Apr.-2013 |
359 | Jimmie Rodgers, country singer | Meridian | Mississippi | YouTube video (Replaced dead link.) 7-Apr.-2011 |
360 | | New Albany | Mississippi | YouTube video30-Jan.-2010 |
361 | | Senatobia | Mississippi | YouTube video (more info) 30-Jan.-2010 |
362 | Tornado victims | Smithville | Mississippi | YouTube video The first two are clearly Inland, the last one seems to be trying not to sound Southern. 10-May-2011 |
363 | | Tupelo /tōōpəlō/[ˈtʰupəˌloʊ] | Mississippi | YouTube video (more info) (Sent in by Y.I. Thanks!) 1-July-2010 |
364 | | Tupelo | Mississippi | YouTube video (more info) (Sent in by Y.I. Thanks!) 1-July-2010 |
365 | | Cape Girardeau | Missouri | YouTube video (Sent in by Brett Harkey. Thanks!) 3-Nov.-2011 |
366 | | Columbia | Missouri | YouTube video |
367 | U.S. senator Bill Bradley | Crystal City | Missouri | YouTube video |
368 | U.S. senator Conrad Burns | Gallatin | Missouri | YouTube video |
369 | Children of Mike Reed | Houston | Missouri | YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 16-Feb.-2010 |
370 | Governor Matt Blunt | Jefferson City | Missouri | YouTube video |
371 | | Kennett | Missouri | YouTube video |
372 | | Kirksville | Missouri | YouTube video As usual, her Central Midland dialect is demonstrated by the interview, not the songs, which are often Inland Southern, appropriate to bluegrass. 3-Mar.-2011 |
373 | | Linn Creek | Missouri | YouTube video (Sent in by Ben Foster. Thanks!) 16-Jan.-2012 |
374 | | Park Hills | Missouri | YouTube video Clearly Inland Southern! 31-Dec.-2011 |
375 | | Poplar Bluff | Missouri | YouTube video This gentleman is clearly Inland, but I can’t determine if he is actually a native. New! 8-Apr.-2013 |
376 | | Poplar Bluff | Missouri | Google video(This is a bad link, since all of his earlier sermons were intentionally removed. His later stuff no longer demonstrates what I had written here, so he no longer serves as a good sample of this location.) (Sermon starts around 13:00. His long /ī/[a(ɪ)] vowels are fairly mixed, suggesting that he has tried to adjust his speech to some degree, but many are clearly Southern, and a few words are clearly Inland. In any case, this town is on the border, so some mixing may not be surprising. His other vowels are thoroughly Southern, so I am fairly confident that he grew up speaking Inland Southern. Another indication is that the more excited he gets, the more Southern he sounds.) Adj. 8-Apr.-2013 |
377 | | Rolla | Missouri | YouTube video |
378 | George Morris, enjoys life | Sikeston | Missouri | YouTube video (Sent in by a contributor. Thanks!) 7-Nov.-2009 |
379 | U.S. representative Roy Blunt | Springfield | Missouri | YouTube video |
380 | Dick M., age 44, furniture maker | Springfield | Missouri | ANAE info and audio This is the sample provided in the ANAE to show that Springfield, Missouri is Lowland Southern, which seems quite unlikely for its location. This sample is clearly not Inland Southern, since multiple cases of the long /ī/[aɪ] vowel occur before voiceless consonants, and only one word, “times” shows the Lowland Southern pronunciation, and this has the long /ī/[a] vowel before a nasal consonant, which is the one place it is often heard in otherwise Midland accents according to the ANAE Ch. 18, p. 243. Therefore I do not think that this sample demonstrates Southern at all. 16-Jan.-2012 |
381 | Kay Barnes, mayor of Kansas City | St. Joseph | Missouri | YouTube video |
382 | Joe Buck, sports commentator | St. Louis | Missouri | YouTube video |
383 | John Goodman, actor | St. Louis | Missouri | YouTube video |
384 | Bob Kuban, drummer | St. Louis | Missouri | YouTube video |
385 | Dr. Jan Garavaglia, “Dr. G: Medical Examiner” | St. Louis | Missouri | YouTube video (more info) 11-Jan.-2011 |
386 | Bob and Ron Coble, farmers | Strafford | Missouri | YouTube video These folks sound quite Southern, with many secondary features of Southern, until you listen closely to their long /ī/[a(ɪ)] vowels, which are actually not southern. (Sent in by Ben Foster. Thanks!) 16-Jan.-2012 |
387 | Jan Howard, country singer[26] | West Plains | Missouri | YouTube video |
388 | U.S. senator Jon Tester | Big Sandy | Montana | YouTube video |
389 | John Bohlinger, lieutenant governor | Billings | Montana | YouTube video |
390 | Wylie Gustafson, western singer/songwriter/yodeler | Conrad | Montana | YouTube video, YouTube video (more info) 19-Oct.-2010 |
391 | Dave Dickenson, football player | Great Falls | Montana | YouTube video |
392 | U.S. senator Max Baucus | Helena | Montana | YouTube video |
393 | Casey Anderson, Expedition Wild host | (East) Helena | Montana | YouTube video (more info) 11-July-2011 |
394 | Eugene Peterson, author of The Message | Kalispell | Montana | YouTube video5-Oct.-2010 |
395 | Maurice Hilleman, microbiologist[27][28] | Miles City | Montana | YouTube video (more info) |
396 | George Winston, pianist [28] | Miles City | Montana | YouTube video |
397 | Dixie Nelson, Chamber of commerce | Alliance | Nebraska | YouTube video8-Aug.-2009 |
398 | Dennis Rose, saddle maker | Arthur | Nebraska | audio (source) Cannot tell from clip whether “pin”=“pen”. 24-Aug.-2010 |
399 | Jim Girardin, Arrow Seed Co. | Broken Bow | Nebraska | YouTube video (more info) 7-Aug.-2009 |
400 | Lon Milo DuQuette, occultist | Columbus | Nebraska | YouTube video (really, really weird ideas) 12-Aug.-2009 |
401 | Barry Kriha, TV reporter | Gibbon | Nebraska | YouTube video (more info) 7-Aug.-2009 |
402 | Howard Parker, cowboy poet | Gordon | Nebraska | audio(source)24-Aug.-2010 |
403 | Walter Schmitt, farmer | Gresham | Nebraska | video & info (source) (Sent in by Kirk Sniff. Thanks!) 7-Nov.-2011 |
404 | Herbert Heine, farmer | Gresham (really Thayer, but there isn’t room) | Nebraska | video & info (source) 7-Nov.-2011 |
405 | Jay Keasling, chemical engineer | Harvard | Nebraska | YouTube video (more info) |
406 | Herman Goertzen, farmer | Henderson | Nebraska | video & info (source) (Sent in by Kirk Sniff. Thanks!) Amazing! The Grand Island wedge extends even farther south and east! 7-Nov.-2011 |
407 | Barrett Ruud, football player | Lincoln | Nebraska | YouTube video |
408 | Joba Chamberlain, baseball player | Lincoln | Nebraska | YouTube video |
409 | Ben Nelson, senator and governor | McCook | Nebraska | YouTube video |
410 | John DeCamp, Politician | Neligh /nēlē/[ˈnili] | Nebraska | YouTube video12-Aug.-2009 |
411 | Johnny Carson, entertainer | Norfolk /nȯrfȯrk/[ˈnoɹˌfoɹk][29] | Nebraska | YouTube video23-Aug.-2010 |
412 | Marg Helgenberger, actress | North Bend | Nebraska | YouTube video |
413 | Dr. Don Rose, disk jockey | North Platte | Nebraska | YouTube video |
414 | Ryan Schultz, mixed martial arts fighter | North Platte | Nebraska | YouTube video21-Sep.-2011 |
415 | Ben Holscher, mixed martial arts fighter | Ogallala | Nebraska | YouTube video21-Sep.-2011 |
416 | Henry Fonda, famous actor | Omaha /ōməhô/[ˈoʊməˌhɒ] | Nebraska | YouTube video26-Aug.-2009 |
417 | Warren Buffett, billionaire | Omaha | Nebraska | YouTube video |
418 | Mayor Susan Wiedeman | Scottsbluff (Gering) | Nebraska | YouTube video31-Dec.-2011 |
419 | Tom Osborne, football coach, etc. | St. Paul | Nebraska | YouTube video (more info) Tom Osborne grew up entirely in Hastings, Nebraska except for four years in St. Paul, from the ages of 5 to 8. However, he talks like St. Paul, not like Hastings, as I have confirmed by interviewing two natives of Hastings, who definitely have “pin”=“pen” and “cot”=“caught”. Like the sample from Ashley, ND, this shows that a phonemic system can be set before the age of 10, and never change after that. 17-Jan.-2012 |
420 | Wayne Connell, artisan | Tryon /trīən/[ˈtʰɹaɪən] | Nebraska | video (source) (Video file seems to be damaged, though previously it was playable. Hopefully it will be fixed in the future.) I need to re-check the video to see whether “pin”=“pen”: I had thought no, but I have recently interviewed a Tryon native, and evidently “pin”=“pen”. 24-Aug.-2010 |
421 | Doug Bereuter /bērītər/[ˈbiˌɹaɪɾɚ], president of the Asia Foundation | Utica | Nebraska | YouTube video (His clip is 10:10-15:08.) 7-Nov.-2011 |
422 | Sam Crawford, pro baseball player | Wahoo /wôhōō/[ˈwɒˌhu] | Nebraska | YouTube video (clip starts at 1:00) 26-Aug.-2010 |
423 | Darryl Zanuck, movie producer | Wahoo | Nebraska | YouTube video (He pronounces it /wôhōō/[ˌwɒˈhu], but he is probably just being funny. My wife, a native Nebraskan, assures me that Sam Crawford’s pronunciation is the correct one.) 26-Aug.-2010 |
424 | Elroy Hoffman, farmer | York | Nebraska | video & info (source) (Sent in by Kirk Sniff. Thanks!) Amazing! The Grand Island wedge extends even farther south and east! 7-Nov.-2011 |
425 | Harvey Pickrel, farmer | York | Nebraska | video & info (source) (Sent in by Kirk Sniff. Thanks!) This guy is from south of York, whereas the previous guy may be from north of York, and this guy’s /ō/[oʊ] vowels are noticeably more fronted, indicating that that the blue line runs between them! However, he has “pin”≠“pen”, showing that that line runs a tiny bit more south! 7-Nov.-2011 |
426 | U.S. representative Dean Heller | Carson City | Nevada | YouTube video25-Oct.-2010 |
427 | Andre Agassi, pro tennis player | Las Vegas | Nevada | YouTube video (Suggested by native Las Vegan contributor Jim Hoffman. Thanks!.) 5-Mar.-2011 |
428 | Governor Jim Gibbons | Reno | Nevada | YouTube video25-Oct.-2010 |
429 | U.S. senator Harry Reid | Searchlight | Nevada | YouTube video (Suggested by native Las Vegan contributor Jim Hoffman. Thanks!.) 5-Mar.-2011 |
430 | Wallace McCain, businessman | Florenceville | New Brunswick | downloadable video (Extremely large file!) (Sent in by Lucy May. Thanks!) 10-Jan.-2012 |
431 | Marilyn Curtin, city councilor, and unknown newswoman | Fredericton | New Brunswick | YouTube video (Sent in by Lucy May. Thanks!) 10-Jan.-2012 |
432 | Matt Stairs, pro hockey player | Saint John | New Brunswick | YouTube video13-July-2009 |
433 | Donald Sutherland, actor | Saint John | New Brunswick | YouTube video Contributor Lucy May says that he is not a good example of the local dialect, and has contributed various others. Thanks! 10-Jan.-2012 |
434 | Don Sweeney, pro hockey manager | St. Stephen | New Brunswick | video (His clip 0:20-0:50) (Sent in by Lucy May. Thanks!) 10-Jan.-2012 |
435 | Michael Durant, U.S. Army pilot | Berlin | New Hampshire | video (Found video again!) Clip starts at 0:45. 24-Aug.-2010 |
436 | Doris “Granny D” Haddock, activist, walked across America | Laconia | New Hampshire | YouTube video1-June-2009 |
437 | Joe McQuaid, newspaper publisher | Manchester | New Hampshire | YouTube video2-June-2009 |
438 | Captain David Ferland, policeman | Portsmouth | New Hampshire | YouTube video (His clips 0:55-1:06, 1:34-1:45) (Sent in by Ben Katz. Thanks! Ben said, “As I’m sure many people do for their hometowns, I thought I’d submit this clip, as I think it gives a better representation of the Seacoast, NH accent, as opposed to the samples you currently have which includes Boston to the South, and Manchester and Laconia inland. The clip features a number of local citizens, but personally, I thought the best example was [the policeman].”) 3-June-2011 |
439 | Margaret Pickering, resident | Portsmouth | New Hampshire | YouTube video (Her clip 0:07-0:41) (Sent in by Ben Katz. Thanks!) 3-June-2011 |
440 | Danny DeVito, actor | Asbury Park | New Jersey | YouTube video |
441 | Tommy DeVito, pop singer - classic working class, slightly modified! ** | Belleville | New Jersey | YouTube video (more info) The curl-coil merger is not dead! This guy clearly says /woyk/[ˈwɜɪk] instead of /wûrk/[ˈwɝk] for “work”, and uses [ɜɪ] instead of [ɝ] in several other words also, and most of his th’s become d or t. This is quite different from his fellow band member Frankie Valli, who is modern middle class. 3-Mar.-2011 |
442 | Dick Vitale, basketball sportscaster - modern middle class ** | East Rutherford | New Jersey | YouTube videoNew! 25-Apr.-2013 |
443 | State senator Michael Doherty | Glen Ridge | New Jersey | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
444 | Sammi Giancano, on cast of Jersey Shore reality show | Hazlet | New Jersey | YouTube video Nice distinctive “bad” /băəd/[ˈbeəd], plenty of cases of both /ăə/[eə] and /ă/[æ], pronounced quite distinctly! So these two distinct vowels are alive and well, even among young people. The following clip is clearer: YouTube video28-Mar.-2011 |
445 | Governor Chris Christie | Livingston | New Jersey | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
446 | Frankie Valli, pop singer - modern middle class ** | Newark | New Jersey | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
447 | Lou Costello, actor & comedian - classic working class | | New Jersey | YouTube video Contributor Jane McMullen set me straight on this one: “Your sample [for] Lou Costello, is terribly wrong. It is not a New York accent. Lou was born and raised in Paterson, NJ. He sounds just like my father (born 7 years later), also born & raised there, and all my relatives. The class is correct, classic working class, children of recent Italian immigrants. And it’s classic Paterson.” Sigh! I find that I sometimes focus on certain prominent features, and those features make me ignore other features, which are more important. I had listed Lou Costello as being from New York City, even though I knew he was born in Paterson. I failed to realize that he was also raised there. But what really led me astray was that he has nearly all of the secondary features of the classic working class of New York City: /ŧħ/[ð] becomes /d/[d], and “first” is /foyst/[ˈfɜɪst] instead of /fûrst/[ˈfɝst]. I had not realized that the latter was historically found in a few places outside of the Greater New York City dialect area, so I assumed that he had grown up in NYC. However, he actually lacks the primary defining features of NYC: he drops very few r’s, and he does not have the bad-had split, as seen in many of the words in the clip above, and in the pronunciation of “bad” at the end of this clip: YouTube video. Instead, he actually has the Eastern North pattern for these words. Thanks for keeping me straight, Jane! 27-Oct.-2011 |
