7 Difficult American Accents You’ll NEVER Guess
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How good are your American English listening skills? Can you figure out where these accents are from? Brag in the comments and let us know!
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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Intro
0:23 – Accent #1
2:25 – Accent #2
4:00 – Accent #3
5:27 – Accent #4
7:55 – Accent #5
9:29 – Accent #6
11:13 – Accent #7
SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
Video Clips:
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YOOPER
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I really appreciate you content. Because of you, my interest in (foreign) languages really began to start (apart from English) and know I started learning French. Thank you Olly!
Happy to hear that!!
Bonne chance! Ne t’inquiète pas pour la conjuguaison: on n’utilise pas les 16 ou 17 temps à l’oral.
Up for another challenge?
https://youtu.be/7SJ-wTR2H6M?si=YnLivmxTd8_HlmTb
When I was growing up in the 1960’s, Geechee, what Gullah is called in Georgia, was the common dialect & accent, so it sounds normal to me.
We used to say “Soon this morning”, instead of “Early this morning”. Not sure, if that’s from Geechee or not?
The Ogeechee River is around the coast of Georgia, so Geechee may have the same root or even be named for the river?
I love you mentioning our dialect. It’s never called Yoopernese. I’m an Ojibwe-Yooper and this was accurate-ish. We have our own flare of it on the rez. It’s the Central to the West of the Upper Peninsula. Very well den, very well.
I moved from NYC to Maine a few years ago and there have been times when I had to ask a Mainer to repeat themselves several times because I just could not understand them! Most people around me just have a subtle New England accent, but there are some Mainers whose families have been here for generations and their accent is particularly strong (much stronger than in your example). It truly is a struggle for me to understand what they are saying.
Wait until you have been here 40 years, you’ll do fine.
Yeah, and maybe in forty years I’ll have made a friend or two. Mainers sure do keep to themselves. Been here a few years and only have a few acquaintances, but no close friendships yet.
I have an aunt that’s lived up there for as long as I can remember. She would say we could go get in the cah (car), and all sorts of other interesting things.
@NYME I’m sorry to hear that! It is a definite thing. I’ve made friends through joining groups over the years. I also lived in NYC for a long time before I moved here. That was a pretty lonely place for me.
“Skun m’nuckles” = “I skinned my knuckles”
“Tweu(r)nt so good” = “It wasn’t very good” (where “-eu-” is a vowel sound a little like a German umlauted o)
“Nummuz a hake” = “Not too bright” (i.e., “Numb as a hake”)
I’m a first gen African but nothing sounds better than that female Southern twang. I just love it.
I guessed 1 right; 2 I thought was somewhere in the Appalachian; 3 I actually thought was Arizona. AZ Latinas and Miami are pretty similar.
My grandmother born in 1934 actually spoke the Southern aristocracy accent she got from her parents who were born in Mobile, Alabama around 1910. Instead of “TV shows” she watched “teelaveesion proagraams.”
Violetta says I creep like the kudzu vines that are slowly but surely strangling our Dixie
So she sounds like the governor of Alabama? Kay Ivey?
@Tuvok No, my grandmother’s accent doesn’t sound like Kay Ivey. Ivey has a more standard Southern accent that’s not as specific.
A bit like Shelby Foote?
About the Gullah accent: At the end of the 1700s, many British loyalists fled the United States to the Bahamas with African enslaved people which is why the Gullah accent in America is very close to the Bahamian accent. As a Bahamian-American, I call us “American-agains” (we came to America, left, and came back again)
I’ve travelled the area he says the Gullah accent exists & I can’t say that I have ever heard it spoken. Is it spoken extensively or in a very limited area. And is it something that is spoken just in closed company? Just curious. THX
@Terry B The accent is mostly on the coastal islands of the region.
@gaotian108 Got it THX – I never visited the islands. He was showing the accent was spoken inland a bunch – wishful thinking – I guess-:)
It sounds a lot like Bahamian dialect. I wondered how they could develop separately and yet sound so similar.
I am not familiar with any of the islands. Can you name several of them that are easy enough to access for the mainland.
I grew up with a typical Midwest American accent (Southern Minnesota) and found some of these difficult to understand. They remind me of parts of Scotland and Northern England that way. One I guessed right was New Orleans. I’ve been through parts of Southern Louisiana and it really is a different spin on the language.
When it comes to regional accents, I’ve noticed big differences between rural and urban areas. In Atlanta, for example, I didn’t hear thick Southern accents. In rural Georgia, I did. In my home state, there obviously is a bit of the Scandinavian/Germanic influenced accent, but not nearly to the level depicted in the Fargo movie and tv series. They were either overdoing it for effect or they just couldn’t get it. The reality is that it’s not so pronounced among younger people or those in Minneapolis, but it is very pronounced in older people and as you get closer to Canada.
I can only speak for English because I’m an uncultured moron, but it seems that there are common accents that everyone can understand and then regional accents. For American English, it would be what you hear on CNN. I think everyone can pick that up even if they don’t speak that way. For British English, I think it would be Olly’s accent. I can clearly understand every bit of that. Cockney, Scotland, Northern England; not so much. I’d need time to get used to it. If you’re learning English as a non-native language, then I don’t envy you.
