most distinct regional dialect

I hate to be a pooty parper, but as novelist_wannabe points out in his initial post, these are dialects.

Accents come from other countries.

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Here's what my dictionary says about accents...

"a mode of pronunciation, as pitch or tone, emphasis pattern, or intonation, characteristic of or peculiar to the speech of a particular person, group, or locality: French accent; Southern accent."

 

Western Maryland has a distinct dialect.

as an aside, I always found this subject fascinating. I remember reading about experts who can tell exactly where you are from, based on your dialect.

 

I was going to bring that up. I've always noticed that the people I know from Penn. place an accent on different parts of a sentence than the rest of the world.

I'm still going to go with cajun though. I never really noticed how different it was until I started listening to zydeco. I still can't understand the words.

 

Maybe Bubbler remembers the guy from one of the Milwaukee papers who used to write a column about nothing but examples of Milwaukee-ese. My Milwaukee relatives loved those columns.

 

Lived in the South most of my life, and as most have said, there are many distinct accents/dialects. One thing I've noticed is that in Georgia, the accent is almost always on the first syllable -- PO-lice, CE-ment, THEE-ayter (theater to you and me), IN-surance, UM-brella. And the L sound is often dropped -- Golf is pronounced GOF, help is pronounced HEP, wolf is pronounced WOOF, school is pronounced SKOO.

As far as the Northeast goes, the New England accent is very different than the New York accent. For some reason, a lot of Southerners seem to get them confused or think they're the same.

I love when Letterman makes fun of the Indiana accent by saying ``warsh'' for wash and ``spatial'' for special.

And I took a trip to Wisconsin a couple years ago and had to hold myself back from cracking up every time the locals started talking about the Pyaaaaackers.

Linguistics lesson over.

 

Oh, yeah, about Pittsburgh. It seems half the NFL coaches and writers are from Pittsburgh (or Western Pa.), and it's easy to tell which ones just by listening to them. Shout out, Len Pasquarelli!

 

Having spent quite a bit of time around people who speak both, I'd have to say Cajun over Pittsburghese, too. More distinctive and it sounds better, though I could not understand a word some people said the first time I was in Louisiana.

Pittsburghese does have more made-up or rarely-used words, such as slippy and gumband.

I will say I strongly prefer y'all over yinz (or younz, choose your spelling).

By the way, has anybody heard of a Cajun accent (or dialect, whichever you prefer) or a person who speaks with one it being referred to as a yat? I never heard it when I was down there, but I have since. It refers to their habit of saying "Where y'at?" as a greeting.

 

See my above post, Bob. Man was Alex Thien, and he wrote the Good Morning! column in the Sentinel for about 200 years.

And poin, is western Maryland where the name of the state is "Mur'lin," or is that general throughout the state?

 

I think some of those go beyond just Georgia. IN-surance, for sure. I remember that one well from my time in Cajun country.

 

IN-surance (for your home or VEE-hickle).
VEE-hickle (car or truck).
TEE-v (200 channels and nothin' worth watchin').
Cuh-SEEN-uh (where you gamble).
BREW-sard (Brew-SARD to everyone else).
FRY-dee (the day after THURS-dee and before Sayerdee).

 

I feel sorry for the folks from states that don't have distinguishable accents. Or are there differences but just not that noticeable?

Florida? Um... unless you're talking the southern part of the state, and that's called spanish.

Arizona? ??

Oregon? ?? ...