448 | Alan Hale, astronomer | Alamogordo | New Mexico | audio (source) |
449 | U.S. senator Pete Domenici | Albuquerque | New Mexico | YouTube video |
450 | Various, presumably locals | Artesia | New Mexico | YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 3-Dec.-2009 |
451 | Sam Etcheverry, football coach | Carlsbad | New Mexico | YouTube video(more info) |
452 | U.S. representative Harry Teague | Hobbs | New Mexico | YouTube video |
453 | Baxter Black, cowboy poet | Las Cruces | New Mexico | YouTube video26-Aug.-2009 |
454 | Ed Foreman, politician, speaker | Portales | New Mexico | YouTube video |
455 | Cody Willard, Fox Business anchor | Ruidoso | New Mexico | YouTube video26-Aug.-2009 |
456 | Conrad Hilton, hotel tycoon | San Antonio | New Mexico | YouTube video This video clarifies that “pin”≠“pen” for him, whereas the following did not: YouTube video11-Jan.-2011 |
457 | James Junes, Navajo comedian | Shiprock | New Mexico | YouTube video (more info) 26-Sep.-2009 |
458 | Harrison Schmitt, astronaut | Silver City | New Mexico | YouTube video31-Aug.-2009 |
459 | Abel Cullum, mixed martial arts | Tucumcari | New Mexico | YouTube video13-July-2009 |
460 | Mayor Jerry Jennings | Albany | New York | YouTube video (Sent in by Derek Hachey. Thanks!) Longer sample: YouTube video11-Feb.-2011 |
461 | Judge Frank Easterbrook | Buffalo | New York | YouTube video7-Aug.-2009 |
462 | William P. Rogers, Sec. of State under Nixon | Canton | New York | YouTube video |
463 | Stewart Vorpahl/vôrpəl/[ˈvoəpəl], “Bonacker” fisherman | | New York | YouTube video (clip starts at 25:00) (Sent in by Alex Van Boer. Thanks!) This is the true native (working class) dialect of “The Hamptons”, not really those that follow, as the explanation that follows shows. It is quite similar to GNYC, and has the same 16 vowels as New York City, including pronouncing the “aw” or /ô/ vowel (see The Cot-Caught Merger) as [oə], but unlike New York City there is no working-class tendency to change th’s to d or t, and several of the vowels have a slight hint of New England. 3-Mar.-2011 |
464 | Mary Gardiner, gourmet produce seller | | New York | The east end of Long Island, often called “The Hamptons”, is unusual in that it has been a rich people’s playground for generations. That’s why I was glad to find the previous clip, which shows the dialect of ordinary people, rather than the rich and famous. All three of the following samples of rich and famous people from East Hampton have quite distinct accents, although they also have certain things in common, in particular their pronunciation of the “aw” or /ô/ vowel (see The Cot-Caught Merger), which is [oə] like New York City. YouTube video (more info) This lady’s ancestors have lived in the East Hampton area since the mid 1600’s, and she grew up there, unlike so many rich kids from the area who were sent off to boarding school. Her accent is fairly close to the “benchmark” Bonacker pronunciation above. One particular difference among the three speakers is that Mary Gardiner pronounces almost all her r’s, David Carmichael drops a few, and Jackie Kennedy is a consistent Systematic R-dropper. They all do it a little, confirming that the original Hamptons pattern is r-dropping. I had thought for a while that “on” rhymed with “Dawn” in this dialect, based on Mary Gardiner, but it doesn’t actually. She (and Stewart Vorpahl) almost seems to rhyme it with “barn”, if the r is dropped, something a few NYC speakers may also do. 3-Mar.-2011 |
465 | David Carmichael, pastry chef | | New York | YouTube video, YouTube video (clip starts at 1:45) 30-Nov.-2009 |
466 | First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy | | New York | YouTube video, YouTube video She definitely has a New York accent, quite distinct from her husband’s Boston accent. She shares some features with the other East Hampton speakers (See my comments above), but at the same time has a “higher class” accent, especially noticeable in her short /ă/ vowel, though she certainly does not have a Mid-Atlantic accent. 3-Mar.-2011 |
467 | Reverend Rob Schenck | | New York | YouTube video7-Aug.-2009 |
468 | Steve Levy, Suffolk County Executive - modern working class?** | | New York | YouTube video (clip 6:05-10:35) (Sent in by Alex Van Boer. Thanks!) 3-Mar.-2011 |
469 | Various residents | | New York | YouTube video The mayor and most of the others on this clip are clearly Inland North and north of (or inside) the bite-bout line. The only speaker who is clearly not is Mort Flexer, near the end, who is clearly Eastern New England. 27-Dec.-2010 |
470 | Dr. Amy Gutmann, University of Pennsylvania President | Monroe | New York | YouTube video23-May-2011 |
471 | Dick Clark, world’s oldest teenager (actually, talk show host, etc.) | Mount Vernon | New York | YouTube video In spite of all his years in show biz, he still retains his native accent to an amazing degree. Not that it’s all that different from General American to start with, but his “aw” or /ô/ vowel (see The Cot-Caught Merger) is frequently a clear [oə]. 23-Apr.-2011 |
472 | Caucasian female, 39, administrative assistant (not clear if born and raised here) | Mount Vernon | New York | IDEA audio (source) |
473 | Don McClean, rock singer | | New York | YouTube video11-Jan.-2010 |
474 | Jimmy Durante, actor & comedian - classic working class ** | New York City | New York | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
475 | Bugs Bunny, cartoon character - classic working class ** (not bad, Mel!)[30] | New York City | New York | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
476 | 9-11 firefighters - modern working class ** | New York City | New York | YouTube video, YouTube video, YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
477 | Bennett Cerf, publisher and personality - classic middle class ** | New York City | New York | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
478 | Humphrey Bogart, actor - classic middle class ** | New York City | New York | YouTube video (Even though Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall both appear in this clip, and are both from NYC, and were even married to each other, he is a whole generation earlier than her, and retains the curl-coil merger, whereas she does not.) 3-Mar.-2011 |
479 | Rocky Graziano, boxer - classic middle class? ** | New York City | New York | YouTube video Based on his background, I would have expected him to be working class, but he doesn’t seem to pronounce any of his th’s as t’s or d’s. 3-Mar.-2011 |
480 | Woody Allen, actor & comedian - modern middle class ** | New York City | New York | YouTube video Certifiably weird! 3-Mar.-2011 |
481 | Lauren Bacall, actress - modern middle class ** | New York City | New York | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
482 | Howard Cosell, sports journalist - modern middle class ** | New York City | New York | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
483 | Regis Philbin, TV personality - modern middle class ** | New York City | New York | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
484 | Don Rickles, actor & comedian - modern middle class ** | New York City | New York | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
485 | Walter Matthau, actor - modern middle class ** | New York City | New York | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
486 | U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt - classic upper class ** | New York City | New York | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
487 | U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt - classic upper class ** | New York City | New York | audio3-Mar.-2011 |
488 | Skip Tollefson, restaurateur - classic middle class! ** | | New York | YouTube video (clip 10:40-17:44) (Sent in by Alex Van Boer. Thanks!) The curl-coil merger is not dead! This guy clearly says /woyth/[ˈwɜɪθ] instead of /wûrth/[ˈwɝθ] for “worth”, and /foyst/[ˈfɜɪst] instead of /fûrst/[ˈfɝst] for “first”, and uses [ɜɪ] instead of [ɝ] in several other words also. Obviously he is from Greater New York City rather than the Hamptons, but I couldn’t find out where! Does anyone happen to know? 3-Mar.-2011 |
489 | Rick Pitino, basketball coach - modern working class ** | Oyster Bay | New York | YouTube video3-Mar.-2011 |
490 | David Smithgall, dairy producer | Perry | New York | YouTube video18-Dec.-2010 |
491 | Jack Foley, poet | Port Chester | New York | YouTube video16-Nov.-2009 |
492 | David Lee, Physicist | Port Chester (Rye) | New York | YouTube video21-July-2009 |
493 | Ed Kritzler, historian | Roslyn Heights | New York | YouTube video (more info) 11-Feb.-2010 |
494 | yoghurtlover16 | Rochester | New York | YouTube video Hilarious: Teaches you how to talk Rochester! (Sent in by Laura Feller. Thanks!) 11-Feb.-2011 |
495 | unnamed, news anchor | Rochester | New York | YouTube video This guy’s accent isn’t quite as pronounced as the preceding (in spite of the crude comment on the YouTube page), but it’s pretty strong for a newscaster! (Sent in by Laura Feller. Thanks!) 11-Feb.-2011 |
496 | Ralph Pagano, TV chef | Staten Island | New York | YouTube video (more info) 30-Nov.-2009 |
497 | Gabby Hayes, actor | Wellsville | New York | YouTube video In spite of being an actor, and in spite of trying to sound like a tough old cowboy, his Inland North accent is still almost unchanged: Backed /ōō/, /ō/ and /ou/ ([u], [oʊ], and [ɑʊ]), “cot”≠“caught”, etc. 24-Aug.-2010 |
498 | Mike Breen, sports commentator | Yonkers | New York | YouTube video21-July-2009 |
499 | Paul Teutul Sr., American Chopper | Yonkers | New York | YouTube video21-July-2009 |
500 | Residents Lizzy Careen, Mary Power, and others | Branch | Newfoundland (& Labrador) | YouTube video (Sent in by Michael Collins. Thanks! He also helped me set the boundaries of Irish Newfoundland.) 19-Apr.-2011 |
501 | Holly Nelson, concerned citizen | Elliston | Newfoundland (& Labrador) | YouTube video (Sent in by Michael Collins. Thanks!) 14-Jan.-2011 |
502 | Anthony, aspiring singer | Placentia | Newfoundland (& Labrador) | YouTube video (Sent in by Michael Collins. Thanks!) 14-Jan.-2011 |
503 | John Crosbie, M.P. | St. John’s | Newfoundland (& Labrador) | video (Replaced bad link.) 14-Jan.-2011 |
504 | Steve Kent, politician | Stephenville | Newfoundland (& Labrador) | YouTube video1-Aug.-2009 |
505 | Roy Williams, basketball coach | Asheville | North Carolina | video |
506 | Harold A., age 46, territorial engineer | Asheville | North Carolina | ANAE info and audio This sample, like the previous one, is clearly Lowland, based on the next-to-last word “like”. However, the ANAE classifies it as Inland Southern, perhaps based on the word “revitalized”, pronounced twice as [ɹiˈvaɾl̩ˈazd]. However, this case is expected to be variable, because, though phonemically it is followed by /t/, which is a voiceless consonant, phonetically the /t/ is realized as [ɾ], which is voiced. 2-Jan.-2012 |
507 | Various residents | Atlantic | North Carolina | YouTube video, YouTube video (throughout the videos) 9-Sep.-2010 |
508 | Del McCroury, bluegrass singer | Bakersville | North Carolina | YouTube video18-Nov.-2011 |
509 | U.S. representative Charles Taylor | Brevard | North Carolina | YouTube video12-June-2010 |
510 | U.S. representative Heath Shuler | Bryson City | North Carolina | YouTube video23-June-2010 |
511 | White male, born 1958, attorney | Burnsville | North Carolina | IDEA audio(source) |
512 | John D. Loudermilk, composer | Durham | North Carolina | YouTube video |
513 | State senator Bob Carpenter | Franklin | North Carolina | YouTube video6-Apr.-2010 |
514 | Erskine Bowles, president UNC system | Greensboro | North Carolina | YouTube video He speaks as expected, except that every case of /th/[θ] becomes /f/[f], and every case of /ŧħ/[ð] becomes /v/[v]. I don’t know if this is an individual idiosyncrasy, or whether it is a local pattern. There is actually a well-established English dialect that has this pattern, Cockney English (London, England). According to contributor Emily Sparkman: «It’s a local pattern, but not limited to the Greensboro/Triad area. I was born and raised in and around Raleigh, NC and did my undergrad in Winston-Salem, fifteen minutes down the road from Greensboro. I’ve heard the substitution everywhere I’ve lived within NC and would guess that it’s prevalent across much of the state, at least among Caucasian, native speakers. It also tends to be somewhat transient, slipping into some words and not others, and comes and goes depending on how quickly the speaker is speaking. «When I’m tired or surrounded by family I slide from /ŧħ/ to /v/ or even an /f/. My mother is from Fayetteville, NC and generally sounds very similar to Mr. Bowles. My father is from Charleston, SC and slips in /ŧħ/→ /v/ substitutions after 39 years of living with my mom. My grandfather is from Wilmington, NC but has spent the last 40 years in Charleston, SC. He never makes this substitution. «‘Without’ slides reeeaaally easily into an /f/. “You goin’ wifout ’im?”
‘With’, rarely becomes /v/ but sometimes becomes /f/. “You goin’ with ’im?” “Is she wiffew?”
‘Twelfth’ commonly becomes ‘twelf’, depending on the context and placement within a sentence. “He’s in twelf grade,” for instance, but not, “I almost won! I came in ... twelfth.”
