Ever since Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene a month ago, I've been trying to figure out her accent. To my ears, it sounds like the Upper Midwestern accent. When I was in Anchorage last year, I don't recall meeting a single person who speaks with Palin's accent, so I figured that Palinspeak couldn't be Alaskan. Turns out that it's not Alaskan, it's Wasillan. From Slate's fascinating explanation for why she talks the way she does:
Palin spent her childhood in Alaska's Mat-Su Valley, which is where she got her distinctive manner of speaking. The next town over from Wasilla, Palmer, has a large settlement of Minnesotans--who were moved there by a government relief program in the 1930s--and features of the Minnesotan dialect are thus prominent in the Mat-Su Valley area. Hence the Fargo-like elements in Palin's speech, in particular the sound of her "O" vowel. (Despite its name, Fargo took place mostly in Brainerd, Minn.) However, even in the area, many people speak a more general Alaskan English, the sort one would find in nearby Anchorage. Palin's frequent dropping of the final G in -ing words and her pronunciation of terrorist with two syllables instead of three are characteristic of general Alaskan English (and Western English) rather than the specific Mat-Su Valley speech.
Isn't that interesting? I love trying to pick out distinctions among regional accents. I can often tell whether a Louisianian is from northern or southern Louisiana. Northerners sound ;like Mississippians or East Texans, while Southerners sound either Cajun, New Orleanian (which has lots of subdivisions), or an interesting and hard to describe Florida Parishes accent that's Southern, but softer and chewier than the twang from the northern part of the state. I confess that I find the accents of the Upper Midwest and the Great Lakes regions hard on my ears, but I particularly love the accent of upper class old-line New Orleanians, and people from the Carolinas. Some New York accents grate, but there's a kind of old-school Manhattan accent that I can't hear enough of; it's the way that Bertram Cooper speaks on "Mad Men." What kind of accent is that? If anybody can explain it, please tell me.
How about a thread on regional accents -- which ones we like, and which ones we don't like? Let's stipulate now that nobody's accent makes them smart or stupid, so please, let's not let the thread get distracted over silly fights. If somebody doesn't like your accent, please don't take it personally.
UPDATE: Stuart Buck sends along links from his blog to video of folks with strong regional accents. Here's a kid from "Sling Blade" with a rich Alabama accent. Here's a link to a Stuart post that references a university audio archive of American regional accents. And if you do nothing else, you've GOT to watch this six-minute film about the various New Orleans accents! The Yat accent is amazing -- the two Yats at the end are straight outta da Bronx!
UPDATE.2: Here is a great way to see how an accent can change over the course of one generation. Compare:
Here is a recording of the accent of an unidentified 20 year old male in Dallas, Texas, from the George Mason accent archive. This is what every white person of this age I ever meet in Dallas sounds like.
Now, listen to this recording of Dallas's own Rawlins Gilliland, from one of his public radio commentaries. I'd guess that Rawlins, who is white, is in his mid-50s. Mark the difference. I don't hear progress.
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My other grandma--who was born in Washington state, although her parents were from Ohio and she lived there a few years in her teens--she called the couch a "davenport" as well.
A true pacific northwesterner knows how to pronounce Puyallup, Sequim and Kalaloch (bonus points for Pend Oreille) but yes, generally, we talk like the folks on tv. That is, most of us here think we have zero accent, and when we travel, people can usually tell we're from the west coast but only generally.
So far as I can tell, there's no difference in accents (assuming you don't live in a minority subculture speaking Chicano or whatnot) from Seattle to Los Angeles to Denver to Boise to Phoenix. Obviously not so east of the Rockies.
See here for more on "Davenport": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davenport_(sofa)
Natives of Montana pronounce "creek" as the first syllable of "cricket" is pronounced. I don't know why, and neither do they. If you say "creek" as in "speak", they giggle.
Baltimore natives tell me that "Baltimore" is pronounced "Bawlmur" and that the first syllable gets the emphasis in "police" and "July": "Ah had to cawl the Balmur POH-leece last JOO-lie.".
I love regional accents.
A few years ago I had the experience of being at a gathering of in-laws and talking with a man who, I discovered, grew up not two blocks from me in suburban Chicago and was a year ahead of me at the same elementary school. Possibly because I've also lived in Minnesota, northern Indiana and now southern Ontario, to my ears he sounded like he had an accent. That was a bit of a surprise.
We too called a sofa a davenport when I was a child. Years later, while visiting my sister near Boston, I told her young niece not to jump on the davenport. She looked at me incredulously and said, "Diving board?!?"
I'm a former Minnesotan who lived in both the northern and southern part of the state. I hear inflections in Palin's voice that I hear in Minnesota, but it's not typical, anymore than the Fargo accents are typical.
What we saw in her "debate speak" Thursday was exaggerated ultra perky folksiness. Listen to the difference between how she sounded in the debate and how she sounded in an Alaska governor round table debate in 2006. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1-B-OyQ-KI
Hi Mary Margaret - I wish I could do phonetic spelling better, but here's an attempt:
Merry gets an 'e' like in 'egg' or 'elephant' - "eh". Meh-ree
Marry gets an 'a' like in 'ack' or the first 'a' in 'alligator' - it rhymes with 'carry' .
Mary rhymes with "airy" or "fairy"
I agree with everyone who has said this is a great thread - more of these please, Rod!
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