Wow. No Minnesota, but this guys mentions it, and does a couple Chicago accents dead on:
http://www.ku.edu/~idea/northamerica/usa/illinois/illinois10.mp3
I'm surprised they don't have Minnesota.
I don't understand -- all the Michigan and Illinois people just sound normal to me. Isn't this supposed to be an archive of accents?
California 1 is just like me, except more female-sounding. "This self-confessed 'Valley Girl" does indeed have the glottalization, the "questioning" intonation, and the creaky voice associated with that dialect.". Yup!
Though there is someone from orange county approximately my age there.
Ha! Do they really sound normal to you? I haven't been away for so long, but with some of those clips, I think, "they must be doing that on purpose."
Yeah, you do sound just like Cali 1. Actually, Cali 1, Valley Girl stuff aside, has a great voice.
Arkansas Six is a lot like me. More like how I used to sound, really; my vowels are more standardized these days, however.
Texas Seven sounds so natural, I'd swear it was media English. I'm pretty sure Texas One is my grandmother.
They don't have South Dakota either, most likely because we don't have an accent to identify.
In a dialect class once, an exasperated girl said, "But I don't understand, what is Standard American English?"
Equally exasperated and twice as uppity, I said, "It's how newscasters on TV talk -- it's how I'm talking now."
The teacher said, "'It's how Ah'm talkin' now'?"
I was pwned before the word.
Smasher, T7 does sound very natural, but you can hear her accent a bit in words like "kit" and "soon." Very slight, but it's there.
Slol, I didn't realize you were a Southerner. I would have expected "slotalker."
I growed up (or, possibly, failed to) all over the map.
slotalker Jones, slowalker Jones.
Nonexistent "Haberham" aside, they think the westernmost point in PA is Lancaster? Humph.
Can we standarize between "hmpf" "hmph" and "humph," please?
So how're the accents in NoCal, w-lfs-n?
Can we standarize between "hmpf" "hmph" and "humph," please?
But I think these are not interchangeable. Even the first two connote different degrees of aspiration. And this is not even getting into "harrumph."
I did mean 'hmph', or maybe even 'harrumph'.
I wouldn't know, slol, as I am still in SoCal.
I think the shorter onomatopoetics mean a more noncommittal expression -- "hmp" and "mm" are relatively nonjudgmental utterances, though to parse it really finely, "hmp" implies, "I have a thought on that subject," while "mm" means, really, nothing except "I hear you talking."
Whereas "harrumph" qualifies as positively expostulatory.
Not to mention, San Francisco is a bustling cosmopolis and I expect Palo Alto & environs to be brimming with out-of-towners, students and workers alike. Who knows but I may never encounter a born and bred Nocalian.
I think local Nocalians are easier to find than you suggest (and possibly easier to find in San Francisco than in Palo Alto). But my information may be dated. Please report at your leisure.
9: Chopper, I beg to differ - watching "Fargo" was like listening to half of my family, slightly speeded up/higher pitched...
I don't sound like anything. :(
The closest I heard was maybe Ohio 5. But my 'a' isn't that flat.
What does over-educated Pennsylvanian sound like?
Ah, quarters.
I loathe the quarter system.
weird. i had a very hard time finding anything that sounded like me. the closest i can find is (a female version, obviously) of jim johnson on the special collections page.
this thing is fun.
I loathe the quarter system
Motiveless malignity? Or do you have a reason?
You know, people generally aren't the best judges of their own accents. Have a friend tell you what you sound like.
Most people tell me I sound like a broadcast journalist. Perfect voice (and face, har har) for radio.
Using the site I just listened for people that I thought didn't have much of an accent. It didn't work though.
9: Chopper, I beg to differ - watching "Fargo" was like listening to half of my family, slightly speeded up/higher pitched...
A) Fargo is in North Dakota. They're a bunch of in-bred hicks.
B) Fargo is set in small-town (Brainerd) Minnesota. The accents are authentic, but laid on with a trowel. (The Coen brothers are natives.)
C) I suspect you are baiting me.
D) Tom Brokaw is from South Dakota. He's polished up his intonations but his accent, such as it is, is pure SoDak.
re: 29
I prefer having late May-early June "free" to having September "free." ("Free" is in quotation marks in recognition of the fact that many academics are still working during this time.)
I prefer having courses that get further in depth to having more, but shorter, courses.
I am motivelessly malignant.
A) Fargo is in North Dakota. They're a bunch of in-bred hicks.