I’ve never heard ‘father/mother’ as ‘fahfer’ or ‘muvver’, however. Same goes for ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandmother’. Tack a possessive s or a -hood after ‘brother’, though, and the /v/ goes in.» Thanks, Emily. Based on this information, it most likely covers an area in central NC, maybe from Winston-Salem and Raleigh down to Fayetteville, but not so far as Wilmington. 21-July-2012 |
515 | Dale Earnhardt, Sr., NASCAR driver | Kannapolis | North Carolina | YouTube video (clip starts at 1:37) 4-Aug.-2010 |
516 | Richard Petty, NASCAR driver | Level Cross | North Carolina | YouTube video, YouTube video4-Aug.-2010 |
517 | George Younce, southern gospel singer | Lenoir | North Carolina | YouTube videoNew! 8-Feb.-2013 |
518 | Randy Travis, country singer | Marshville | North Carolina | YouTube video The fascinating interplay of dialects continues to amaze me! Randy Travis is clearly Lowland Southern, as this interview shows, as could hardly be otherwise, given where he grew up. However, when he sings, he sometimes clearly adopts an Inland Southern accent, perhaps in an unconscious effort to sound more “country”, given his image as a Neotraditional country singer, as can be heard in this moving rendition of Three Wooden Crosses (replaced bad link). 31-May-2011 |
519 | Andy Griffith, comedian & actor | Mount Airy | North Carolina | YouTube video Throughout his career on the Andy Griffith show and elsewhere, Andy Griffith has demonstrated a consistent Lowland Southern dialect, as shown in this clip, although Mount Airy is right on the border with Inland Southern. However, in some of his earliest comedy clips, before he started his acting career, he mixes some Inland Southern into his speech, probably to sound more “hick”, as can be heard in this clip. (Sent in by Abbey Thomas. Thanks!) However, he is inconsistent, suggesting that his native dialect is indeed Lowland. 14-Apr.-2012 |
520 | Jeff Whisnant /hwĭsnənt/[ˈʍɪsnənt] (not with a /z/ sound!), southern gospel singer | Morganton | North Carolina | YouTube video (more info) Clearly Inland, though with some inconsistencies, which is not surprising, given that he grew up right on the border. 4-Sep.-2010 |
521 | Brooke Aldridge, bluegrass and southern gospel singer | Newland | North Carolina | YouTube video, YouTube video (more info) 21-July-2012 |
522 | Various residents | Okracoke Island | North Carolina | YouTube video, YouTube video (throughout the videos), YouTube video (more info, more info) 9-Sep.-2010 |
523 | White male, born 1926, retired journalist | Oak City | North Carolina | IDEA audio (source) |
524 | (No names or specific towns given, only regions.)[31] | Outer Banks (location uncertain) | North Carolina | ncsu.edu/linguistics/ncllp/dialectquiz.php9-Sep.-2010 |
525 | State senator Fred Smith | Raleigh | North Carolina | YouTube video11-Feb.-2010 |
526 | Richard Jenrette, investment banker | Raleigh | North Carolina | YouTube video11-Feb.-2010 |
527 | Jody Brown & Stephanie Brown, southern gospel singers, ethnic Cherokees | Robbinsville | North Carolina | YouTube video10-Apr.-2010 |
528 | Roy Cooper, North Carolina attorney general | Rocky Mount | North Carolina | YouTube video He only seems to drop an r in one word: “North”, part of the name of his state, which doesn’t quite count. 25-Mar.-2011 |
529 | Junior Johnson, NASCAR driver | Ronda | North Carolina | YouTube video, video & info Very much a borderline accent: a mixture of Lowland and Inland, but probably slightly more Lowland. 4-Aug.-2010 |
530 | White female, born 1930, housewife | Shelby | North Carolina | IDEA audio (source) |
531 | White male, 19 (not clear if born and raised here) | Winston-Salem | North Carolina | IDEA audio (source) |
532 | Greenville Mayor Pat Dunn | Wake County (rural) | North Carolina | YouTube video (clip starts at 5:48) I had made the assumption that she was from Greenville, but this web site says she is from rural Wake County. She clearly drop r’s, and it is unclear whether she has Tidewater Raising: the only test word is “out”, which she only says once, and it goes by rather fast, but it does sound raised. This only messes up my map! It would have been simpler if she were from Greenville! Instead, I will treat her as an older speaker retaining older features. 25-Mar.-2011 |
533 | Stephanie Glance, basketball coach | Waynesville | North Carolina | YouTube video16-Mar.-2010 |
534 | Charlie Daniels, country singer (sort of) | Wilmington | North Carolina | YouTube video (Replaced clip.) His first hilarious hit, back when he was a long-hair. He has changed a lot, as this clip shows: YouTube video7-Apr.-2011 |
535 | Herb Key, Appalachian singer | Wilkesboro? | North Carolina | YouTube video3-Apr.-2010 |
536 | David Brinkley, newscaster | Wilmington | North Carolina | YouTube video6-Feb.-2010 |
537 | Governor John Hoeven[32] | Ashley | North Dakota | YouTube video (more info) |
538 | Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer | Bismarck | North Dakota | audio & info |
539 | CariDee English, fashion model | Fargo | North Dakota | YouTube video |
540 | Josh Duhamel, actor | Minot /mīnŏt/[ˈmaɪˌnat] | North Dakota | YouTube video7-Nov.-2009 |
541 | U.S. senator Byron Dorgan | Regent | North Dakota | YouTube video7-Nov.-2009 |
542 | Paige Palmer, TV fitness expert | Akron | Ohio | YouTube video4-Nov.-2009 |
543 | Connie Schultz, columnist | Ashtabula | Ohio | YouTube video27-Dec.-2010 |
544 | Urban Meyer, college football coach | Ashtabula | Ohio | YouTube video27-Dec.-2010 |
545 | Maya Lin, designer | Athens | Ohio | YouTube video |
546 | Sam Hornish, Jr., NASCAR driver | Bryan | Ohio | YouTube video16-Feb.-2010 |
547 | John Glenn, astronaut, U.S. senator | Cambridge | Ohio | YouTube video |
548 | U.S. representative Steve Chabot | Cincinnati | Ohio | YouTube video |
549 | House Republican Leader John Boehner | Cincinnati | Ohio | YouTube video |
550 | U.S. representative Dennis Kucinich, former mayor | Cleveland | Ohio | YouTube video |
551 | Ohio House Speaker Armond Budish | Cleveland | Ohio | YouTube video6-Dec.-2010 |
552 | Ray Stevens, “pro” wrestler | Columbus | Ohio | YouTube video6-Dec.-2010 |
553 | Dwight Yoakam, country singer | Columbus | Ohio | YouTube video27-Dec.-2010 |
554 | Martin Sheen, actor | Dayton | Ohio | YouTube video1-Mar.-2010 |
555 | Robert Pollard, indie rock singer | Dayton | Ohio | YouTube video21-Dec.-2010 |
556 | U.S. representative Zack Space | Dover | Ohio | YouTube video22-Aug.-2009 |
557 | Johnny Paycheck, country singer | Greenfield | Ohio | YouTube video11-Jan.-2011 |
558 | Bobby Bare, country singer | Ironton | Ohio | YouTube video (more info, more info) He also speaks some on these clips: YouTube video, YouTube video. Adj. 27-Apr.-2013 |
559 | Phyllis Diller, comedian | Lima /līmə/[ˈlaɪmə] | Ohio | YouTube video24-Jan.-2011 |
560 | Susan Smeersol (spelling?), bookstore owner | Greenville | Ohio | YouTube video She is a native, as she says, and clearly “pin”≠“pen”, so in spite of my early idea that Cincinnati and Dayton formed an island surrounded by “pin”=“pen” areas, in fact there is a corridor uniting them to the “pin”≠“pen” area! 11-July-2011 |
561 | State representative Jay Goyal | Mansfield (Lexington) | Ohio | YouTube video6-Dec.-2010 |
562 | Ricky Stanzi, college football player | Mentor | Ohio | YouTube video27-Dec.-2010 |
563 | Don Shula, pro football coach | Painesville | Ohio | YouTube video27-Dec.-2010 |
564 | Roy Rogers, singer & actor | Portsmouth | Ohio | YouTube video, YouTube video27-Mar.-2010 |
565 | Dean Martin, actor | Steubenville | Ohio | YouTube video26-Oct.-2009 |
566 | Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director | Toledo | Ohio | YouTube video24-Oct.-2009 |
567 | U.S. representative Jim Jordan | Urbana | Ohio | YouTube video12-Nov.-2010 |
568 | State representative Bob Peterson | Washington Court House | Ohio | YouTube video (more info) 6-Dec.-2010 |
569 | Mike DeWine, politician | Yellow Springs | Ohio | YouTube video1-Mar.-2010 |
570 | Bob Stooks, University of Oklahoma football coach | Youngstown | Ohio | YouTube video12-Dec.-2011 |
571 | Bo Pelini, University of Nebraska football coach | Youngstown | Ohio | YouTube video12-Dec.-2011 |
572 | Various residents | Ada | Oklahoma | YouTube video All speakers except the narrator speak Inland Southern. Nancy Duncan has a few long /ī/ vowels with diphthong [aɪ], but she is mostly consistently Inland. Adj. 27-Apr.-2013 |
573 | Johnny Bench, baseball player | Binger /bǐnggər/[ˈbɪŋɡɚ] | Oklahoma | YouTube video |
574 | Stephen Vaughan, loan officer and rancher | Boise City | Oklahoma | YouTube video (His clip starts at 1:33.) He is the speaker wearing the red plaid shirt. Of all the speakers on this video, he is the only one with a clear Inland Southern accent, that is, all of his long /ī/ vowels are pronounced [a]. According to a picture on this website, his name is Stephen Vaughan, though the caption is a bit confusing as to who is who. However, a picture on this website seems to confirm his identity. This website says that he is a rancher as well as a farm loan officer , suggesting that he is a local. Local farmer and Farm Bureau president Larry Crews evidently also speaks Inland Southern based on his long /ī/ vowels, but no examples of long /ī/ vowels before voiceless consonants occur to make it absolutely certain. The other speakers show many of the secondary features of Inland Southern, but their long /ī/ vowels are diphthongs [aɪ]. 6-Oct.-2011 |
575 | Robert Conley, author | Cushing | Oklahoma | YouTube video18-Oct.-2010 |
576 | Owen K. Garriott, astronaut | Enid | Oklahoma | YouTube video |
577 | Captain Charles Scheffel, World War II veteran | Enid | Oklahoma | YouTube video11-Jan.-2011 |
578 | Roger Miller, country singer | Erick | Oklahoma | YouTube video12-Aug.-2010 |
579 | Darrell Royal, football coach | Hollis | Oklahoma | YouTube video |
580 | General Kenneth M. Taylor | Hominy | Oklahoma | msn video |
581 | Kurt Stevenson, school board candidate | Idabel | Oklahoma | YouTube video29-Mar.-2010 |
582 | Bernice (and Leroy) Krittenbrink and fire chief Randy Poindexter[33] | Kingfisher | Oklahoma | MSNBC video (more info) |
583 | Reba McEntire, country singer | McAlester | Oklahoma | YouTube video |
584 | Keith Anderson, country singer | Miami /mīămə/[ˌmaɪˈæmə] | Oklahoma | YouTube video18-Oct.-2010 |
585 | LeRoy Jones, cowboy poet | Mountain View | Oklahoma | National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum interview (more info) (Source suggested by archivist Laura Anne Heller. Thanks!) As might be expected by someone who is right on the border, he has many of the secondary features of Inland Southern, but his long /ī/s are almost all [aɪ]. Johnny Bench above is similar. 22-Apr.-2011 |
586 | James Garner, actor | Norman | Oklahoma | YouTube video |
587 | Vince Gill, country singer | Norman | Oklahoma | YouTube video22-Aug.-2009 |
588 | Woody Guthrie, folk singer | | Oklahoma | YouTube video30-Mar.-2010 |
589 | Bobby Murcer, baseball player | Oklahoma City | Oklahoma | YouTube video |
590 | Garth Brooks, country singer | Oklahoma City (Yukon) | Oklahoma | YouTube video11-July-2009 |
591 | Mel McDaniel, country singer | Okmulgee | Oklahoma | YouTube video He talks consistent Inland Southern, and usually sings Inland: YouTube video, but sometimes he sings Lowland: as when he is singing as someone from Louisiana: YouTube video as heard in “light” and “night”, which of course is quite appropriate; even so, he slips up once, on “rifle”, showing that he really is Inland! 12-July-2011 |
592 | Ricky Manning, homeowner | Pauls Valley | Oklahoma | YouTube video |
593 | Mark Whitehead, singer | Purcell | Oklahoma | YouTube video According to this song, which he wrote, he spent all of his youth in Purcell, and he sings the song with a clear Inland Southern accent. However, his web site says he was born in Norman, and Purcell is not mentioned. I have not found an interview. So, if anyone can clarify the situation one way or the other, please do so. 23-May-2011 |
594 | Matt Holliday, pro baseball player | Stillwater | Oklahoma | YouTube video11-July-2009 |
595 | U.S. representative John Sullivan | Tulsa | Oklahoma | sullivan.house.gov (click VIDEOS, then Select) 1-Mar.-2010 |
596 | Caucasian Male, 34, Fire Chief (clearly Inland South, but not clear if born and raised here) | Wyandotte | Oklahoma | IDEA audio(source) |
597 | Peter Short, United Church moderator | Arnprior | Ontario | YouTube video31-July-2009 |
598 | Dan Quinn, pro hockey player | Brockville | Ontario | YouTube video (more info) 31-July-2009 |
599 | Duncan Keith, pro hockey player | Fort Frances | Ontario | YouTube video Even with 7 teeth missing, this clip is quite clear. This one is longer, but doesn’t really have more of him speaking: YouTube video. 29-Dec.-2010 |
600 | Rochelle Mazar, contributor | Guelph /gwĕlf/[ˈɡwɛlf] | Ontario | YouTube video (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) 4-Apr.-2011 |
601 | Jason Law, contributor | Inwood | Ontario | YouTube video (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) 30-Mar.-2011 |
602 | Lubomyr Luciuk, college professor | Kingston | Ontario | YouTube video31-July-2009 |
603 | Mike Fletcher, diver | Port Dover | Ontario | YouTube video21-Dec.-2010 |
604 | Tanya Kim, TV personality | Sault Ste. Marie | Ontario | YouTube video6-Feb.-2010 |
605 | Joe Bowen, sportscaster | Sudbury | Ontario | YouTube video |
606 | Michael Barry, pro cyclist | Toronto | Ontario | YouTube video20-Feb.-2010 |
607 | Nora Young, CBC Radio host | Toronto (Don Mills) | Ontario | YouTube video Nora made this video after she interviewed me on CBC radio in March of 2011. Thanks! I hope many others will do the same. (See Record Your Own Voice for more info or to hear the interview.) 26-Mar.-2011 |
608 | Ken Boshcoff, politician | Thunder Bay | Ontario | YouTube video30-Jan.-2010 |
609 | Mike Eaves, Hockey Coach | Windsor | Ontario | YouTube video4-Nov.-2009 |
610 | Killer Kowalski, “pro” wrestler | Windsor | Ontario | YouTube video Warning: graphic description of gore! Don’t listen too long! 4-Nov.-2009 |
611 | Ross Coleman, pro bull rider | Molalla/məlǒlə/[məˈlɑlə] | Oregon | YouTube video This is actually not a good sample for this area, which is why I have colored it pink. He sometimes seems to be trying to imitate a Texas accent, which seems to be in vogue on the rodeo circuit. In particular, he seems to have fronted his long/ō/[oʊ] vowel more than is normal for his area. Contributor Andrea Niemiec wrote to confirm this: ‹‹I listened to the Mollala, OR audio sample with a great deal of interest, as I grew up about 15 miles away in Silverton, OR, where I lived until the age of 18. I believe that he is attempting to sound “country” a great deal more than most people do; certainly there is slight accent from certain older generations who have grown up in rural Oregon, but he sounded like an “out-of-towner” to me, and I would agree with you in ascribing it to his profession.›› Contributor Meagan Ford also confirms that he is not a good sample. 17-May-2012 |
612 | Phil Knight, Nike co-founder | Portland | Oregon | YouTube video Oops! I had him listed as being from Eugene, not Portland. Don’t know how I did that: Wikipedia is very clear about it. Contributor Gilbert Kennen pointed out my error. Thanks! And as I listen to his long /ō/[oʊ] vowels, I realize that they are Portland, not Eugene. 5-Mar.-2011 |
613 | U.S. representative Earl Blumenauer | Portland | Oregon | YouTube video25-Nov.-2010 |
614 | David Griggs, astronaut | Portland | Oregon | YouTube video (His clips are at 12:25-16:30 and 17:25-17:55) 14-Apr.-2012 |
615 | Roy Afflerbach, former state senator and mayor | Allentown | Pennsylvania | YouTube video28-Oct.-2011 |
616 | Charles Bronson, actor | Ehrenfeld | Pennsylvania | YouTube video5-May-2009 |
617 | Fred Biletnikoff, pro football player | Erie | Pennsylvania | YouTube video4-Nov.-2009 |
618 | State representative Glen Grell | Harrisburg | Pennsylvania | YouTube video There’s nothing quite so boring as parliamentary procedure! 4-June-2009 |
619 | Rick Gray, mayor of Lancaster, PA | Harrisburg | Pennsylvania | YouTube video28-Nov.-2011 |
620 | Jimmy Stewart, actor | Indiana | Pennsylvania | YouTube video26-Nov.-2009 |
621 | Fred Rogers, host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood | Latrobe | Pennsylvania | YouTube video5-May-2009 |
