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Most people I know or have come in contact with nationwide have lost any regional accent. I'm speaking of suburban or rural youth under 25 or so. The California "Valley" type speech patterns (quick, clipped speech; the overuse of "like" and a rising inflection) seems to have spread coast to coast. It's most noticeable among young women.
Apart from quick, I can't think of a similar accent. If anything, the type of speech I'm used to as a Northeasterner (and the type I have myself) is quick but very "slurred," more that there's plenty of assimilation and reduction. Finals and initials tend to blend into each other so as to keep speech at a rapid pace.
For the quiz, I got the "Northern" variety, but I've been told it's nearly impossible to detect any accent for me. While I think the quiz is pretty accurate, since I change vowel sounds for the same word seemingly at a whim, it's hard to pin down any type. I can easily tell if someone has a Chicago accent or really any Midwestern/Rust Belt one, though, so I'd assume that actually excludes me. I guess growing up in and around New York City kind of throws people off since our stereotypical accent is long dead.
I was born in 1991 and have received a few comments here in California about a slight Boston accent. And believe me, there are people my age who have thick handed Boston accents and what is weird about it is I think it's way more prevalent in girls than guys.
I'm in my mid-30s, and most people my age have a mild southern accent. People older than me tend to have a more pronounced southern accent. People younger than me tend to have a less pronounced accent or none at all.
Of course, this applies to those in urbanized areas.
I honestly think that the southern accent is dying out in the metropolitan areas with younger individuals.
We recently traveled to Nashville, and I couldn't help but note that most of the younger adults we interacted with did not have much of an accent at all. This is much the same in the Atlanta area. Only in the rural areas does it seem like many younger people (children and people in their early to mid-20s) are retaining a southern accent. A shame.
My sister has one of the deepest southern accents ever and she was born in 1991: ohhh blesss yowerr heart type of deep, and I have no accent at all. When asked where I was from in the navy and everyone was always dumbstruck when I'd say Atlanta they'd always say but you don't have an accent. I have no idea why she has such a deep accent.
I once met a woman from the Pacific Northwest, and when introduced to her friend, I was met with a "but you don't have an accent" after telling her that I was from the Atlanta area. I don't get that, as I sound mildly southern to my ears.
However, never in my travels has someone commented on my accent as being from the South. However, my father has had comments on many occasions.
I'm not saying it's Dixieland, but rural Missouri almost always has a "southern sounding accent that may not be completely southern", and this carries over into KC and STL. Think of how many people over the years moved to those cities from smaller towns in Missouri, brought the accents, the kids grew up with the accents. To an outside visitor, it is very prevalent and there is a marked difference compared to the English spoken in Des Moines or Omaha in a large percent of the residents.
Well first off, St. Louis has had an established unique accent basically since it was founded. It also has characteristics of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. I grew up 120 miles south of St. Louis and people notice when someone is speaking the St. Louis dialect. I have never heard anything southern in a typical St. Louis dialect. Where I'm from is a pretty good approximation of the north-south dialect divide. I've never been to Kansas City but I have never seen any evidence to believe that southern accents are spoken by KC natives. You are hearing the South Midland accent, which is significantly more midwestern than southern.
I think people make the mistake of thinking that since someone says "warsh" instead of "wash", or "Missour-uh" istead of "Missour-ee", it's automatically a southern accent. If someone uses "Missour-uh" and yet doesn't speak a southern accent, it's still not a southern accent.
In fact, I'm pretty sure the Missour-uh thing is most common in the western part of the state, not the southern part of the state. I took the quiz and it said southern and yet I pronounce it "wash" and "Missour-ee".
Even though the quiz said southern, I know most Missourians don't talk like me. They pronounce things a bit different than I do sometimes. I grew up very far south in the state.
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