Accent Expert Gives a Tour of North American Accents - (Part 3) | WIRED

Key Takeaways

hi eric singer dialect coach the map tour of north american accents continues [Music] if you missed parts one and two you can check them out here we're diving into part three from the west let's talk about california let's talk about southern california another part of the country where we have some really exciting ongoing change so just like in some contemporary english accents a more open oral posture a lower jaw is lowering some vowel sounds most noticeably the dress and trap vowels there are a bunch of vowel sounds moving around here goose and goat can both be very fronted and the short e vowel the kit vowel is being split in two for ng it's likely to sound like e so thing going just like the rest of the west but otherwise it's lowered like dress and trap so bid gets closer to bed miss begins to sound like mess and so on so of course if you take this accent on like turn the dial up to 11 we're talking about a stereotypical surfer accent like sort of a bill and ted's kind of thing you can hear that in a clip here when they say excellent that's a lower dress vowel excellent excellent excellent it's very much change in progress so stay tuned and of course la county has the highest latinx population in the country so i'm going to turn this over to meghan again hi again now i'm going to talk about chicano english the majority of chicano english speakers reside in the u.s southwest in california and in chicago chicano english is heavily influenced by mexican spanish spanish has been in this region longer than english has in 1848 mexico ceded this land to the u.s because of this history mexican spanish has been influencing the english of the area for a really long time one of my favorite features is devoicing of word final z so the sound z is a voiced sound you can actually tell if you put your fingers here right by your throat and you do the z sounds you'll feel vibration with the voicing we use the voiceless equivalent which is an s so the z sounds at the end of words turn into more of an s sound you can hear this devoicing in the plural form or chair chairs becomes chairs you can hear that feature here he did things he did things he did things another remarkable feature of chicano english is that there's less vowel reduction so it's a little subtle but i'll try to show you how it sounds i say because and someone who would reduce the vowel would say because i say together and someone reduced the vowel to together today today you can hear the features in this native speaker clip to here you don't want to listen to everyone thanks megan while we're in the southwest with chicano english let's make a quick stop in the navajo nation kalina on this stop we will be visiting the traditional homelands of the navajo people in the four corners area the same devoicing feature found in chicano english can also be found in navajo english you can hear a native speaker here i want him to recognize all indian tribes the second feature here is a glottal replacement of final consonants you can hear the glottal stop instead of a t i wanted to hear back to eric thank you kalina next up here's nicole to talk about african-american language in california we know that african-americans in california participate in local features such as ooh fronting and up talk you can hear that here uh i'm a monty dorn dorin dorn tuesdays too soon to do that tuesdays tuesdays a 2016 study found bat retraction or the a vowel being pronounced further back in the mouth among bakersfield african americans you can hear that in this clip i'll be right back and then we can stack those boxes right back right back and now the map tour continues with eric as we move north from california up in the pacific northwest we've definitely got that caught caught merger they sound the same up here just like they do everywhere in the west and in canada but one thing you hear a lot up here is a lip rounded vowel for it oh so here we might talk about a hot pot oh there's a little pocket around san francisco that doesn't have the cot caught merger by the way so unlike the whole rest of california the whole west coast really cod and caught sound distinct here like they do in most of the south and the east just a little dialect island up over the border in vancouver you'll hear that same lot rounding but you'll also start to get raising and tensing in the trap vowel when it comes right before a gu sound like in bag agriculture flag similar to what you can hear over in minnesota speaking of minnesota again there's a fascinating dialect pocket in alaska the matanuska-susitna valley that can sound uncannily like those broad minnesota accents a lot of people suddenly noticed this in 2008 when sarah palin the former governor of alaska shot to national fame as the republican vice presidential nominee you can see that here in this clip i appreciate this privilege of being able to be here and speak with americans we want to keep our aaa bonding rating in minnesota it turns out that in the 1930s there was a huge migration of farmers to the matsu valley from michigan minnesota and wisconsin so that's how that happened okay back to canada now kalina's originally from the northwest territories let's go back to her there are nine official languages spoken in the northwest territories including north slavey which is a part of the athabascan language family i'm inspired by the many revitalization efforts by our people to save our languages for example language deaths in hawaii this is where young people are immersed in the language every day with elders in the community another revitalization method is a translation of popular television shows and movies into indigenous languages because of all this i have tremendous hope for both the future of our native american languages and of native american english thank you kalina okay let's go to toronto and let's talk for just a minute about probably the most famous canadian accent feature there is it's called canadian raising though you may not have heard it called that but you're probably familiar with naboot yeah of course canadians aren't actually saying ut naboot what they're doing is raising the start of the diphthong in words like out and about so that instead of it starting very open it's starting from somewhere in the middle of the mouth oh it only affects syllables that end in an unvoiced consonant so words like out about house mouth in words like how now loud rouse canadians still use that wide ow diphthong canadian raising isn't only in that class of words though the mouth vowel it also affects the price vowel in the same way so that the starting point of words like right life type mice can get raised too but words like rise five tied fly keep their full eye diphthong you can hear the contrast between both of those if i say something like that's a fine price for a brown house so out in the atlantic provinces of canada we'll hear accents that are in some cases almost unrecognizably different from what you'll hear in most of the rest of canada once again isolation and length of time are the key factors here newfoundland accents are maybe the most distinctly different of all i'm giving this one a go even though i've never done it before so be gentle please your new fees now there's lots of variation here of course and most younger folks aren't going to sound like this but this would be an accent from the fair southeast of newfoundland down below saint john's we could go on about this one all day sounds a bit irish doesn't it this part of newfoundland was in fact settled by irish people mostly from county wexford there's quite a lot of reasons why this particular old newfoundland accent sounds irish bow sounds of course intonation aspiration but you'll also hear the irish slit tea what's a slit tea it's a t sound made with a very soft closure at the tip of the tongue or not even really quite a full closure at all there's a slit left for the air to escape through what that hit it i could stay here all day but it's about time to wrap this up so let's dip back down across the border back into the states and end close to where we started in north eastern new england i remember that caught caught merger well the whole western u.s has it in all of canada and so does this part of new england goes down about as far as boston rhode island doesn't generally have it but here in maine you've got that caught caught merger so all the vowel sounds and those two big groups of words emerged they all sound like oh here you know what doesn't all sound the same though mary mary and mary now they do in my normal accent mary mary mary and the same is true for almost all of north america but most speakers up here still have distinct pronunciations for all three mary mary mary even more interestingly at least in some older folks speak still the historical distinction between horse and horse is still preserved so if your horse has a sore throat you might have a horse horse you can still hear this distinction in parts of ireland and scotland and parts of the u.s south but that's about it this is one of the last places you'll hear it and that's it that's our last stop so listen let me just say again this is not meant to be a comprehensive tour of all north american accents we try to be at least somewhat representative and to include some insights into how and why accents might differ from place to place i sincerely want to thank all of the linguists and language experts who've helped out and if you want to follow them here they are one more time you can find me on twitter at megandfigueroa and you can also find me at my podcast the vocal fries pod you can find me on twitter i'm at mix linguist if you want to learn more about the gala language and what i'm getting into follow me on instagram at sunrise show twitter at sunbasho or sunmesho.com you can find me at amanidorndialex.com this video would have had to be about 10 times longer if it were really going to be systematic and thorough but these are some sounds i love and some things i think are interesting and i had a lot of fun sharing it with you if i piqued your interest about accents and variation here are some cool resources for finding out more and we'll throw some more in the description below