622 | Arnold Palmer, pro golfer | Latrobe | Pennsylvania | YouTube video5-May-2009 |
623 | Joe Montana, pro football player | Monongahela | Pennsylvania | YouTube videoNew! 26-Jan.-2013 |
624 | Judge John E. Jones | Orwigsburg | Pennsylvania | Google video |
625 | City Councilman Frank Rizzo, Jr. | Philadelphia | Pennsylvania | Compare “bad” in this YouTube video with “dad” and “had” in this YouTube video to hear the two distinct vowels. 4-June-2009 |
626 | U.S. representative Michael Doyle | Pittsburgh | Pennsylvania | YouTube video7-May-2009 |
627 | Dennis Miller, comedian & commentator | Pittsburgh | Pennsylvania | YouTube video (Replaced bad link again!) Interviewing Jesse Ventura: talk about two extremely distinct accents! And points of view! (Original link suggested by Y.I. Thanks!) 24-Jan.-2011 |
628 | Johnny Angel & the Halos, singing group | Pittsburgh | Pennsylvania | Santa Claus is comin’ Dahntahn This is great! It’s a dialect enthusiast’s dream! They take the familiar song, and change the words just enough to really maximize the occurrence of their unique pronunciation of the /ou/[a] vowel! Not to mention various unique terms. And they even have good harmony! (See the next entry for some help on the words.) (more info) 24-Jan.-2011 |
629 | DoubleShot!, singing group | Pittsburgh | Pennsylvania | Santa Claus is goin’ Dahntahn Very similar to the preceding, but shows the words, which is a big help in a few places! On the other hand, their Pittsburg accent sounds to me to be just the tiniest bit less pristine than the preceding. (more info) (Sent in by Ted Ying. Thanks!) 24-Jan.-2011 |
630 | The Yinzers, singing group | Pittsburgh | Pennsylvania | YouTube video Just as fun as the preceding two! 24-Jan.-2011 |
631 | Richard “Punchy” Kozlowski[35] | Reading /rĕdĭng/[ˈɹɛdɪŋ] | Pennsylvania | YouTube video15-Nov.-2011 |
632 | Mike Mussina, pro baseball pitcher | Williamsport | Pennsylvania | YouTube video |
633 | Jonathan Mann, Journalist | Montreal | Quebec | video24-June-2010 |
634 | Dan Laxer, Journalist | Montreal | Quebec | YouTube video24-June-2010 |
635 | U.S. senator John Chafee | Providence | Rhode Island | YouTube video |
636 | Police officer | Providence | Rhode Island | YouTube video31-Mar.-2010 |
637 | David “onemon22” | Regina /rəjīnə/[ɹəˈdʒaɪnə] | Saskatchewan | YouTube video Yes, I know the clip is about Wilmington, Delaware, but the speaker is from Regina! 26-Mar.-2011 |
638 | U.S. senator Lindsey Graham | Central | South Carolina | YouTube video Lowland Southern speaker from an apparently Inland Southern area. See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. 2-Jan.-2012 |
639 | Fritz Hollings, U.S. senator, governor | Charleston | South Carolina | YouTube video |
640 | Katon Dawson, politician | Columbia | South Carolina | YouTube video |
641 | David Beasley, former governor | Darlington | South Carolina | YouTube video |
642 | U.S. senator Strom Thurmond | Edgefield | South Carolina | YouTube video (Older speaker retaining Lowland Southern and r-dropping, although many younger ones may have lost it!) One feature that he has, which most Classical Southern speakers no longer have, is his special pronunciation of the vowel in “hurt”, “turning”, and “concerning” as [ɜɪ], much like New York City, rather than the now more common [ɝ]: unlike New York City, this vowel [ɜɪ] is quite distinct from the /oi/ vowel in words like “coin”. Contributor Jason Reid provides further info: “According to the linguist John Wells in his book Accents of English (1982), this pronunciation was at one time common. Erik R. Thomas in his very detailed phonetic description of Southern speech in A Handbook of Varieties of English (2004) says this pronunciation was at one time very widespread, but very few speakers born after 1930 show it (Strom Thurmond was born in 1902).” The latter writer’s indicated range seem to cover all of my Lowland Southern area except North Carolina and Virginia (and Florida, though I have personally heard it there also, from African American speakers, many of whom retain it to the present day). This same pronunciation can also be heard in most of the New Orleans samples, and is still heard today. However, I visited with a number of older white speakers in Augusta, Georgia, in the spring of 2012, and though they all had consistent Classical Southern accents, none of them showed any sign of the [ɜɪ] pronunciation. However, the [ɜɪ] pronunciation is not dead in this area: in November of 2012 I met an older gentleman from Sumter, South Carolina, who spoke Classical Southern and used the [ɜɪ] pronunciation in a number of words. 28-Nov.-2012 |
643 | U.S. senator Jim DeMint | Greenville | South Carolina | YouTube video Lowland Southern speaker from an apparently Inland Southern area. See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. 2-Jan.-2012 |
644 | Sofia B., age 33, bank teller | Greenville | South Carolina | ANAE info and audio Clearly Inland, based on the word “invite”. 14-Feb.-2012 |
645 | Kristen B., age 41, bank teller | Greenville | South Carolina | ANAE info and audio Clearly Inland, based on the word “like”. 14-Feb.-2012 |
646 | Susan Smith, murderer | Union | South Carolina | YouTube video (Her clip is 1:48-2:30.) 12-July-2011 |
647 | U.S. senator Tom Daschle | Aberdeen | South Dakota | YouTube video |
648 | 67-year-old White man with some schooling | Ludlow | South Dakota | audio and info |
649 | Bob Barker, game show host | Mission | South Dakota | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Dawn”! 27-Mar.-2010 |
650 | U.S. senator George McGovern | Mitchell | South Dakota | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Don”. 19-Mar.-2010 |
651 | Nancy Tystad Koupal, historian | Mitchell | South Dakota | audio (more info, more info) “On” rhymes with “Dawn”! Does not match the other people from Mitchell. Was she really raised in Mitchell?24-Mar.-2010 |
652 | Mike Miller, pro basketball player | Mitchell | South Dakota | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Don”. 27-Mar.-2010 |
653 | Governor Mike Rounds | Pierre /pîr/[ˈpʰɪɹ] | South Dakota | YouTube video“cot”≠“caught”, but the difference is minimal, so much so that I at first missed it, and had him in the wrong region! This is not unusual for the Western North. |
654 | Mark Ellis, pro baseball player | Rapid City | South Dakota | YouTube video, YouTube video (His clip starts at 1:30.) These clips are short, but he clearly speaks differently from Becky Hammond, and instead speaks a bit more the way the ANAE says someone from Rapid City should speak! However, he clearly has more backed long/ō/[oʊ] vowels, unlike what the ANAE says, which straightens out the yellow long o frontingline of dots, which I had twisting around Rapid City! New! 12-Mar.-2013 |
655 | Becky Hammond, basketball player | Rapid City | South Dakota | YouTube video She evidently does not represent Rapid City well, having apparently lived too long in Texas! Adj. 12-Mar.-2013 |
656 | Tillie Black Bear, Lakota women’s advocate | St. Francis | South Dakota | YouTube video“On” rhymes with “Don”. 27-Mar.-2010 |
657 | Joe Foss, World War II flying ace | Sioux Falls | South Dakota | YouTube video |
658 | U.S. senator Tim Johnson | Vermillion | South Dakota | YouTube video19-Mar.-2010 |
659 | Lee Raymond, Exxon | Watertown | South Dakota | YouTube video |
660 | James Abourezk, former U.S. representative and U.S. senator | Woods | South Dakota | YouTube video An interesting character. And he clearly has “on” rhyming with “Dawn”, which makes the “on” line even twistier than before! New! 12-Mar.-2013 |
661 | Archie Campbell, comedian | Bulls Gap | Tennessee | YouTube video1-Jan.-2010 |
662 | Troy Odle | Camden | Tennessee | YouTube video |
663 | Peg McKamey Bean, southern gospel singer | Clinton | Tennessee | YouTube video, YouTube video (Replaced bad link.) These are two different renditions of the same song, separated by decades. But her accent never changes, and is one of the best examples of Inland Southern I have heard! (The song’s message is right on also, and she sure feels it as she sings it!) 21-July-2012 |
664 | Sterling Marlin, NASCAR driver | Columbia | Tennessee | YouTube video, YouTube video, YouTube video (His clip starts at 3:22; sent in by Karl Gerlach. Thanks!), YouTube video (His clip starts at 1:22.) In the first two clips he sounds thoroughly Inland, but in the last two he sounds more Lowland, but mixed with Inland. Actually, in the last one, from 1:59 to 2:05 he says “Coors Lite” with what sounds like [aɪ], though it is awfully fast, “twice” with a clear [aɪ], and “tonight” with a clear monophthong [a]. I would have to say he is Inland, but very borderline, and I have tried to draw the border to somewhat represent this! (One could also surmise that he might have changed over the decades, but the remainder of his accent is absolutely pristine, so I doubt it!) Adj. 12-Mar.-2013 |
665 | Mack Brown, football coach | Cookeville | Tennessee | YouTube video10-Mar.-2010 |
666 | Amanda Garrett, vlogger | Cookeville | Tennessee | YouTube video (Sent in by her mother Tracy. Thanks!) Almost fully consistent Lowland Southern as far as her long /ī/[a(ɪ)] vowels and in other ways. The dialect is not dying out, even among young people! 5-Mar.-2011 |
667 | Rodney Atkins, country singer | Cumberland Gap | Tennessee | YouTube video, YouTube video5-July-2010 |
668 | State senator Doug Jackson | Dickson | Tennessee | YouTube video The stuff politicians find to quibble about! 10-Mar.-2010 |
669 | Dave’s mom | Dover | Tennessee | YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 16-Feb.-2010 |
670 | Dave’s dad | Dover | Tennessee | YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 16-Feb.-2010 |
671 | Committee members | Dunlap | Tennessee | YouTube video The lady who does most of the talking is clearly Inland, as is the man who speaks briefly towards the end. (The man who talks the most sounds like a transplanted northerner.) 1-Nov.-2011 |
672 | Politically active resident | Dunlap | Tennessee | YouTube video Not to detract in any way from the concerns of the main speaker, mainly teenage drinking, and who seems to have researched his subject, I find it delightful that his kids (presumably) are playing “punch bug” in the background. Clearly Inland. 1-Nov.-2011 |
673 | The Boyd Brothers, local country singers | Dunlap | Tennessee | YouTube video Clearly Inland. 1-Nov.-2011 |
674 | Diana Walker, southern gospel singer | Knoxville | Tennessee | audio & info (Scroll down to her testimony to listen.) Very consistent and clear Inland, but very occasionally does a long /ī/[a] vowel with a diphthong [aɪ], for no obvious reason! (more info) 11-July-2011 |
675 | Rafael Eledge, Civil War relic expert | Lawrenceburg | Tennessee | PBS video (more info, more info) This is a wonderful sample: Rafael is such a confident professional, and his accent is such perfect Inland Southern. 1-May-2012 |
676 | Fred Thompson, politician, actor, etc. | Lawrenceburg | Tennessee | YouTube video (more info) Since we have such a clear sample in the previous one from Rafael Eledge, it is almost pointless to include this one. His pronunciation here is mostly Lowland, which might be explained by the fact that he has worked extensively as an actor, and could presumably adjust his speech accordingly. However, I decided to include it anyway, because in spite of all this he does pronounce a few words with a clear Inland pronunciation, notable the word “iceberg”, suggesting that his native dialect is Inland. 1-May-2012 |
677 | Storekeepers: Cathy Bell, Robbie Treadwell | Linden | Tennessee | YouTube video These 2 are clearly Inland. 12-June-2010 |
678 | Dwight Hines, businessman | Lobelville | Tennessee | YouTube video All but the first one are clearly Southern, but only this speaker happens to use any diagnostic words for Inland: his name being one of them! (The first speaker sounds like a transplant from up North.) 12-June-2010 |
679 | Mayor Randy Brundige | Martin | Tennessee | Google video (video no longer public) (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) Adj. 15-Jan.-2013 |
680 | John Wilder, speaker, TN senate | Mason | Tennessee | Older r-dropper: YouTube video (Speaks Classical Southern, dropping his r’s, something only heard occasionally from much older speakers in this area.) 10-Mar.-2010 |
681 | Roy Acuff, “king of country music” | Maynardville | Tennessee | YouTube video Beautiful combination of Anglo-Celtic melody (more info) with traditional mountain dialect. YouTube video, YouTube video Anybody like railroad songs? These are two of the best! 3-Mar.-2011 |
682 | Carl Smith, country singer | Maynardville | Tennessee | YouTube video10-May-2011 |
683 | Buddy Coppock, southern gospel singer | Maynardville | Tennessee | audio & info (Scroll down to his testimony to listen.) Very consistent and clear Inland, but very occasionally does a long /ī/[a] vowel with a diphthong [aɪ], for no obvious reason! (more info) 11-July-2011 |
684 | Various, presumably residents | McMinnville | Tennessee | YouTube video (All speakers are Lowland.) 10-Mar.-2010 |
685 | Dottie West, country singer | McMinnville | Tennessee | YouTube video (Clearly Lowland as well!) 23-Feb.-2011 |
686 | Grady Ward Partin, storyteller | Monteagle | Tennessee | YouTube video (Sent in by Eva Griffin. Thanks!) Contributor Eva Griffin suggested that the Grundy County dialects are mountain dialects, i.e. Inland Southern, and she was quite right. Grundy County is up on the Cumberland Plateau, all of which is solidly Inland Southern. (See comments about the Cumberland Plateau in the Inland and Lowland Southern section.) New! 16-Mar.-2013 |
687 | Don Hill, storyteller | Beersheba Springs /bûrshəbə sprēngz/[ˈbɝʃəbə ˈspɹɪiŋz] | Tennessee | videos & info: click on Big Don “Tells It Like It Was”. (Sent in by Eva Griffin. Thanks! There is lots more great information on the Grundy County history page.) New! 16-Mar.-2013 |
688 | Paula Flowers, politician | Monterey | Tennessee | YouTube video10-Mar.-2010 |
689 | U.S. Congressman Bart Gordon | Murfreesboro | Tennessee | YouTube video10-Mar.-2010 |
690 | Caucasian male, born 1990 | Nashville | Tennessee | IDEA audio(source) |
691 | John Seigenthaler, journalist | Nashville | Tennessee | YouTube video (Speaks Classical Southern, dropping many of his droppable r’s, something only heard occasionally from much older speakers in this area.) New! 26-Jan.-2013 |
692 | Ronnie McDowell, pop singer | Portland | Tennessee | YouTube video (more info) 2-Dec.-2009 |
693 | Darryl Worley /wûrlē/[ˈwɝli], country singer | Pyburn | Tennessee | YouTube video4-Sep.-2010 |
694 | Bryan Simmons, southern gospel singer | Quebeck | Tennessee | Click here, then click on the second “Play Demo” link. (more info, more info) 31-July-2012 |
695 | Caucasian male, born 1943 | Ridgetop | Tennessee | IDEA audio(source) |
696 | Skylar McBee, college basketball player | Rutledge | Tennessee | YouTube video (Sent in by Jay Brantner. Thanks!) 18-Nov.-2011 |
697 | Josh Franks, Southern gospel singer | Savannah | Tennessee | YouTube video (more info) 23-June-2010 |
698 | Randy Parton, Dolly’s brother | Sevierville | Tennessee | YouTube video Dolly has modified her speech, but Randy still speaks pure Inland Southern! 30-Jan.-2010 |
699 | U.S. Congressman Jim Cooper | Shelbyville | Tennessee | YouTube video10-Mar.-2010 |
700 | Jimmy Martin, bluegrass singer | Sneedville | Tennessee | YouTube video, YouTube videoNew! 25-Apr.-2013 |
701 | Billy Blakely, fishing guide | Tiptonville | Tennessee | YouTube video26-Nov.-2009 |
702 | Carl Perkins, rockabilly singer | Tiptonville | Tennessee | YouTube video28-Mar.-2012 |
703 | Herbert and Marie Adams, “Herbie Town” | Trenton /trǐntən/[ˈtʰɹɪɾ̃ən] | Tennessee | Google video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 4-Sep.-2010 |
704 | Ron Pace, financier | Waverley | Tennessee | MSNBC video20-Feb.-2010 |
705 | Phillip Fulmer, football coach | Winchester | Tennessee | YouTube video10-Mar.-2010 |
706 | Caucasian male, born 1940, hair stylist | Amarillo | Texas | IDEA audio(source) |
707 | Jeannie C. Riley, country singer, later southern gospel singer | Anson | Texas | YouTube video This is the song that made her famous (and a bit notorious), but later she preferred to be known for her gospel music. 21-July-2012 |
708 | U.S. representative Lloyd Doggett | Austin | Texas | YouTube video9-May-2009 |
