Your Familie's Ethnic Accent (Chicago, Brooklyn: middle school, cabin, suburban)

[williepotatoes]

Originally Posted by ChiNaan

Did you do dat ting two or tree times?

I noticed in Ireland that people pronounce "th" as "t", and have wondered if that's where that particular aspect of Chicagoese comes from.

That is very likely, because the Irish were here in good numbers before the great hordes of European masses came. Funny thing is, that many Italians had this affliction too. They spoke old country at home but their English was influenced by their working class peers and neighbors who were usually of central/eastern European origin. The very people who promulgated Chicagoese to a second language.

If you want to hear blunt, unadulterated Chicagoese, listen to old interviews and such with Chicago outfit guys.

[Irishtom29]

Originally Posted by ChiNaan

I noticed in Ireland that people pronounce "th" as "t", and have wondered if that's where that particular aspect of Chicagoese comes from.

Yeah, there's no "th" sound in the Irish language.

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by ChiNaan

For the small portion of the Midwest indicated in the link I posted, yes. In Chicago and the other Great Lakes cities, where the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (an extremely strong and easily-recognized accent indicated in the other link I posted) dominates, absolutely not. The Great Lakes-area (Northern Cities if you prefer) accent is as clear as many other regional U.S. accents.

Iowa and Eastern Nebraska (part of the Midwest but not part of the Great Lakes area) is where you hear the lack of accent. THAT is the accent (or lack thereof) prime time and national news like to use. It's been decades since they used Ohio as the standard, because of the vowel shift that has occurred there (as well as in Chicago and the rest of the GL Area).

I'm sorry you think I'm a douchebag for disagreeing with you, but you'll get over it.

Ah, I knew there was a conversation I forgot.

We don't actually disagree, you just went way out of your way to over-extrapolate from my generalization, which I made abundantly clear was just that.

Totally fine of course, but I do mind having words put in my mouth in a condescending manner.

Do you really think I don't know the difference between big city accents in the Great Lakes region and the generic one (and yes I agree, it's really the lack of an accent) that people call "Midwestern"? Come on now.

I know of the vowel shift, etc. it's all fascinating stuff. I am still interested in what/how a "non-accent" perseveres in this day and age.

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by williepotatoes

That is very likely, because the Irish were here in good numbers before the great hordes of European masses came. Funny thing is, that many Italians had this affliction too. They spoke old country at home but their English was influenced by their working class peers and neighbors who were usually of central/eastern European origin. The very people who promulgated Chicagoese to a second language.

If you want to hear blunt, unadulterated Chicagoese, listen to old interviews and such with Chicago outfit guys.

If you haven't read the Story of English book I linked, you'd like it. It talks about how Ireland's massive vocabulary got completely co-opted and assimilated into "English," without of course getting any credit.

This by the way, is AWESOME. Talks about the vowel shift, but provides some cool nuances as well:

Curious City | WBEZ examines the Chicago accent | WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

Curious City | WBEZ looks at the Chicago accent and whether it

[ChiNaan]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

Do you really think I don't know the difference between big city accents in the Great Lakes region and the generic one (and yes I agree, it's really the lack of an accent) that people call "Midwestern"? Come on now.

I've honestly never heard people refer to the General American (lack of) accent as a "Midwestern" accent, so I guess that's where the confusion came from. When people from outside the Midwest say "Midwestern accent" I assume them to mean the Northern Cities / Great Lakes accent, since that's where the vast majority of Midwesterners live, and/or the "Oh ya, you betcha, don'tcha knoh!" kind of accent in WI/MN/ND/SD (like in the movie Fargo).

As a person who, like Walter Kronkite and Johnny Carson, is originally from the small portion of the Midwest where GAE is the norm, I'm flattered to know there are people who think of it as the accent of the whole Midwest, though. I'd have had a much easier time understanding people when I first moved here if it was.

[williepotatoes]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

If you haven't read the Story of English book I linked, you'd like it. It talks about how Ireland's massive vocabulary got completely co-opted and assimilated into "English," without of course getting any credit.