I KNOW you're baiting me. But, other than the inbred part, I can't argue too much. I often find myself stuck after:
"Oh, you're from North Dakota. Like, where Mt. Rushmore is"
"No, that's South Dakota"
"So what's in North Dakota?"
But this is the perfect place for one of my own Fargo stories (I thank you for pointing out takes place mostly in Minnesota, because I get tired of doing so).
I've only seen it once - and there's a scene where he's driving out of the parking garage, and the camera flashes to the tellers booth - broken glass and blood. "Oh geez," I say. Camera flashes to character "Oh geez". Now, I didn't have the heavy accent, but I still felt pwned.
32: wasn't baiting. I know Fargo's in NoDak, and that the movie was set in Minnesota (although they cross the border a couple of times, if memory serves). The higher speed/pitch reference was a lame attempt at suggesting that Frances McDormand's (sp?) accent in the movie wasn't exactly the same as my grandmother's...
And Paul, as someone who's worked at Mt Rushmore, you have my sympathy- for the longest time I claimed the Corn Palace was North Dakota's biggest tourist attraction, until someone pointed out to me it was acutally in South Dakota...
they've got a world of white people at that site. the university administrator white people they have in there for south carolina are accurate as far as that goes, but *not* a good representation of a south carolina accent.
For New York state, they have thirteen clips of people from NYC and surrounding environs, and none from upstate. I am slighted.
I KNOW you're baiting me. But, other than the inbred part, I can't argue too much.
What's the best thing to come out of North Dakota?
I-29.
What do you do when a North Dakotan throws a grenade at you?
Pull the pin and throw it back.
But seriously, you guys have, like some badlands, right? The ones that aren't nearly as good as South Dakota's? And, some missile silos. Oh, and pheasant hunting. You've got that.
Ogged - Awesome story. I'm really worried about that kid, though - what kind of person CHOOSES to write a paper on ND tourism? I hope it was just a teacher with a wicked sense of humor, doing a twisted version of the "Write about the back of your thumb or a certain brick on the opera house" bit from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance .
Chopper:
What's the best thing to come out of North Dakota?
Hey man, Laurence Welk was from ND. And Gatsby. Though the fact that I'm using a fictional character as person #2 certainly says something.
Yeah, some of the badlands spill over. And I moved away young and am a city boy, so I've never sampled the pheasants. My favorite attraction to cite demonstrating the patheticness gives one of the nicknames: the Peace Garden State. Up on the border to Canada there's some garden to promote peace (because we could invade Canada at any instant). Though they do run a band camp for high school students in the summer, so at least a little useful.
My parents have moved back now - I can't imagine that I ever will.
Which reminds me--Jimmy Gatz was not Jewish! Stop saying that Jimmy Gatz was Jewish!
The New Yorker's art critic is from North Dakota.
I moved out of South Dakota at the start of college, and can't imagine ever going back. I in fact look forward to November 2008, when I will have lived in Minnesota longer than I did South Dakota.
I look forward to November 2008 when we may actually have some prospect of a president who isn't a completely malicious incompetent buffoon. If, in fact, the current guy hasn't managed to get us all accidentally killed by then.
Yes, sure, that too. Unless we can impeach him for gross dereliction of duty before then.
Chain of succession:
Bush--Cheney--Hastert--Ted Stevens--Rice--Gonzales?
I'm really not sure whose resignation I want to call for.
""So what's in North Dakota?""
I once drove (well, was in a car with other people, one of whom drove) to North Dakota to do my laundry. We stayed for about an hour, and left. So I can say it's an okay place to go to to do laundry.
We were in South Dakota, and so far as we could tell, there was no laundromat within a hundred miles in SD.
Montana goes on long after it's finished making its point, you know.
I can't imagine Cheney having a lot of political capital if he succeeds Bush. A severely weakened Cheney administration combined with a massive swing back toward Democrats in Congress in 2006, and I'd feel a lot better about prospects for the following years.
Bush--Cheney--Hastert--Ted Stevens--Rice--Gonzales?
Point of Pedantry: the actual line of succession goes Bush, Cheney, Hastert, Ted Stevens, Rice, John Snow, Rumsfeld, THEN Gonzales.
Thanks--the question mark was actually meant to indicate uncertainty about who comes next. Wasn't Snow supposed to be on the way out? Did they forget to fire him or something?
They were going to get rid of Snow, and then they couldn't find anyone to actually take his job, so he kind of just stayed there. It certainly wasn't the most embarrassing moment in the first term/second term changeover, but it was one of the more comical.