709 | Colby Yates, bull rider & country singer | Azle | Texas | YouTube video (more info) Clearly has an Inland Southern accent, more representative of the Dallas-Fort Worth area than that of Kenny Marchant of Carrollton below. 6-Sep.-2011 |
710 | Mark Chesnutt, country singer | Beaumont | Texas | YouTube video Has a clear Lowland South accent, but a few words sound Inland. I don’t have a good explanation for this, since Beaumont is far from the Inland Southern area. 12-Dec.-2011 |
711 | Debra Medina, politician | Beeville | Texas | YouTube video28-Apr.-2010 |
712 | U.S. representative Mac Thornberry | Clarendon | Texas | YouTube video30-Dec.-2011 |
713 | Terry Labonte, NASCAR driver | Corpus Christi | Texas | YouTube video Very thorough Lowland Southern, though occasional diphthongs in voiced situations, especially before /n/, which is not unusual. This and the next clip demonstrate that the ANAE was mistaken, and that Corpus Christi is not actually a distinct dialect. (I have now moved the Jim “Reverend Horton” Heath clip to the Rejected Data section below.) 23-Nov.-2012 |
714 | Bobby Labonte, NASCAR driver | Corpus Christi | Texas | YouTube video Very much like his brother, can’t decide whether the word “time” has a diphthong or not. 23-Nov.-2012 |
715 | U.S. representative Kenny Marchant | Carrollton | Texas | YouTube video (clip at 5:35) The Dallas-Fort Worth area is one of the few areas where there seems to be a mixture of Inland Southern and Lowland Southern based perhaps on class distinctions, though the bedrock dialect seems to be Inland. Kenny Marchant in this clip speaks mostly Lowland, with occasional lapses into Inland. However, the two speakers before him, apparently also locals, speak only Inland. See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. 12-Dec.-2011 |
716 | Valerie M., age 47, food service worker | Dallas | Texas | ANAE info and audio (Replaced bad link.) Clearly Inland South! 31-Dec.-2011 |
717 | Heather Cranford-Nied, sports commentator, etc. | Dallas (Duncanville) | Texas | YouTube video (Her clip starts at 1:30) more info) Clearly speaks Inland Southern! 12-Dec.-2011 |
718 | Ross Perot, Jr., businessman | Dallas | Texas | YouTube video Perot clearly comes from a wealthy family and attended a private school, which may explain why he shows no sign of Inland Southern, but only Lowland Southern. See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. 12-Dec.-2011 |
719 | Kent Hance, Texas Tech Chancellor | Dimmitt | Texas | YouTube video20-Jan.-2010 |
720 | State senator Eliot Shapleigh | El Paso | Texas | YouTube video[36]24-Feb.-2011 |
721 | Ronn Lucas, ventriloquist | El Paso | Texas | YouTube video24-Feb.-2011 |
722 | Governor John Connally | Floresville | Texas | YouTube video, YouTube video (Second one sent in by Karl Gerlach. Thanks!) 8-Nov.-2012 |
723 | Clayton Williams, oil man | Fort Stockton | Texas | YouTube video12-Jan.-2010 |
724 | Dr. Adam Boyd, M.D. | Franklin | Texas | audio & info9-May-2009 |
725 | Ron White, comedian | Fritch | Texas | YouTube video Not as objectionable as some of his stuff, unless you love dogs or parents. (Sent in by Y.I. Thanks!) 1-July-2010 |
726 | Harry Kreisler, host of “Conversations with History” | Galveston | Texas | YouTube video (Hardly Southern at all. See Galveston Movement.) 1-July-2009 |
727 | Joe Don Baker, actor | Groesbeck | Texas | YouTube video9-May-2009 |
728 | Bob Moorhouse, photographer and rancher | Guthrie | Texas | National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum interview (Source suggested by archivist Laura Anne Heller. Thanks!) (more info) 23-Apr.-2011 |
729 | Mary Kay Ash, entrepreneur | Houston /hyōōstən/[ˈhjustən] | Texas | YouTube video Yes, I know, she’s an older speaker, now deceased, but there still must be some real southerners in Houston, right? Yes, there are: see the following! 23-May-2011 |
730 | Joel Osteen /ōstēn/[ˈoʊˌstin], “prosperity gospel” preacher | Houston | Texas | YouTube video (Replaced dead link.) Finally, a living Houstonian who actually speaks Southern! (See also John MacArthur) 16-Jan.-2012 |
731 | White female, born 1981, college student | Huntsville | Texas | IDEA audio(source) |
732 | Vernon Dalhart, very early country singer | Jefferson | Texas | YouTube video (Not the kids’ version of Big Rock Candy Mountain! Very similar to the version in O Brother Where Art Thou?.) Lowland Southern with hints of Classical , but generally not Classical. 31-July-2012 |
733 | Bill Burns, fiddle player | Lipan /līpăn/[ˌlaˌpʰæn] | Texas | YouTube video (Sent in by Karl Gerlach. Thanks!) 8-Nov.-2012 |
734 | Ed Gerlach, big band legend | Livingston | Texas | YouTube video (Sent in by Karl Gerlach. Thanks!) 8-Nov.-2012 |
735 | Terry Allen, “outlaw” country singer | Lubbock | Texas | YouTube video Occasionally his long /ī/ vowels are [aɪ], but the vast majority are clearly Inland Southern [a], before both voiced and voiceless sounds. 3-Mar.-2011 |
736 | Don Bowman, “outlaw” country singer | Lubbock | Texas | YouTube video This is the infamous “Wildwood Weed” song, in its original incarnation. (more info) 3-Mar.-2011 |
737 | Caucasian male, born 1938 | Mart | Texas | IDEA audio(source) |
738 | General Tommy Franks | Midland | Texas | YouTube video |
739 | Larry Gatlin, country singer | Odessa[37] | Texas | YouTube video, YouTube video (Second one sent in by Karl Gerlach. Thanks!) 8-Nov.-2012 |
740 | Leslie Satcher, country singer | Paris | Texas | YouTube video27-Mar.-2010 |
741 | Gene Stallings, college football coach | Paris | Texas | YouTube video9-Mar.-2012 |
742 | George Strait, country singer | Pearsall | Texas | YouTube video |
743 | Ray Price, country singer | Perryville | Texas | YouTube video24-Mar.-2010 |
744 | U.S. representative Louie Gohmert | Pittsburg | Texas | YouTube video, YouTube video (Second one sent in by Karl Gerlach. Thanks!) (There is no “h” in “Pittsburg”, as pointed out by David Lawrence. Thanks!) 8-Nov.-2012 |
745 | Dickie Greenwood, President of Disability Resources, Inc. | Rochester | Texas | YouTube video (Sent in by Karl Gerlach. Thanks!) This speaker starts out trying not to sound as Southern, but as he goes along his speech settles into solid Inland Southern, except once right at the end. 8-Nov.-2012 |
746 | Fess Parker, actor | San Angelo | Texas | YouTube video31-Aug.-2009 |
747 | George Jones, country singer | Saratoga | Texas | YouTube video23-Feb.-2010 |
748 | Johnny Horton, country singer | Rusk | Texas | YouTube video (Replaced bad link.) 15-Dec.-2010 |
749 | Caucasian female, born 1924 | San Marcos | Texas | IDEA audio (source) |
750 | Caucasian male, born 1950(?) | Sanderson | Texas | IDEA audio (source) |
751 | Lieutenant Governor Bill Ratliff | Sonora | Texas | YouTube video27-Mar.-2010 |
752 | Rex Linn, actor | Spearman | Texas | YouTube video |
753 | Lee Roy Parnell, country singer | Stephenville | Texas | YouTube video Added interview clip: YouTube video. Oops! I had him listed as being from Abilene, whereas he is actually from Stephenville. Contributor Karl Gerlach set me straight. Thanks! He also pointed out that he isn’t consistent in his speech, which can be heard on the interview clip, but he also clearly is Inland Southern, because those features keep popping up, unlike Ben Hogan, who is Lowland. 4-Sep.-2012 |
754 | Ben Hogan, pro golfer | Stephenville | Texas | YouTube video He is another speaker of Lowland in a predominantly Inland Southern region. See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. 12-Dec.-2011 |
755 | Ross Perot, Sr., Politician | Texarkana | Texas | YouTube video, YouTube video (Second one sent in by Karl Gerlach. Thanks!) 8-Nov.-2012 |
756 | Sarah McClendon, correspondent | Tyler | Texas | YouTube video (Her clip is at 8:40.) 13-May-2009 |
757 | Dale Evans, singer & actress | Uvalde | Texas | YouTube video27-Mar.-2010 |
758 | Tracy Byrd, country singer | Vidor | Texas | YouTube video Has a clear Lowland South accent, but a few words sound Inland. 15-Dec.-2010 |
759 | U.S. representative Joe Barton | Waco | Texas | YouTube video9-May-2009 |
760 | Various residents | Waxahachie /wôksəhăchē/[ˌwɒʊksəˈhæʧɪ] | Texas | YouTube video All residents clearly Inland, unlike Byron Nelson below! 6-Sep.-2011 |
761 | Byron Nelson, pro golfer | Waxahachie | Texas | CBS News video (more info) He clearly speaks Lowland, although the native dialect of Waxahachie seem to be Inland, as can be seen from the previous sample. See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. 12-Dec.-2011 |
762 | Mary Martin, actress | Weatherford | Texas | YouTube video An actress, and another speaker of Lowland in a predominantly Inland Southern region. See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. 12-Dec.-2011 |
763 | Caucasian female, born 1938 | Weslaco /wĕsləkō/[ˈwɛsləˌkʰəʊ] | Texas | IDEA audio(source) 2-Mar.-2011 |
764 | Alan Wachsman, native Wichitan, sixth-generation Texan (How in world do you pronounce “Wichitan”?) | Wichita Falls /wĭchĭtô fôlz/[ˈwɪtʃɪˌtʰɒʊ ˈfɒʊlz] | Texas | YouTube video (more info) Sometimes finding a good sound sample for a particular place is like pulling teeth: You search through dozens of web sites and still don’t find one. Not this time: the very first clip found by searching for Wichita Falls on YouTube is this one, and it is excellent, and is as Inland North as you can get, filling in a nice blank spot. If only it were always this easy! 19-Apr.-2011 |
765 | Forrest Cuch, Indian leader | Fort Duchesne /dōōshān/[ˌduˈʃeɪn] | Utah | YouTube video26-Sep.-2009 |
766 | Waldo Wilcox, rancher | Green River | Utah | YouTube video (more info) 26-Sep.-2009 |
767 | Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s | Ogden (Clearfield) | Utah | YouTube video6-Feb.-2010 |
768 | Governor Gary Herbert | Orem | Utah | YouTube video6-Feb.-2010 |
769 | Mayor Lewis Billings | Provo | Utah | YouTube video6-Feb.-2010 |
770 | Clayton Christensen, Harvard Professor | Salt Lake City | Utah | YouTube video6-Feb.-2010 |
771 | Hannah Teter, Olympic snowboarder | Belmont | Vermont | YouTube videoNot a true Vermont accent?11-Feb.-2011 |
772 | U.S. senator Patrick Leahy | Montpelier | Vermont | YouTube videoAfter feedback from contributors, and listening again, I see that he does not really have a distinct Vermont accent, even though hegrew up in Montpelier. However he clearly does have “cot”=“caught”. 11-Feb.-2011 |
773 | Ross Powers, Olympic snowboarder | Peru | Vermont | YouTube videoMore than one contributor has said that Ross Powers does not have a real Vermont accent, and the following are probably better examples. However, my question is: does southern Vermont have a less pronounced accent than the north? 11-Feb.-2011 |
774 | Bill, old timer | Stowe | Vermont | YouTube video Contributor Jon Protas says none of the preceding three samples from Vermont shows a real Vermont accent, so I added this one. There were several even better ones, but they used some words you can’t use on TV, so I couldn’t use it. There were some others, but they seemed to be of people imitating a Vermont accent, so they didn’t work either! 2-Feb.-2011 |
775 | George Woodard, dairy farmer | Waterbury | Vermont | YouTube video This was sent in by Charlie Farrington as a more representative sample. Thanks! 11-Feb.-2011 |
776 | John Bowman, bluegrass gospel singer | Ararat | Virginia | YouTube video (www.caccwarriors.com/john-bowman) 9-Sep.-2010 |
777 | Katie Couric, CBS news anchor | Arlington | Virginia | YouTube video (more info) (“pin”≠“pen”)5-Oct.-2010 |
778 | Rich Lowry, National Review editor | Arlington | Virginia | YouTube video (more info) (“pin”≠“pen”)5-Oct.-2010 |
779 | Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google | Arlington | Virginia | YouTube video(“pin”≠“pen”, except “any”, “many”) 5-Oct.-2010 |
780 | Charles Stanley, pastor | Danville (Dry Fork) | Virginia | YouTube video4-Sep.-2012 |
781 | Elliott Sadler, NASCAR driver | Emporia | Virginia | YouTube video (His clip starts at 4:12.) He is clearly both Classical Southern, dropping most of his droppable r’s, and he is quite a young man at 37, showing that Classical Southern is alive and well! He is also clearly Tidewater, as his pronunciation of “out” shows! (Sent in by Karl Gerlach. Thanks!) 23-Nov.-2012 |
782 | Chris Kraft, NASA engineer | Hampton | Virginia | YouTube video21-July-2009 |
783 | Jackson Family, bluegrass gospel singers (Joe Jackson, banjo) | Hurley | Virginia | YouTube video9-Sep.-2010 |
784 | white male, born 1979 | Leesburg | Virginia | IDEA audio(source) |
785 | Jerry Falwell, preacher | Lynchburg | Virginia | YouTube video |
786 | June Carter Cash (of the Carter Family), country singer | Maces Spring | Virginia | audio,YouTube videoAdj. 16-Apr.-2013 |
787 | Ralph Stanley, bluegrass singer | McClure | Virginia | YouTube video, YouTube video6-Sep.-2010 |
788 | Carter Stanley, bluegrass singer | McClure | Virginia | YouTube video6-Sep.-2010 |
789 | L. Douglas Wilder, mayor of Richmond, governor of Virginia | Richmond | Virginia | YouTube video, YouTube video Sent in by Carlisle Childress. Thanks! He comments: “I’d like to offer the following video as a candidate for a native Richmond speaker. Doug Wilder was the first elected African-American governor in the US in 1990. Although you have said that you were not following African American dialects, he does speak just like my father and his siblings (all Caucasians), all born in the same neighborhood about the same time (Church Hill neighborhood in Richmond VA, in the 20s and 30s ).” I am now including some African American samples, but only in the Lowland South where their dialects originated. However, I hardly perceive any AAVE features in Doug Wilder’s pronunciation, and wonder how he compares with other African Americans in Richmond. He has both the Tidewater Raising and Classical Southern, which made me redraw both of these lines. New! 25-Apr.-2013 |
790 | Margaret Gibson, poet | Richmond | Virginia | YouTube videoI at first thought that she was representative of the traditional Richmond accent, but contributor Carlisle Childress clarified that she is not. She has neither the Tidewater Raising nor Classical Southern, unlike Douglas Wilder, who does represent the traditional accent.Adj. 25-Apr.-2013 |
791 | “Mother” Maybelle Addington Carter (of the Carter Family), country singer | Nickelsville | Virginia | YouTube videoAdj. 16-Apr.-2013 |
792 | U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Taubman | Roanoke | Virginia | YouTube video |
793 | U.S. representative Virgil Goode | Rocky Mount | Virginia | YouTube video |
794 | E.C. Ball, gospel & folk singer | Rugby | Virginia | YouTube video3-Apr.-2010 |
795 | Wayne Henderson, guitar maker | Rugby | Virginia | YouTube video, YouTube video3-Apr.-2010 |
796 | Harrison Tyler, grandson of president John Tyler | Sherwood Forest Plantation | Virginia | C-span video (His clips start at 7:00) (Sent in by Robert Taylor. Thanks!) He clearly demonstrates both Classical Southern and Tidewater raising, as in his pronunciation of “house”. His wife Payne Tyler (her clips start a 18:20) also has a very interesting accent, somewhat different from his, but I have not found any definite information where she grew up. New! 13-Apr.-2013 |
797 | Anne Tyler Netick, great-granddaughter of president John Tyler | Sherwood Forest Plantation | Virginia | C-span video (Her clip starts at 2:22:40.) (Sent in by Robert Taylor. Thanks!) (more info) She clearly demonstrates both Classical Southern and Tidewater raising, as in her pronunciation of “about”. New! 13-Apr.-2013 |
798 | Brothers Don & Harold Reid, southern gospel singers | Staunton /stăntən/[ˈstænʔn̩] | Virginia | YouTube videoNew! 8-Apr.-2013 |
799 | Various residents | Tangier Island | Virginia | YouTube video9-Sep.-2010 |
800 | The Singing Cookes, bluegrass and southern gospel singers | Wise | Virginia | YouTube video, YouTube video, YouTube video, YouTube video, YouTube video, YouTube video, YouTube video (more info) Gorgeous harmony and Inland Southern! New! 6-Apr.-2013 |
801 | Douglas Osheroff, physicist | Aberdeen | Washington | YouTube video (more info) 16-Nov.-2009 |
802 | Bob Hickman, saddle maker | Colfax | Washington | YouTube video (more info) 6-Dec.-2010 |
803 | Kirk Triplett, pro golfer | Pullman | Washington | YouTube video25-Nov.-2010 |
804 | Judy Collins, folk singer | Seattle | Washington | YouTube video6-Sep.-2011 |