This by the way, is AWESOME. Talks about the vowel shift, but provides some cool nuances as well:

Curious City | WBEZ examines the Chicago accent | WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

Curious City | WBEZ looks at the Chicago accent and whether it

After reading that, I now know I'm an infected carrier of fronted "o" syndrome. A cop is a c-ah-p and a shot is a sh-ah-t. Seems to me that our beloved native dialect is probably doomed to extinction in a generation or two. I base that mostly just on personal observation, having seen such a big decline in it's usage during my lifetime. It really was fostered by the European immigrants anyway, and todays newcomers are mostly from
Asia and Latin America. Not too many Mexican grocers are going to offer you a sample of their homemade chorizo s-ahhh-sage these days in Chicago. Well they may offer it, but they won't pronounce it Chi-nam style.

[MassVt]

I'm also hearing a pure Boston accent less and less these days; when I do hear it, it's somewhat muted, although I'm sure that it exists outside of my daily acquantances..

[JBVirtuoso]

Originally Posted by williepotatoes

After reading that, I now know I'm an infected carrier of fronted "o" syndrome. A cop is a c-ah-p and a shot is a sh-ah-t. Seems to me that our beloved native dialect is probably doomed to extinction in a generation or two. I base that mostly just on personal observation, having seen such a big decline in it's usage during my lifetime. It really was fostered by the European immigrants anyway, and todays newcomers are mostly from
Asia and Latin America. Not too many Mexican grocers are going to offer you a sample of their homemade chorizo s-ahhh-sage these days in Chicago. Well they may offer it, but they won't pronounce it Chi-nam style.

I'd say the native Chicago accent (like the one you hear when CPD officers walk into the donut shop) is probably on its way out, as those old ethnic divisions are becoming less and less important. But I don't think the Great Lakes northern vowel shift accent is in any danger of going away. If anything, it's probably getting stronger. You can actually hear it from some people from the NYC metro area as well, which I wasn't expecting until I heard it firsthand.

Immigrants often adopt accents in peculiar and unpredictable ways. Most of the second-generation Mexican Chicagoans I've met have the standard Chicago-area accent with the nasal fronted vowels. A lot of Asians, on the other hand, have regional accents that don't make any sense. I have a friend who moved from India with her parents as a child, speaking no English before age 7. She's only ever lived in the Chicago suburbs, yet her accent is almost unmistakably that of the Bay Area. I have no idea how that happened.

[ChiNaan]

Originally Posted by JBVirtuoso

But I don't think the Great Lakes northern vowel shift accent is in any danger of going away.

Agreed. When I moved to the area several years ago I heard it everywhere, constantly. Now I don't notice it as often, which makes me fear that I might be doing it, too. Strangely I notice it even more with people who live in the suburbs (including NW Indiana) and SW Michigan than in the city itself. This may be because a much higher percentage of the people I know in the city are from other places than the people I've met from the burbs.

Originally Posted by JBVirtuoso

You can actually hear it from some people from the NYC metro area as well, which I wasn't expecting until I heard it firsthand.

Interesting. The map on Wikipedia shows it extending through Connecticut and Rhode Island, but I thought that was a bit of a stretch. The accents of the few RI people I've known sound more like Boston accents to me. When I think of NYC metro accents I think of NJ, Brooklyn, and Long Island accents, which all sound about the same to me, but I'm sure sound different to people from those places.

Originally Posted by JBVirtuoso

yet her accent is almost unmistakably that of the Bay Area.

I'm curious, what is a Bay Area accent? Northern California all sounds very accent-neutral to me. For that matter, the whole West Coast sounds accent-neutral to me, unless you count the ValleyGirl/surfer thing in segments of the SoCal population. I'm apparently missing something, which is weird since I'm not from there. I find all of this stuff to be fascinating.

[jwaiter]

In Ireland the letter H is pronounced HACHE whereas we say ACHE (ch as in charter), as a child I didn't know this and thought my grandma was always saying it wrong, now I know college educated Irish and I realize that's the way it's taught.