# Ohio accent



## me82

Hello,

I have been listening to different kinds of American accents. I am not able yet to recognize what accent is from what State, but I have noticed I understand some more than others.

For some reason, I would like to understand the accent from Ohio better. But I am not sure to recognize it amongst other accents.

Can you please explain to me how to recognize it?

As for understanding it, this is hard sometimes... They speak so fast!! Do you have any advice for me to understand it better? Have you ever had the same difficulties than me with this accent or another?

I hope my thread is correct, this time. 

Thank you all in advance for sharing.


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## firecracker

I think some accent are easier to understand than others.. I work in a call centre and receive phone calls from all over the states.. and i usually understand everyone.. there are some differences that i can hear but i don't understand where they are from..
I only recognise those calling fron Boston.. don't know why!!

But this is an interesting topic.. does anyone know more about the different accents in the US?


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## Sabelotodo

I once read in the preface to a dictionary that the southern Great Lakes area and Central Plains of the United States (i.e. Most of Ohio, Indiana, southern Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska) have little or no accent.  I was smugly satisfied to read this because I had been saying for years that we are the ones who have no accent.  (I'm from northern Indiana, next door to Ohio.) In general, we pronounce words as they are written in the pronunciation key of a _Webster's Dictionary of American English. _ When an actor hires a voice coach or a businessperson hires a speech therapist to get rid of a regional accent, he is paying to learn to speak like us.  There is no quirk of pronunciation that comedians can use to caricaturize us.  We are completely ordinary...perfectly boring.  I suspect it comes from our tendency to follow the rules.  For generations our parents and school teachers taught us to use standard pronunciations as if they were the Ten Commandments.

There... that ought to stir up debate!


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## COLsass

I've heard all the radio voice personalities for NPR (National Public Radio) receive voice training in Ohio as well because it's the place with the most _neutral_ accent.  There's no such thing as _no_ accent.  However, I take some issue with applying the term neutral as well because it implies a kind of standard of normal that in my opinion can't really exist in English since it's so widely spoken and in constant flux.

In reality a lot of people have this accent as well BECAUSE many public schools, in the south and southwest in particular, hire teachers from the Northeast, that holy bastion of education.  Also people move around in the US so if you're in a call center you might be talking to someone from Little Rock, Arkansas who grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan!  

Strongest accents on my ear: Boston, Southern California, Texan, Queens.


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## river

For a start, see here http://www.blacktable.com/smith040407.htm


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## fenixpollo

Geographically, Ohio borders Pennsylvania to the West, so some Ohioans have some East-Coast qualities to their accent (e.g. longer, more open vowels).  It is also borders Kentucky and West Virginia, so some Ohioans have some Appalachian qualities to their accent (e.g. harder consonants; _warsh_ for wash).  It's also to the East of Indiana, so some Ohioans have some Midwestern qualities to their accent.

One might theorize that being such a crossroads makes Ohio a linguistic melting pot, as it were.

And yes, Virginia, *all* Ohioans have an accent.


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## morpho

I agree with fenixpollo. We *ALL* have accents, though some of us may not have one that is readily associated with a particular region.

I think it would be unwise to identify accents along political boundaries. The "Ohio" accent of which you speak doesn't begin/end at the state line, I'm sure.


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## me82

morpho said:
			
		

> The "Ohio" accent of which you speak doesn't begin/end at the state line, I'm sure.


 
Yes I know that, of course. I was calling it "Ohio accent" because I don't know where it starts/ends but I know I will go to North Ohio someday and I would like to learn to understand persons...

And in order to understand it, I need some practice... which is why I dare asking you peeps if you know any movie, TV show, celebrity, else where I can hear the accent that Ohio persons usually have, so I can look for it myself... Dear mods, I am NOT asking for "ressources" (whatever it means), but for *names*... in order to learn more English, which is on-topic on this message board.  

Anyway, I appreciated reading you guys! And the link posted is interesting!