805 | Aya Sumika, actress | Seattle | Washington | YouTube video20-Feb.-2010 |
806 | Bill Gates, Microsoft cofounder | Seattle | Washington | YouTube video10-Feb.-2011 |
807 | Richard Karn, actor & game show host | Seattle | Washington | YouTube video28-Oct.-2011 |
808 | U.S. representative George Nethercutt | Spokane | Washington | YouTube video25-Nov.-2010 |
809 | Tom Maccarone, restaurateur | Walla Walla | Washington | YouTube video (Sent in by S. Radtke. Thanks!) 19-Feb.-2011 |
810 | Jay Randolph, sports commentator | Clarksburg | West Virginia | YouTube video |
811 | Homer Hickam, NASA engineer | Coalwood | West Virginia | YouTube video |
812 | Richard Thompson, politician | Fort Gay | West Virginia | YouTube video (more info) (Cannot get a long enough clip to be sure “cot”=“caught”, but the surrounding samples are clear.) 28-Apr.-2010 |
813 | Jim Grobe, college football coach | Huntington | West Virginia | YouTube video2-Dec.-2009 |
814 | Don Blankenship, coal CEO | Matewan /mātwǒn/[ˈmeɪtˌwɑn] | West Virginia | YouTube video26-July-2012 |
815 | CountryBoyYes | Matewan | West Virginia | YouTube video28-Apr.-2010 |
816 | Tom Chafin, descendant of the feudin’ Hatfields | Matewan | West Virginia | YouTube video (Clip starts at 4:50.) 30-Apr.-2010 |
817 | Lawrence Kasdan, movie producer, director, and screenwriter | Morgantown | West Virginia | YouTube video (His clip starts at 2:20.) (more info) This is the second northernmost example of Southern (after nearby Cumberland, Maryland), and is a rare case of someone in the movie industry who retains a strong regional accent! He seems to have “cot”=“caught”, unlike Cumberland, but this is not surprising. 23-July-2011 |
818 | Mark Funkhouser, Kansas City mayor | Paden | West Virginia | YouTube video |
819 | John McKay, football coach | Shinnston | West Virginia | YouTube video |
820 | General Chuck Yeager, test pilot | Myra | West Virginia | YouTube video I have listened to various samples of his, and clearly “cot”≠“caught”, though they are fairly close! Now need to verify Charleston. 28-Apr.-2010 |
821 | Sara Stapleton, high school principal | Wayne | West Virginia | YouTube video (her clip starts at 3:57) 28-Apr.-2010 |
822 | Steven Akers, high school student | Wayne | West Virginia | YouTube video (his clip starts at 0:41) 28-Apr.-2010 |
823 | Arden Cogar, Sr., lumberjack | Webster Springs | West Virginia | YouTube video1-July-2010 |
824 | John Corbett, actor | Wheeling | West Virginia | YouTube video Oops! I had put Wheeling in the “pin”=“pen” region, but I must have been in a hurry: Both speakers clearly distinguish. 12-June-2010 |
825 | Bob Ney, talk radio host | Wheeling | West Virginia | YouTube video22-Aug.-2009 |
826 | J. P. Hayes, pro golfer | Appleton | Wisconsin | YouTube video3-June-2011 |
827 | Matt Kenseth, NASCAR driver | Cambridge | Wisconsin | YouTube video Not as strong as some Inland North, but still representative. 31-Dec.-2011 |
828 | Thomas Christianson, boil master | Door County | Wisconsin | YouTube video (Sent in by Y.I. Thanks!) 28-Oct.-2010 |
829 | State senator Dave Hansen | Green Bay | Wisconsin | YouTube video29-Dec.-2010 |
830 | Laura, cancer patient | Green Bay (Hobart) | Wisconsin | YouTube video (Sent in by Anneke Majors. Thanks!) 24-Jan.-2011 |
831 | Defense secretary Les Aspin | Milwaukee | Wisconsin | YouTube video16-Mar.-2010 |
832 | Craig Counsell, pro baseball player | Milwaukee | Wisconsin | YouTube video (Clip starts at 4:00) 16-Feb.-2010 |
833 | John Koepke /kĕpkē/[ˈkʰɛpki], dairy producer | Oconomowoc /ōkǒnəmōǒk/[ˌoˈkʰanəmoˌak] | Wisconsin | YouTube video3-June-2011 |
834 | State senator Joe Leibham /līphǒm/[ˈlaɪpˌham] | Sheboygan /shəboigən/[ʃəˈbɔɪɡən] | Wisconsin | YouTube video, YouTube video This guy speaks what I’ve always thought of as a typical Wisconsin accent, though I now realize that it’s limited to southern and eastern Wisconsin, and is simply a fairly pure (or extreme) example of Inland North, also heard elsewhere in the region. 2-Mar.-2011 |
835 | Secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger | Stevens Point | Wisconsin | YouTube video16-Mar.-2010 |
836 | Chris Bangle, car designer | Wausau | Wisconsin | YouTube video6-Sep.-2011 |
837 | Lynne Cheney, wife of U.S. vice president | Casper | Wyoming | YouTube video |
838 | U.S. representative Cynthia Lummis | Cheyenne | Wyoming | YouTube video |
839 | U.S. senator Alan K. Simpson | Cody | Wyoming | YouTube video |
840 | Steve Moulton, Western singer and rancher | Encampment | Wyoming | National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum interview (Source suggested by archivist Laura Anne Heller. Thanks!) 23-Apr.-2011 |
841 | Jesse Garcia, actor | Rawlins | Wyoming | YouTube video8-Feb.-2010 |
842 | Lexie Madden, Miss Wyoming 2012 | Torrington | Wyoming | YouTube video, YouTube video Sent in by M.W. Thanks! He complained that in Torrington “pin”≠“pen”, and he was right. In fact, Torrington has several features that distinguish it from the rest of Wyoming and from nearby towns in Nebraska.New! 9-Mar.-2013 |
843 | Phil Gatensby, counselor | Carcross | Yukon Territory | YouTube video |
844 | Stanley, Sr., native American from Gwich’in tribe | Old Crow | Yukon Territory | YouTube video |
| | | | |
| Rejected Data: | | | (These are people raised in a certain place, but not representing the local dialect. If any of you have local knowledge and think that these people do represent the local dialect, please let me know!) 3-Nov.-2011 |
| | | | |
Reject: | Jimmy Means, NASCAR driver[38] | Huntsville | Alabama | YouTube video |
Reject: | Collin Raye, country singer | De Queen | Arkansas | YouTube video When I first heard him, singing this clip, I thought, “Okay, he’s from De Queen, Arkansas, and he speaks Inland Southern. Turns out I was wrong on both counts. First, he is totally inconsistent: he sometimes sings Inland, as in this clip, but usually sings Lowland, as in the first song on this interview clip: YouTube video, but he doesn’t actually talk Southern at all, as can be heard in the interview. Also, though he was born in De Queen, he was raised someplace in Texas. The first clip is a cool song, and I had at first assumed that it was a true story about Collin Raye’s grandparents, but I can find nothing to indicate this. Even so, he probably sang it in Inland Southern because he was thinking of his own grandparents, who may have been from De Queen. (I only included all this because I like the song.) 25-Feb.-2011 |
Reject: | Joe Spano, actor[39] | San Francisco | California | Google video |
Reject: | Christopher Lloyd, actor | New Canaan | Connecticut | YouTube video 26-Sep.-2009 |
Reject: | U.S. president George H. W. Bush | Greenwich | Connecticut | YouTube video (Evidently spent too much time in Texas!) 16-Nov.-2009 |
Reject: | John Malkovich, filmmaker | Benton | Illinois | YouTube video (Has “pin”≠“pen”, but Benton is “pin”=“pen”) 8-Jan.-2011 |
Reject: | Bill Doba, football coach | New Carlisle | Indiana | YouTube video (Evidently has picked up some Southernisms from places he has coached!) 8-Jan.-2011 |
Reject: | Hank Harris, actor | Duluth | Minnesota | YouTube video1-May-2010 |
Reject: | | Cape Girardeau | Missouri | YouTube video7-May-2009 |
Reject: | | Sikeston | Missouri | YouTube video7-May-2009 |
Reject: | Melanie Wilkinson, reporter | Clearwater | Nebraska | YouTube video (more info) “cot”=“caught”; where did that come from? |
Reject: | Kyle Rosfeld, boot maker | Valentine | Nebraska | YouTube video (more info) |
Reject: | Harvey Perlman, Chancellor, UNL | York | Nebraska | YouTube video (more info) According to the previous website, he was raised in York, but this website and several others say he was born in Lincoln. So the question is, when did he move to York? Based on the other samples from York, which are Northern, I assume he does not represent York. 7-Nov.-2011 |
Reject: | Leah Dizon, model | Las Vegas | Nevada | YouTube video Native Las Vegan contributor Jim Hoffman said that this speaker has a slight Asian accent, and suggested Andre Agassi instead. Thanks! 5-Mar.-2011 |
Reject: | Matt Bonner, pro basketball player[41] | Concord | New Hampshire | YouTube video2-June-2009 |
Reject: | Richard Lederer, columnist | Concord | New Hampshire | YouTube video2-June-2009 |
Reject: | U.S. first lady Barbara Bush | Rye | New York | YouTube video (Evidently spent too much time in Texas!) 16-Nov.-2009 |
Reject: | Gavin Veris, pro football player | Chillicothe /chǐlǐkôthē/[ˌtʃʰɪlɪˈkʰɒθi] | Ohio | YouTube video Oops! He looks African American, but speaks General American, with no hint of AAVE, and with “pin”≠“pen”! I thought this was for historical reasons, e.g.: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chillicothe,_OH#History, and that he represented the local “white” dialect, but in fact the local white dialect has “pin”=“pen”, something I was able to determine by watching a documentary about the town, in which all the speakers were locals. 3-Nov.-2011 |
Reject: | Gerald Tremblay, mayor | Montreal | Quebec | YouTube video Does not have Canadian raising, but is a native French speaker! 1-July-2010 |
Reject: | Mayor James Ruberto /rəbârtō/[ɹəˈbeɹˌtʰoʊ] | Pittsfield | Massachusetts | YouTube video (Sent in by Nicole Garzino. Thanks!) (more info) Nicole Garzino had proposed this speaker as representative of Pittsfield, even though he clearly has an Inland North accent. What makes it all confusing is that he apparently was raised and born in Pittsfield, at least according to the above web site, and for a while I adjusted the map assuming that he was representative, even though it make some weird bends in the lines. However, I have finally had to reject him, for reasons given under Gary Kitmacher. 20-Apr.-2011 |
Reject: | Jean Charest, Premier of Quebec | Sherbrooke | Quebec | YouTube video Does not have Canadian raising, but is a native French speaker! 1-July-2010 |
Reject: | Kevin Burke, entrepreneur | Chattanooga | Tennessee | YouTube video (more info) He starts out with a non-southern “Hi!”, but immediately lapses into nearly pure Inland Southern! However, I recently realized that he may not have grown up in Chattanooga, but only in “southeast Tennessee”, as indicated on this website. Actually Chattanooga is Lowland Southern, as discussed in Inland and Lowland Southern and their relationship to the extent of slavery before the Civil War. 3-Nov.-2011 |
Reject: | Two residents | Trenton | Tennessee | Google video (It is not clear if this lady is from Trenton, but she speaks Lowland, and the people in the other clip from Trenton, who are far more likely to be natives, speak Inland. The sample of the other person in this clip is too short to be sure.) (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 20-Feb.-2010 |
Reject: | Jim “Reverend Horton” Heath, “country-fed punkabilly” singer | Corpus Christi | Texas | YouTube video The ANAE had claimed that Corpus Christi did not speak Southern, and I thought this clip proved it, but actually the Labontes demonstrate the opposite. 23-Nov.-2012 |
Reject: | Dan Blocker, “Hoss” on Bonanza | O’Donnell | Texas | YouTube video (Supposedly grew up in O’Donnell, in west Texas, but speaks Lowland. However, the information in Wikipedia is sketchy.) |
Reject: | Female, born 1980, student (some inconsistency with long /ī/[a(ɪ)], but also some signs of Inland Southern) | Texarkana | Texas | IDEA audio (source) My main sample for Texarkana, Ross Perot, clearly speaks Lowland! 3-Nov.-2011 |
Reject: | Jimbo Fisher, FSU assistant football coach.[42] | Clarksburg | West Virginia | YouTube video |
Reject: | Larry Wilcox, actor | Rawlins | Wyoming | YouTube video (Because he is an actor, he has evidently learned to say “ten-four” instead of “tin-four”!) 8-Feb.-2010 |
Do you pronounce the “l” in the red words in the chart below? How about in the blue words? I don’t pronounce the “l” in any of them! However, I do pronounce the “l” in all of the green words, though some people don’t pronounce it in all of these. I only became aware in 2011 that many Americans pronounce the “l” in the red words, and I’m trying to find out if the distribution is regional, or is just all mixed up! (The words in parentheses are not very common, so don’t pay attention to them if you aren’t sure, or if they don’t work like the others.) 15-May-2012
Most Americans apparently pronounce the “l” in the red words in the first column below, a smaller number pronounce the “l” in the red words in the second column, and an even smaller number pronounce the “l” in the red words in the third column, but like me some Americans definitely do not pronounce the “l” in any of them, nor do the vast majority of English speakers outside North America.1-June-2011
I am fairly certain that no native English speakers pronounce the “l” in the blue words. However, I thought that was true of the third red column, and I was proved wrong, so please let me know. 8-June-2011
Please let me know which words you pronounce the “l” in, and which you don’t. Be sure to compare them with the words in black below to see if they rhyme. If they do, then you aren’t pronouncing the “l”! 1-June-2011
Until 2011 I had assumed that historically the “l” in all of the red words above was completely lost in all English dialects, and that the few speakers who did pronounce the “l” did so because it had been reintroduced based on a “bookish” pronunciation. However, I seem to have been quite wrong. A number of contributors to this page have written in and told me so, after seeing the “alm” words listed in the previous section, and marked as having a “silent l”. Thus, contributor Jon from Sacramento, California disagrees: “I would also note that all of the words that you list with a silent ‘l’ in your father-bother distinction (balm, psalm, palm, alms, calming) I would say with a swallowed but still present to varying degrees “l” sound, and I think the majority of people I grew up with in Sacramento would too.” Thus he pronounces “balm” as /bŏlm/([ˈbɒɫm] (he does not distinguish “cot” and “caught”), with a “dark l”, which would sound almost “swallowed”, as he describes it, though clearly there. 15-May-2012
I should have realized that it wasn’t a bookish pronunciation, since it only applies to certain groups of words, as shown in the first chart above, not to all words with silent “l”, of which there are many. I have listed the main groups in the first chart above. 3-June-2011
After I was challenged by these two contributors, I went looking on the Internet, and found that there is indeed one American dictionary that lists a pronunciation of some of these words with the “l” pronounced, the Online Merriam-Webster dictionary, in all of these words: calm, palm, balm, psalm, qualm, alms, and napalm, and even provides audio samples of the “l” pronunciation. This was surprising to me, since most dictionaries, both American and British, give only a pronunciation with no “l”. (Merriam-Webster also gives another pronunciation /kăm/ for “calm”, which would evidently be the Scottish pronunciation, like “palm” mentioned above.) 16-May-2011
Later I realized that a lot of people also pronounce the “l” in “folk” and “yolk”, as shown in the Initial Survey Results chart below. Almost all of these also pronounce the “l” in “calm”, suggesting that the two word groups are part of the same pattern of “l” retention.8-June-2011
So this seems to be a conservative feature harking back to a time when the “l” in the red words was pronounced by all speakers, and as such, is probably a regional feature like the others on the map. 8-June-2011
If this is a conservative feature, then it must have been brought over to the U.S. from some region of Great Britain or Ireland. However, there is almost no trace of this “l” anywhere in this area, not even in Scotland or Ireland, from which many of the conservative features in American English came. However, my trusty contributor Y.I. has been able to track down one possible source: what is called the West Country of England (really the extreme southwest) apparently continues to pronounce this “l”, according to John Wells in The Accents of English, page 346, in a section describing the vowels in the West Country. According to this article, <<The West Country accent is probably most identified in American English as “pirate speech” - cartoon-like “Ooh arr, me ’earties! Sploice the mainbrace!” talk is very similar. This may be a result of the strong seafaring and fisherman tradition of the West Country, both legal and outlaw.>> Clearly this accent could have had influence in the Americas (as suggested in this linguistics book tracked down by contributor Y.I.), though why the influence has been so pervasive is unclear. 6-Sep.-2011