Yeah, Olly speaks in the RP (received pronunciation) accent. Back in the day people from different areas of the UK having different regional accents and who wanted a career in broadcasting were forced to learn RP, because it’s considered to be accent-less, and thus easily understandable. However, these days it’s no longer the case, and so we hear a lot of accent varieties from different newsreaders etc., probably for reasons of equality and inclusion than anything else. This accent is also naturally spoken mainly in the south east of England.
Born and raised in Flint, Michigan. Sharp division between the UP and LP in culture and dialect! While they are called Yoopers, we are referred to our northern friends as Trolls – as in, the trolls under the bridge (the Mackinac Bridge).
Flint’s own accent is a bit southern in some people for being so far north, thanks to a lot of folks from Georgia, Arkansas, and Tennessee moving north to work at GM between the 30’s through the 50’s or so.
Don’t forget Missouri! There’s that whole neighborhood at Bristol and Fenton Rds that’s called “Little Missouri”.
A lot of Southeastern Michiganders also do that glottal stop that’s really prominent in Cockney English. It’s not Brighton it’s Bri’en. Not Fenton it’s Feh’in.
Our vowels are really nasally, too. I’ve heard it call “the Michigan Uni-vowel” before.
Here in Canada, the province of Newfoundland has the most distinct accent that is sometime incomprehensible to the rest of Canada. The inhabitants of Nfd are descendents of Ireland and Scotland from 1700s and 1800s. One time my 6-year-old asked her friend’s mother who was from Nfd, why “newfies” spoke differently. Her reply: “We think the English speak proud.”
As a teen in the 1990s, I made a Canadian friend at a summer camp. While Americans at the time were fond of “Blonde” jokes, Canadians told “Newfie” jokes!
I’d love to see you talk about the Memphis or Atlanta/Florida accents (the AAVE versions). They are the strongest southern accents I’ve heard, I can not even understand them sometimes
The Miami accent is also very similar to pockets of accents in former mill towns in Massachusetts which have had large influx of people from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and more recently Haiti which has created an accent that is so so so similar to the Miami one and completely from the Chicano accents found in areas with large Mexican populations in the south west.
Mainer here. There is something to the Maine accent that is incredibly difficult for people “from away” to imitate. It’s something about the diphthongs, the intonation and the actual position that the mouth is in that makes it very hard to replicate unless you’ve spoken it or heard it your whole life. It’s linguistically such a fascinating and wonderful accent/dialect with very few speakers nowadays.
Awesome! Gullah Geechee! Also, Irish has influenced so many accents and dialects! We need to protect our endangered and minority languages, dialects, and accents!
So glad to see an example of an Upper Midwest accent! The accent where I live in Minnesota is very similar. This regional accent is quite distinct and yet it’s very rarely brought up, and precious few examples of it exist in any sort of media. I’m proud of where I live so I’m happy to see it get some attention!
Hey, I want to point out something interesting, I’ve noticed that in all the American accent videos I’ve watched, there’s rarely any mention of a unique American accent that I’m quite familiar with: the Hawaiian accent. It’s fascinating how this distinctive accent, influenced by the rich cultural blend of Hawaii, often gets overlooked in discussions about American accents.
Also, they have their own district form of pidgin English.
Reckon it’s almost more of a Pacific Islands grouping than what we think of when we say American accents, but you have a point there.
I’m from Maryland and we have what we call the Chesapeake or MidAtlantic accent. It seems like a mix of the Jersey/New York kinda blunt sound with a general southern US accent and mix in some African American slang and pronunciation.
It’s fascinating, thank you for this video. My Spanish journey has led me to be fascinated with my own language
I’m from the USA and I had difficulty understanding everything they were saying (all 7 accents). I’ve lived in California, Oregon, Oklahoma, and Texas but admittedly have not toured the eastern part of the country much. Wow! I learned a lot today.
I’m Canadian , and I find that some of those “Accents” occur within Canada as well…and not by affectation.
Yooper for instance sound like much of western Ontario in such places as Thunder Bay, Sault Ste, Marie and Sudbury.
The Maine dialect sneaks across the border too, into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
That Piratey accent starts to sound like Newfoundland Irish.
Much of western Canada is influenced by Mid-west America, where as Eastern Canada has much more Irish, Scots and French influence.
Thank you for another lovely video. Lifelong Californian but I have traveled around the country and have always been fascinated with the variety of accents. In California alone we have a variety (and evolving) that range from the standard Western to Chicano and different Asian American accents. So many people have moved here from all over the country and world. There are even remnants of Southern accents in the Central Valley.
As a native Yooper who is always expecting to never see the Yooper dialect to make an appearance, I was very happy to see it included in the video, thank you for bringing our dialect to the spotlight.
However, in my entire life of living in the UP and speaking Yooper, I have never heard it referred to as “Yoopanese” in any other form than a joke/mockery, or from non-Yoopers who aren’t aware.
Anywho, have a nice day, eh!