"Wes" wrote in message
news
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

That Michigan 3 seemed a bit out of place. Maybe an exile from NYC
living
in Trenton, NJ.
Might even wonder if the guy is Jewish.

It does sound more Eastern-urban than the others. The ones from Detroit
have
a mild, but noticeable Northern Cities Vowel Shift. That sound really
stands
out to us Easterners, and we usually identify people who have that sound
as
upper-Midwest.

I can usually spot a still working Detroiter by being over fed, a mustach
and some wierd
beard, expensive SUV, home on a lake near me that he paid too much for,
looking down on us
non union locals. They seem to be becoming few and far between now. That
UAW sticker on
their SUV is a tell.

sigh They must miss their long breaks from re-tooling shutdowns. When
Oldsmobile shut down for re-tooling, the RVs headed north out of Lansing in
a steady stream, filling up parks all over the northern part of the state.
The ones who didn't have RVs had cottages on the lakes.


The ones from Ishpeming and L'Anse are definitely Yoopers -- they have a
vowel shift, but not in the same direction. It's called "Canadian
Raising,"
if you're interested. g

I'll have to listen to those. I was looking for the eh factor but got
tired of listening.

I didn't hear any "eh's," but I didn't listen to all of them. But I heard
some "aboots" for "about." and other vowel shifts.


The others have the "Mary-marry-merry merger," another Midwest
characteristic identified with Inland North American dialect. It's
stronger
in Wisconsin, but the whole region shows traces of it, especially from
people who have been planted there all their lives.


The other ones I sampled seemed pretty normal.

Of course. That's what you hear every day. g

No chit



There are lots of individual pronunciations that will mean something to
you
if you track such pronunciations in other parts of the country, but they
don't mean a lot standing by themselves. Still, it's interesting:

http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/.../state_MI.html

Anyway, your personal pronunciations may be different, but there are
definite differences between Michigan pronunciations and those of the
most
"neutral" part of the country, which is a large area of the West coast.

I'm assuming we are leaving out "valley gurl" ?

g Yes, there are local dialects, but a lot of the far West is largely
free
of the vowel shifts, raisings, non-rhotic pronunciations, and so on, that
the rest of us have in our pronunciations.

Tom Brokaw, someone not from my area, seems to have little accent to me.
Same for Shep
Smith that is from down south. He seems to have lost what little he had
over time. I
guess working from NYC has that effect. You stick me back in any state
I've lived in and
I tend to start talking like the locals. I guess, I like to fit in
wherever I go. I used
to joke, the only place I've been is Japan where I didn't pick up a local
accent.

That's pretty common. Since I lived in five different states before I
graduated from high school, plus eight years on-and-off in Michigan after
that, my accent is very flexible. g





There are a few pronunciations of mine that give me away as
mid-Atlantic,
but people rarely think I'm from NJ. That's because the remnants of my
accent are Philadelphia/Delaware Valley/South Jersey, not New
York/Northeast
New Jersey. It's the latter that most people think of as a "Jersey"
accent,
because that's what you hear on TV shows like "The Sopranos." But in
fact
that is a very local and ethnic (Italian) accent in NJ. It's about like
Brooklyn. Most of us rarely hear that accent in real life. Only on TV.

Normally when I think Jersey, I think of my adopta dad's Polish family.
Well there was an
aunt (ANT) that was Italian but she didn't have a lot of influence.

In the northeast corner of the state there are several very local, ethnic
dialects that still survive. They're for the experts to sort out. I just
recognize them as New York-area ethnic (Italian, Polish, or Irish,
mostly).
If you ever watch the new TV show "Jersey Shore" (which is unlikely g)

I don't get broadcast tv. Fox news, Cspan, Comedy Channel to get Stewart
and Colbert's
take is enough for me. Every once in a while, JS puts on a good show when
he gets
outraged by those he belives in that did wrong. Liberals listen to Rush,
Conservatives
watch Jon Stewart. We watch each other.

you'll hear a real hard-core Bergan County Italian pronunciation. The show
supposedly takes place in Seaside Heights, where I spent many days when I
was in high school. I'll be darned if I can remember ever hearing that
harsh
accent down there, but you do hear it from time to time when those Bergan
County folks get loose. d8-)

You much more into accent than I am.

On and off. My interest in linguistics is about the history of grammar and
syntax, because it relates to writing. The accents just go along for the
ride, and I only dabble. I can't read phonetic transcriptions. It's like
learning another language with an entirely different alphabet.



Some regions have strong accents. Texans sound like Texans, Georgians
like Georgians, and
when I was speaking to a gent at Starrett today, it was certain he
wasn't
calling from a
call center in India rather than Mass.

I *thought* Indiana had a neutral accent until I ran into some people
that
lived near my
former part of the state. Those people have an accent. Don't know how
I
missed that 35
years ago.

My great uncles kids have a bit of accent. Their mom is a WWII British
war bride that is
still living and as kids they spent a part of every year up in Alaska
hunting it tends to
make them sound like Canadian's that immigrated from England.

Wes

Well, as I said, it can be interesting. The more you learn about it the
more
you get into it. My dad was more into it than I am, and he was a lot
better
at spotting where people come from. He seemed to pick up the interest when
he was in the Marines in WWII.

I think it was easier back when we were much less mobile.

Yeah, and the war brought together men from all over the country, back when
accents were stronger and people didn't travel as much. I'll bet it was
entertaining.

One of the funny things I ran into when I attended Michigan State was people
asking where I was from, and then saying, "But you don't *sound* like you're
from New Jersey!" g Then I had to explain that there are at least three
distinct accents in New Jersey...and that I don't sound much like any of
them.

BTW, if you want to hear authentic, contemporary North Jersey accents, check
that page I sent you to before, only go to NJ:

http://web.ku.edu/~idea/northamerica.../newjersey.htm

There are only three recordings; the first two are typical North Jersey,
number 2 sounding more like business and professional people, and number 3
more like blue-collar. They are *very* different from what you typically
hear on TV. Number 4 (there is no number 1) is a young woman from Princeton,
which is where I lived through my high school years and then again after I
was married. That's central Jersey. The girl might sound more like me but
she's too young. She sounds like my son -- they're the same age. There's a
generational shift in pronunciation that's very marked.

--
Ed Huntress