In any case, the retention of this “l” thus does not seem to depend on whether or not “cot”=“caught”, since it occurs across the continent. However, I am fairly certain that all speakers who are systematic r-droppers always lack the “l” in the “calm” group, and that all speakers with the father-bother distinction do too. This makes sense, since the resulting vowel is /ä/, which mainly occurs as the result of r-dropping. It is less clear why the “yolk” group would drop the “l” for this group, since the resulting vowel /ō/[oʊ] does not normally occur as a result of r-dropping. 2-Oct.-2011
Unlike the other data on the main map, this data is not from audio or video sound samples, but from self-analysis and direct interviews, since finding individual words in sound samples is almost impossible. It appears that the vast majority of Americans pronounce the “l” in “calm”, except for those in systematic r-dropping areas (as mentioned in the previous section), and nearby areas like Poughkeepsie and Port Chester, New York, in the Eastern North dialect. (New Orleans seems to have followed NYC in this as in many other features, at least as far as the common words go.) So it would seem that I am in a small minority! Evidently my dialect was influenced by my parents more than I realized: my Dad was from Port Chester, New York, an area that does not pronounce the “l”, and my mother was originally from Australia, which is a systematic r-dropping area, and so again does not pronounce the “l”. Even so, I can’t believe I didn’t even notice such a widespread pattern for so long! As for Canada, it seems likely that many or most there also retain the “l”, though so far I only have data for one location. 6-Sep.-2011
We now seem to have enough data that the geographical pattern is becoming clear for the “calm” group and to a lesser extent for the “yolk” group, though the “talk” group remains unclear. However, we clearly still need more data to map these patterns fully, in particular we need more locations where the “l” in these words is definitely not pronounced. Help me out, people. This is a very simple thing for you to write in and tell me: “I grew up in X, and I pronounce the “l” in all these words,” or “I grew up in Y, and I don’t pronounce the “l” in any of these words except ‘almond’,” or whatever the case may be. 15-May-2012
Inland and Lowland Southern and their relationship to the extent of slavery before the Civil War
Before discussing the distribution of Inland Southern and Lowland Southern, I need to define them more clearly, since I find that there is a lot of confusion as to what I mean by Inland Southern versus Lowland Southern. Adj. 17-Apr.-2013
Thus, to determine if a particular speaker speaks Inland or Lowland Southern, first make sure he speaks Southern at all by listening to words like “ride” and “buy”. If he does, then listen to words with voiceless sounds like “ripe”, “bite”, “righteous” (which has a /ch/ sound in spite of the spelling), “like”, “life”, “ice” (s sound), “python”, etc.
A surprising pattern seen on the map is the peculiar way in which the two Southern dialect areas are intertwined. It turns out that the current pattern of Lowland Southern matches to an amazing degree the areas with a high percentage of slaves before the Civil War, as shown by this famous antique map. Granted, there are a few minor surprises, but what is astonishing is not the occasional surprises, but how few the surprises are! 10-Mar.-2010
What seems likely is that the Inland Southern dialect spread west and south first, and then the Lowland Southern dialect was spread later by the slaveholding “aristocracy”, but never penetrated into areas unsuitable for large plantations, such as mountainous areas or dryer areas in the west. An exceptional area is Virginia, where Lowland Southern spread westward into non-slaveholding areas, and adjacent areas of West Virginia and North Carolina. Another exceptional area seems to be south Georgia and north Florida, which no Inland Southern speakers apparently ever reached.29-Apr.-2010
The “r-dropping” areas (the green lines) and “Tidewater raising” (the pink line) also seem to be restricted to these slaveholding areas.
One result of this later spread of Lowland Southern is that Inland Southern was nearly broken into two sections, divided by what might be called the “Nashville-Florence Corridor”. If you look at a satellite map of this area, you can actually see this corridor in a lighter color outlined by darker forests, a fascinating geographic demonstration of my theory. This is not to say that as a general rule Inland areas are forested and Lowland areas are not, though this is often the case, and holds true in this case. The forested area to the east of the corridor matches rather precisely the Cumberland Plateau, a stretch of higher and often rugged land which often rises abruptly from the flatter land to the west. In fact, the line dividing Inland Southern from Lowland Southern seems to follow exactly the northwest edge of the Cumberland Plateau from just west of Monterey, Tennessee all the way to Hackleburg, Alabama, with the entire plateau being solidly Inland Southern (except for its southern tip in Alabama, which was mostly settled later). Adj. 16-Mar.-2013
A narrow neck around Iuka, Mississippi remains to connect the two sections of Inland Southern. Adj. 16-Mar.-2013
However, as more data comes in an expected result of this should be that there will be occasional islands of one dialect surrounded by the other, and this indeed seems to be the case with Chattanooga, Tennessee. This is an important city in southeastern Tennessee. I most recently spent some time there in October, 2011, was able to listen to many native speakers, and was able to determine that it is a solidly Lowland Southern city, being situated in a fairly large flat plain, and having a strategic location on the river. However, it is surrounded on all sides by mountainous country which speaks Inland Southern, making it a linguistic island! 3-Nov.-2011
This is not to say that Inland South areas in general voted Republican: they didn’t, and in Texas and Oklahoma they were as Solid South as anywhere else. I am only saying that such areas are consistently in the Inland South region. (Nowadays, of course, everything has changed, and the south overwhelmingly votes Republican.) 9-Mar.-2012
Charleston is clearly a special case of Lowland Southern, as is clear by listening to it. The Down East & Outer Banks dialect doesn’t sound very Southern at all, but does at least have the “Tidewater raising”. Florida doesn’t count, since it had a huge influx of Yankees in the 20th century. In fact, Florida is effectively upside down: the farther south you go in Florida, the more Northern people sound! 19-Nov.-2011
Obviously areas in the South settled after the Civil War may not follow this pattern, especially those which are near the border between the two subdialects. The Birmingham, Alabama area is a case in point. Birmingham did not exist before the Civil War, but was founded in 1871 as a steel production center, and grew so fast between 1880 and 1920 that it was given its well-known nickname “The Magic City.” It lies in a very mountainous area (part of the Cumberland Plateau mentioned above), and thus was probably originally in the Inland South, but because of the huge influx of people from all over the South, it is now Lowland Southern. Trussville was founded much earlier, around 1820, but remained small until it was swamped by the growth of Birmingham, and now follows its pattern, as do the other nearby towns, but towns just a little farther removed like Odenville or Jasper do not. Adj. 16-Mar.-2013
However, it turns out that there is at least one town south of Birmingham and Anniston which speaks Inland Southern and which was definitely settled before the Civil War, the town of Sylacauga, which was originally incorporated in 1838, though it was a Creek (or Shawnee?) Indian village as far back as 1748. The name of the town is pronounced /sĭləkŏgə/[ˌsɪləˈkʰɑɡə], not /sĭləkôgə/[ˌsɪləˈkʰɒʊɡə], in spite of the spelling: it was originally called Syllacoga, which in turn was derived from the Indian name Chalaka-ge, according to the Wikipedia article). So far I have not been able to find any good sound clips for Sylacauga (if you know of one please send it me!), but I made a visit there in the spring of 2012, where I met a native who clearly spoke Inland Southern, and who had lived there all her life. In November of 2012 I met two more natives of Sylacauga and talked with them at length, and they also spoke clear Inland Southern. As can be seen by looking at a map of the Talladega National Forest, which runs in a northeast to southwest direction just to the east of Anniston, and which includes the highest point in Alabama, Mount Cheaha, Sylacauga lies at the tail end of the southernmost ridge of the Appalachian mountains. (This ridge can also be clearly seen on this map and this map.) Adj. 16-Mar.-2013
Because of all this, the Inland North line makes several sharp curves along its southern edge in Alabama. Presumably at the time of the civil war, Inland Southern was spoken throughout the entire Cumberland Plateau and the southern part of the Appalachian Mountains, shown fairly well on this map, whereas the Piedmont was mainly Lowland Southern. Adj. 16-Mar.-2013
It has been often been suggested (or assumed) that in some areas there is also a social-status distinction between what I have called “Inland Southern” (sometimes referred to as “hillbilly” or “country”, as in “He sure talks country!”) and “Lowland Southern”, with people from higher-class family backgrounds favoring the “Lowland Southern” pattern, and this would make sense if my hypothesis as to its spread is true. Even so, evidence of such a social distinction does not appear in very many places, and only near the border between these two regions. Two such areas are an area surrounding Dallas and Fort Worth in Texas and an area around Greenville in South Carolina, which are evidently Inland Southern areas, but in which a number of people born and raised there (like Ross Perot, Jr. or Kenny Marchant) have Lowland Southern accents, mostly people in the middle and upper socioeconomic class. A third such area is Little Rock, Arkansas, which is clearly a Lowland Southern area, but in which several samples of people born and raised there show traces of Inland Southern, notably people in what are often viewed as working class professions. Such areas are marked on the map surrounded by a dotted red line, and samples showing this variation will be marked with “See Possible Southern Class Distinction?.” 14-Feb.-2012
According to contributor A.T.W., in Texas the status of Inland Southern is different from its status in the east:
But all this leaves the question: Where did Inland Southern start out? What was its original area? If we look at this map showing settlement as of 1800, we see that the earliest settled areas of what is now the Inland South region are located on either side of the Cumberland Gap, through which nearly all of the western settlement from the South took place at that time. This settlement process would have involved much mixing of populations and dialects, and it seems likely that Inland Southern was the result of this mixing, thus distinguishing it from the more settled Lowland Southern. I have now marked the Cumberland Gap on my map, and it can be seen that it lies almost exactly in the center of the northernmost node of Inland Southern, which would have been its original area. The Appalachian Mountains themselves, including the Cumberland Gap area, were not settled until later, since it was not desirable land, but the settlers were evidently speakers moving south from this original area, as the map suggests. 29-Apr.-2010
Does this mean that Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett spoke Inland Southern, since they lived in this area? Well, in spite of the fact that many of us grew up hearing Fess Parker play him on television with an Inland Southern accent, Daniel Boone certainly did not have the accent, for two reasons. One is that he was born and raised in Pennsylvania, not in the South at all, and didn’t move to the south until he was 16, in 1750. The second is that he lived way too early, long before Inland Southern would have even formed. He was one of the prime movers in encouraging the population movement that would have created it, but he would have been an old man before it really coalesced. His grandchildren probably did speak it. 21-July-2012
This does not explain why Inland Southern is almost non-existent in West Virginia (except for the Hatfield-McCoy area), which speaks almost entirely Lowland Southern in the southern part, in spite of being almost entirely mountains, and Midland in the north. It turns out that its settlement pattern was different from the rest of the Appalachians (check out this interesting 1861 voting map, which lines up almost exactly with my map). In any case Inland Southerners apparently tended to move east and south into new lands, not north. 30-Apr.-2010
The r-dropping areas in the Lowland South (marked with a dark green line) could be described as “Classical Southern”. This is the accent that Scarlett O’Hara is attempting to imitate in this clip from Gone with the Wind. This area represents the heart of the old plantation system, as can be seen on the map mentioned above. However, this feature seems to only occur in older settled areas, and does not occur in western areas on the Mississippi River or farther west that were settled after about 1825. 7-Dec.-2009
Within this area older speakers seem to be consistent in maintaining this pattern. However, many younger ones in this area seem to be pronouncing all of their r’s, and I will include some of these with a comment. Outside of this area (but always within the Lowland Southern area) there will occasionally be much older speakers who do speak Classical Southern. I will comment individually on each of these, and will mark their city surrounded by a dotted green line. 23-July-2011
As can be seen on the map, the pin-pen merger is primarily a Southern feature, but has spread well beyond the South. I suspect that this has happened for two principal historical processes, both of them involving Southerners moving west and North. 12-June-2010
2. Farther west the line runs much further north, and, I suspect, was spread north up the cattle drive trails from Texas in the late 1800’s, presumably by Texas cowboys who hired on for a drive and decided to settle down somewhere along the trail home. This can be seen by comparing the pin-pen line with this map of the cattle drive trails. 29-Apr.-2011
In addition to these two major influences, there are several additional areas for the pin-pen merger. One, which is no surprise, is that there is a small area of pin-pen merger that spreads west from the tail end of the Southern area. This seems to reach as far west as Arizona, but does not reach California. This area was settled by a mixed population even before the Civil War, but these included a large proportion of southerners, and during the Civil war the southern half of what became Arizona and New Mexico seceded from the Union, as discussed in the Wikipedia article on Traditional Arizona. 29-Apr.-2011
Another area, which to me was a bit unexpected, is the Salt Lake City area. 11-Jan.-2011
The Greater New York City dialect is the second most unusual dialect in all of North America (after New Orleans). It has many unusual features, and, more than any other city, New York seems to have historically shown great variation by social class, which is why I give so many audio examples. The following descriptions explain the classes marked in the chart with **: 10-May-2011
Though its influence on the surrounding area has been limited, it has had a lot of effect on the speech of Cincinnati and of New Orleans (see the Dialect Description Chart), and shares the short-a split with the Atlantic Midland region.
