Sheila consoles me in Do You Hear What I Hear?:
Don’t feel to bad, I’ve never noticed KO having an accent. As for Ohio, I’ve lived here all my life and I haven’t a clue what rrgirl and orinenglish are talking about. I’ve lived in the Northeastern, Northwestern, and Southeastern parts of the state and everybody sounds the same to me.
Thanks. I don’t feel so bad now. I like to think I’m a pretty good listener.
But perhaps I’m not.
I only scored 7 out of 12 (58%) on this Regional dialect quiz.
I think you have to be from in the state to notice the variations in Ohio accents. Especially if you’re from the northern part of the state. Because you don’t want people thinking you talk like “those hicks down south.” LOL.
Comment by orinenglish — 8 February 2007, Thursday @ 20:22:13 |
Although I have to admit, that doesn’t explain Sheila hearing no differences. Sheila, do you have a tin ear? Just funnin’ ya.
Comment by orinenglish — 8 February 2007, Thursday @ 20:23:03 |
actually, I spent my entire childhood and youth near the PA/NY state line within a large extended family whose members rarely travel more than 50 miles from their birthplaces. I’ve lived in northern Ohio for about 35 years (I had to get away from all those relatives), and have traveled and worked throughout many small Ohio towns. I love how folks in a town near Toledo, Genoa, say jen-OH’-uh; a little town near Kent (kint) is pronounced man’-too-way but spelled Mantua, and how out-of-towners and uppity folks say “ky-uh-HO-ga” with a tonal shift up on the accent, but many locals say ku-Ha’-guh in almost two syllables, when they talk about the elections board in Cleveland. I can’t quite get the tune of Gnaddenhutten. its not how it looks. I think that John Glenn has about the loveliest native accent in the state. occasionally someone asks me where I’m from. I tell them I was born in Ohio. I was. and I came back.
I took the regional dialect test, and scored 50%. looking at the map, I had a hard time believing that the entire western third of the continental US could have only one regional accent. so I poked through the links and found a page discussing west coast accents. the writer explained that the pacific northwest accent sounds like a cross between CA and Canada, and the accents are changing with each generation because there aren’t many communities with a long-standing stable English speaking population. OK. look out Portland, valley-speak is coming. I also learned what the criteria is for a regional accent, according to the people who designed the test…it comes down to a few vowel sounds, and the location of the speakers anatomy in which the sound is formed. so TX and TN get lumped together because of the way they say the word bat. Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo are in the same dialectic region because of the way they/we say cot and caught. and folks from St. Louis have no accent. Okey-dokey.
I love this stuff. thanks for giving me something besides door hardware and self-leveling floor fillers to think about, though I love door hardware, too.
Comment by rrgirl — 9 February 2007, Friday @ 00:27:32 |