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## rich7

Take a look at this you might find it interesting......

soorry here it is....

http://www.ku.edu/~idea/northamerica/usa/ohio/ohio.htm


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## me82

Oh my God!!! That is perfect!!! Thank you so very much Rich, that is even better than what I hoped to find! Many many many thanks!!!!!! :-D


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## foxfirebrand

Did this thread disappear when it was first made, several days ago? I made a post in it, and when I went back to the index page it was all gone. Now I see that what I wrote, off the top of my head, is pretty amply covered in rich7's link (what an interesting site!).

Anyway, here it is, for what it's worth:

There are at least four dialect regions in Ohio.  The major difference is between northern and southern. 

The northern (lakeshore) region is represented by people who speak a mid-Atlantic variant (in the far west, between Sandusky, say, and Erie, PA) and those (east of Cleveland) who speak an old-Midwestern "rustbelt" variant, common in urban centers between Chi-town and Motown.

The southern (Ohio Valley) region is also an east-to-west spectrum starting with an eastern Old Dominion (VA and WV) variant blending into the downriver-Ohio-Valley dialect around Cincinnati and Dayton, similar to a more Appalachian-derived dialect spoken in Kentucky on the other bank of the river.

I'm not being facetious here-- Ohio is a very peculiar and variegate linguistic zone, divided along lines of colonization and history (the Kentuckians tended to be Scots-Irish, those across the Pennsylvania border tended to be early German-speaking colonists, of which the Amish are the best known) and there is also a rural-vs-urban difference, compounded by a black-vs-white dialectic difference.

There isn't even a single, simple black AE dialect for Ohio-- the southern Ohio River Valley blacks have been there since Uncle Toby swam the floods in Antebellum days, the northwest zone echoes with the blues-lyrics patois of the great Delta migration in the 1930s and thereafter-- and the northeast is more like Pittsburgh, a region whose blacks didn't all pour up from the post-Civil-War South, but were part of an east-to-west migration from Eastern Seaboard cities. Mississippi-delta sharecroppers who picked up stakes and took the train or Hwy 61 to Chicago (and then drifted eastward to Motown) spoke one dialect, free blacks from Maryland (a non-Confederate but slaveholding state that technically wasn't covered by the Emancipation Proclamation, and whose slaves simply headed west in an act of unopposed revolt) spoke a whole nother idiom.

An audio file demonstrating an "Ohio accent" would be more a cacophany than a chorus, a sort of Carmina Burana without the music. 
.


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## me82

Hello Foxfirebrand,

<<Deleted - Rule #44>>

I am learning a lot more than I thought I would... thank you so much Foxfirebrand and everyone else!


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## me82

Well on this website, the "Ohio3" is the hardest to understand, don't you think?  ... I don't want the transcription yet, I've got to listen to it many times before... But damn, this is very hard!

This reminds me of a video I once watched and a character said "Let's ride" and I understood "That's right" hehehe... Is there anyone who misunderstands things like me? :-D


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## me82

<< Text deleted.  Rule #44 >>

COLsass, I am not sure why yours was deleted, but I remember you said I could ask for the transcription (which certainly is not why your post was deleted) so... I would like it for the "Ohio3"... Or at least the beginning... I have tried to understand but there are things he says too fast and not clearly...

Did anyone have a hard time understanding like me but finally understood with practice?  

Have a good day everyone!


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## keeprockin'

"I was smugly satisfied to read this because I had been saying for years that we are the ones who have no accent.  (I'm from northern Indiana, next door to Ohio.)"

Amen! Yes, I know we all have accents, but I've often felt the same way.

As for Ohioans being easiest to undestand, I was once on a raft and explaining what we should do if he hit a rock -- pretty important that people understand what I'm saying in this case -- and a couple people (East Coaster & Southwesterner) didn't understand what was going on because they thought I said "a rack" or "Iraq" (but I'm also from Chicago, that may be more to blame). Anyway in my experience and from what I'm trying to remember from linguistics class, long "a" is very characteristic of the Midwest. That and being friendly and not a "fly-over state," whatever those coast people say.


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## Jimmy007

Interesting topic!

It is normal that American people have different accents. I just recognized that people from south america have very soft voice compared to the one from the north.