The various dialects of New Orleans make it the most unusual dialect situation in all of North America. Some neighborhoods speak Classical Southern, and other neighborhoods speak a dialect which doesn’t sound Southern at all, but instead sounds exactly like New York City until you listen for a while. I have taken several dialect samples from this clip from the “YEAH, YOU RITE” documentary. This clip is a dialect student’s dream, and explains in some detail the dialect situation in New Orleans. I used four samples from this clip because it was clear what neighborhood of New Orleans they were each from. I would have used more, but it was impossible to determine what part of town the other speakers were from.
The entire documentary does not seem to be available on the Internet, except for purchase. I did, however, find a transcript, which helped a bit in identifying speakers.14-Jan.-2011
Where do they speak without an accent? Or where do they speak “General American”?
This question implies that there is an accepted standard of spoken American English which is perceived as not having any strictly regional features. In other words, any features which are distinctly northern, southern, eastern or western would be excluded. And indeed there is such a standard, used by most radio and television news staff throughout the U.S. Applying such a definition rigorously leaves us with the orange striped areas on the map, in parts of the Central Midland and South Florida, and the southern fringe of the North. Applying a slightly less rigorous definition would also include some neighboring areas on the map, although these all have some noticeable regional features. For instance, San Francisco and East Midland both sound just a little bit too eastern, areas below the pin-pen line sound just a bit southern, etc. The Wikipedia article on General American covers the question fairly well, and in some detail, and I recommend reading it. The area mapped in that article covers the same general area in the Midwest as mine, but I would not include all of the cities included there.
The Canadian standard dialect is obviously distinct from the American one, and corresponds to what is spoken in most of Canada, excluding the Atlantic Provinces. 21-Dec.-2011
Yes, some do, though obviously many do not. I have included a number of the former on the map, and even a few of the latter. These are all marked on the map in Dark Blue, or in a few cases in Rust.
The following geographic features (arranged more or less from west to east) seem to have a direct correlation with some dialect area, boundary, or feature: 1-Nov.-2011
2. In the far south, the mountains seem to block further westward expansion of the Inland South dialect, certainly in southern New Mexico, and probably also in west Texas, though south of El Paso this area is so sparsely populated and has such a high Mexican population that I have yet to find a sound sample of a native English speaker from this area. Anyone got one? Please send it in! The El Paso dialect probably owes the fact that it is east of the cot-caught line and south of the pin-pen line to influence from the South, but it clearly is not Southern by the definition of that dialect, and must have had significant admixture from the West and perhaps from the Midland.
I have also included a few geographical features which do not seem to have any correlation with dialect features:
In spite of this, one often hears people refer to a “Texas accent” (there are really three, just considering the blue and red lines!), or a “Massachusetts accent” (there are really four!). In fact, there isn’t a single dialect area on this map that could be described as a “state dialect”: they are all either significantly larger or smaller than a state! 17-Aug.-2010
As for which state has the most distinct dialect areas (defined by the blue and red lines), the winner appears to be Pennsylvania, with five dialect areas, though Louisiana may also have five, depending on how New Orleans is treated. 17-Aug.-2010
The runners up, with four, are: Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Ohio, and possibly also Maryland and New York (data is lacking for the latter two). It could also be argued that West Virginia has four, since in all other cases I have treated the loss of a vowel phoneme as grounds for defining a new dialect, but I am hesitant to introduce a new dialect on these grounds alone, “Allegheny Lowland Southern”, since this phoneme loss here may be viewed as a minor spillover from up north. 23-Mar.-2011
How about the national border between Canada and United States? This is a different story, and in fact this border is also the southern boundary of the Canadian dialect for almost its entire length. This dialect’s notable characteristic is the “Canadian raising” of the vowels in words like “out” and “house” (where the vowel is followed by a voiceless consonant), but not in “loud” and “now”. This feature appears to be viewed by Canadians as a sort of badge of identity, and defines the border rather clearly! Granted, it also occurs in the Tidewater South, but since this is far from the Canadian border, and since their dialect bears no other resemblance to Canadian English, it doesn’t matter!
However, this doesn’t fully explain the situation. At least two Canadian contributors have written in and begged to differ with this analysis, saying that the vast majority of Canadians are totally unaware of how they pronounce things, and are certainly not consciously putting on the Canadian raising as a kind of affectation. And of course they are absolutely right! The vast majority of speakers of any language are totally unaware of the fine detail of their pronunciation system, and most Americans and Canadians cannot tell what side of the border someone is from simply by their pronunciation. So why hasn’t this feature seeped across the border to the U.S. side at any point? Other features have crossed the border freely, as the next section shows, but this one has not. Well, part of the explanation may be that a small percentage of people are able to discern features like Canadian raising, and perhaps some of these people, perhaps on both sides of the border, have lit on this particular feature as being a badge of identity for Canadians, and have helped keep it from crossing the border. So maybe it’s as much the Americans as the Canadians who have kept it a Canadian feature! 6-Sep.-2011
On the other hand, at least one section of Canada, southern British Columbia, was evidently settled mostly by Americans or Europeans, with little direct immigration from previously settled areas of Canada, since the center of the country was still largely unpopulated, as discussed in the “Do some geographic features coincide with dialect boundaries or areas?” section under the discussion of the bite-bout line. And yet all of these settlers adopted the Canadian raising, and the line follows the U.S.-Canadian border all the way to the Pacific. Why did this happen unless at least some people felt that this was a badge of identity for Canadians? 15-Apr.-2011
For a while I had thought that there was a second exception, because I thought I had found an area in Southeastern Quebec where Canadian raising did not apply, Specifically the cities of Montreal and Sherbrooke. However, the samples I had selected were ethnic French speakers, and even though their English showed no trace of a French accent, Chris Harvey says that ethnic French speakers are not the best samples of the native English Montreal accent. Check out the two samples I have now included for Montreal. It seems my entire idea was wrong that, because the Stanstead area was settled by Americans, they would still speak like Americans rather than Canadians. Chris Harvey assures me that they do not. Apparently the “Badge of Identity” applies here, too! However, I am still looking for good sound samples for Sherbrooke and Stanstead. Please send me some if you have them! 17-July-2010
This is not to say that this is the only feature that distinguishes Canadian from American English: The Canadian shift, discussed in detail in ANAE Ch. 14, affects many Canadian vowels. However, the Canadian raising is what most people tend to notice, which is why I think that it has become the badge of identity. 29-Dec.-2010
Read the next section for more insight on this question. 15-Apr.-2011
But of course the big thing shared by Canadians with many Americans, in both the east and west, is the cot-caught merger. In fact, this feature is shared along the western two-thirds of the border, and it seems almost certain, simply by a quick look at the map, that the North Central dialect borrowed this feature from Canada, since this is the only feature that distinguishes North Central from the North. How much the West derived this feature from Canada is uncertain, but it must have been significant, since they not only share this feature, but also the fronting of the long /ōō/[u] vowel.
In the east there are two areas along the border where this feature is shared across the border. Obviously the border shared by the Maritimes and Quebec with New England is one of them, and it is extremely probable that this feature was shared across this border very early in the history of the two nations, or even before they split into two nations in 1776! The other area is Lake Erie, where there are a line of cities on the American side that have the cot-caught merger. Was this due to Canadian influence? It would seem unlikely, except that another dialect feature crosses into Canada at this same point: one of the long o frontinglines of dots (the pink ones), and another dialect line is split at this point, the bite-bout line. So who knows? On the other hand, the ANAE Ch. 14, pp. 203-206 suggests that there was no such influence, since the city of Erie, Pennsylvania was originally part of the Inland North (and presumably Ashtabula and Painesville were also, though these are not mentioned in the ANAE), and only later became Allegheny Midland. Because of this I have not shown the cot-caught line crossing Lake Erie. Adj. 12-Mar.-2013
However, even with various features crossing the border, this does not mean that towns on opposite sides of the border will sound particularly similar. As mentioned above, Windsor and Detroit sound extremely different, sharing only one important feature. But even towns sharing more features don’t really sound that close: Tammy Faye Bakker Messner from International Falls, Minnesota, and Duncan Keith from across the river in Fort Frances, Ontario pronounce their /ō/[o] vowels the same, and also their /ou/[ɑʊ] vowels in words like “down”, but many of their other vowels are very different. The fact that they are neighboring towns in a remote area don’t seem to matter: one is American and the other Canadian, and that matters more! 6-Sep.-2011
I am a professional linguist and a Christian missionary, working in indigenous Amerindian languages. My work has nothing to do with English, so that is why this project is just a hobby.
A few readers have asked where I am from, and what dialect I speak. Actually, I am the total opposite of the kind of people I am looking for the sound samples on my map: They have each been born and raised in one specific place in the U.S. or Canada. I was born in Mexico City, the son of Christian missionaries, and moved back and forth between Mexico and various places in the U.S. throughout my childhood, spending most of my time in the U.S. in the Oklahoma City area. My parents met in Mexico.
My father was born and raised in Port Chester, New York. He spoke a number of different languages. He did not have a Port Chester accent (Eastern North; check out the two sound samples I have listed), but instead spoke essentially General American, the one relic of his Eastern North upbringing being that he distinguished words like “merry” /mĕrē/[ˈmɛɹi] and “marry” /mărē/[ˈmæɹi].
My mother had an even more interesting background. She was born in Sydney, Australia, of parents who immigrated there from Scotland. When she was 10, the family moved to Berkeley, California. When she arrived, she had a strong Australian accent, but due to the ridicule of her peers, she quickly adopted a Bay Area accent, and sounded thoroughly American for the rest of her life. However, the Australian system had apparently established itself in her subconscious, because after I got interested in English dialects, I asked her if the words “father” and “bother” rhymed for her (see The Father-Bother Distinction above). She said, “Oh, no, they are quite different!” “Really?” I said. “Say them for me.” And when she said them, they both had the very same vowel, rhyming perfectly, following the Bay Area pattern. But they still felt different to her, because in her childhood she had pronounced them with very different vowels, and that phonemic system was apparently still there, though covered up by a Bay Area surface system. She also clearly distinguished “merry” and “marry”, which is not a Bay Area feature, but evidently a remnant of her Australian childhood. She also rhymed “on” with “Don”, which matches both Berkeley and Australia. (For other cases in which a phonemic system can be fixed by the age of 10, see the footnote for John Hoeven).1-Nov.-2010
So, what accent do I have? I turns out that I speak fairly pure General American, probably because all of my schooling was in English in an American style school, even when I lived in Mexico. For the most part I don’t follow my parents’ speech patterns. For instance, they both distinguish “merry” and “marry”, and I do not. Specifically, in my dialect “cot”≠“caught” (with a clear Central Midland pattern, not the raised /ô/[oə] of the northeastern U.S.), “pin”≠“pen”, and “on” rhymes with “Don”. Even though I spent seven years in the Oklahoma City/Norman area between the ages of 7 and 18, I didn’t pick up any influence there, since in this area “pin”=“pen” and “on” rhymes with “Dawn”. 8-June-2011
The one area in which I seem to have followed my parents, and differ from most Americans, is that I don’t pronounce the “l” in “calm” or “yolk” or “talk” (see The Pronunciation of “alm” and “olk” and “alk”). 8-June-2011
So what area matches my dialect? No area matches my dialect exactly, though the closest seems to be South Florida, especially the southern part below the “on” line, though I think my native pronunciation of the long/ō/[oʊ] vowel is a bit more backed, and I don’t know yet how South Florida handles the words in The Pronunciation of “alm” and “olk” and “alk”). (I had previously thought that Canton, Ohio was also a close match, but it has a strongly raised “bat” vowel, whereas I do not.) I suspect that many others who moved constantly in their youth, such as “army brats” or missionary kids like myself, will have a similar pattern, which could be called something like “Transient General American”. (South Florida was populated by transients, especially the southern half, so the fact that it has this dialect should not be surprising.) On the other hand, most people who grow up in those Central Midland areas which have a General American accent as their native dialect normally rhyme “on” with “Dawn”, not “Don”. 18-Nov.-2011
Ian McGowan