Jimmy007


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## savanna

me82 said:


> COLsass, I am not sure why yours was deleted, but I remember you said I could ask for the transcription (which certainly is not why your post was deleted) so... I would like it for the "Ohio3"... Or at least the beginning... I have tried to understand but there are things he says too fast and not clearly...
> 
> Did anyone have a hard time understanding like me but finally understood with practice?
> 
> Have a good day everyone!


 
Ohio3 just happens to be MY accent, for the most part, seeing as I grew up near Marietta


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## Hockey13

Jimmy007 said:


> Interesting topic!
> 
> It is normal that American people have different accents. I just recognized that people from south america have very soft voice compared to the one from the north.
> 
> Jimmy007


 
 

No, we all speak exactly the same and like robots.


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## miranda.rae

Hey. I live in Ohio and I recently went to West Virginia and me and my friends were trying to do a West Virginia accent in the middle of some store lol. And some lady walked up to us and was like "WELL I BET YOU HAVE AN ACCENT TOO, LETS HEAR IT!" So me and my friend told her we are from ohio. and she got all quiet and walked away haha So I gues we dont really have an accent that is so noticible that anyone can make fun of it. Well my Mom is a flight attendent based out of Atlanta so she has picked up a southern twang now. So what ive noticed is.. southerners say soda. We say Pop. We talk fast compared to Southern people. We ask a lot of question that dont need to be answered ya know? (like that) Umm.. most of us dont say yes ma'am to adults or yes sir. (I do because i think it shows respect but im about the only one) I cant think of many others.. words like lawn and yard, creek, crick, and river.. washcloth and washrag.. southerers say ya'll and we definetly dont.. we hang shoes on telephone wires tied together by the laces to mark a gang or where someone died (Ive never seen that in places like florida but they might do that too) umm.. we dont wear cowboy hats lol.. So, sorry i rambled on, but im bored outta my mind So hope this helped a little, but it probably didnt haha well buh bye!


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## se16teddy

Hockey13 said:


> No, we all speak exactly the same and like robots.


No, it's the other way round. All robots, like Stephen Hawkin's voice synthesizer, sound like Americans. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100902105229AAqfIvs


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## amazzingamber

As a native Ohioan, it was at first hard to hear my own accent. But this is so far what I've noticed:

with words like Canton, Fulton, button, etc. we don't pronounce the Ts strongly. 

It's hard to explain in writing.


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## fenixpollo

amazzingamber said:


> with words like Canton, Fulton, button, etc. we don't pronounce the Ts strongly.


That's probably more of a generational thing. I hear a glottal stop in place of a "t" in the middle of words, not just from Ohioans but from people all over the US who were born since 1985 (and from a few born since 1975). It makes button sound like "bu'in", Canton like "can'in", Fulton like "ful'in".


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## amazzingamber

maybe, I've heard my friends from other places pronounce the Ts


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## TaylorP

The one thing I notice when I think of the Ohio accent is the no-existent "g" in the "-ing" (i.e. Talkin, runnin, callin). I live in central Ohio and no one I know pronounces the "g".


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## LilianaB

This is characteristic of some Brooklyn accents as well ( Brooklyn, NY).


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## dreamlike

TaylorP said:


> The one thing I notice when I think of the Ohio accent is the no-existent "g" in the "-ing" (i.e. Talkin, runnin, callin). I live in central Ohio and no one I know pronounces the "g".



I thought the same is true of every single English accent and the "g" in the "-ing" is usually elided.


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## Hau Ruck

It would also depend on what region of Ohio is being put into question.  

Where I currently live, Cincinnati (southern Ohio/KY border), there is a hint of southern twang.  They also tend to pronounce certain words such as "fire" as "faar" and "creek" as "crick".  Many people in the northern regions would not want you to associate their speech with that of the southern portion.

In the north, they tend to have more of an Illinois/Michigan/Wisconsin accent.


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## merquiades

Hello. Here is a study on Ohio English which might add some useful research data to this discussion.  Apparently the state is linguistically rich. The author speaks of four different accents in Ohio going from north to south.


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## berndf

*Moderator note: Thread moved to EHL*


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