13 American Accents Ranked EASIEST to HARDEST to Understand
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🇺🇸 American accents never cease to baffle me. Some are soothing, some are confusing, and some are downright unintelligible! How well do you know your American accents? I scoured the country to find 13 different accents and ranked them from the easiest to hardest to understand. Check it out, then let me know in the comments how your American accent skills stack up.
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Which American accent is the hardest to understand?
0:22 – Accent #1
1:45 – Accent #2
2:54 – Accent #3
4:40 – Accent #4
6:10 – Accent #5
7:14 – Accent #6
9:05 – Accent #7
12:24 – Accent #8
14:33 – Accent #9
16:00 – Accent #10
17:52 – Accent #11
20:27 – Accent #12
22:20 – Accent #13
📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
🎬 Video Clips:
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Can you understand these accents? 👉 https://youtu.be/Bl8ksfLfW6Q?si=ZTjbdIbMvPE5OwgG
A lot of those Gen Am examples were just softer versions of regional accents, but I could tell them all apart (as an American). One even seemed like a fake American accent (there was a vowell in there I’ve never heard from an American). Jen Anniston is the only one I think can pass as actually Gen Am from those . To my American ear those were NOT all general… they were regional, just not heavy. When you live in it you can still hear an accent in people who ‘have a little bit of an accent”…. honestly, living here, most of the regional accent examples are definitely representative of people with strong or heavy regional accents, but most Americans with regional accents have much more subtle ones (that apparently, people from overseas cannot differentiate from Gen Am…. oh, but Americans can tell, we can tell).
the accents were way easier to understand than this messy video. are you listing accents? states? cities? this video is so hard to follow and hard to tell when you’re switching from one accent to the next one. the editing needs some serious improvements.
Idaho , Utah , Arizona western accent is very distinct but varying in depth.
NYC and upstate NY(anything past Albany) have completely different accents.
MISSED:
Kentucky
Alabama (Birmingham)
Alaska
Hawaii
Virgin Islands (Crucian/Thomian)
Res (Indian Reservations)
Canadian (west, mountain, plains, Ontario, Newfie, Arcadian, quebec)
Puerto Rico
Samoan.
The accent from the old Western film is more of a combination of transatlantic Hollywood accent and a Texan accent.
And Katherine Hepburn and Reginald Garner were taught to speak “Mid-Atlantic”
that’s a new thing calling it mid atlantic or transatlantic. Someone made that up in recent years.
What is a transatlantic Hollywood accent? Transatlantic referred to east coast to europe. Old Western films was whatever the actor was, and their own accent.
THere wasn’t any focus on accent.
@@morriganinoregon Reginald Gardiner? The English actor?
Anyway, that label mid atlantic is new in the last couple decades.
From movie viewers not grasping the accents.
Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis,etc were not taught Mid Atlantic, there was no such thing in those days. There was no such thing when I went to acting conservatory in the 70’s.
It mainly was their own New England accents. Hepburn from upper class Connecticut family. Davis from Massachuetts.
But added to that, there was what was called ‘Standard Stage’ English.
Standard English is same as General English, just contemporary.
Standard Stage was American actors doing the classics, like Shakespeare,
without doing an English accent. So it was more proper..a bit.
But it also was that in those days the majority of hollywood actors came from stage in New York,where they performed everything from the classics, contemporary dramas/comedies, Shakespeare,etc.
So you got a majority who has that type of sound to their speaking,
both from being from the East Coast, and from standard stage English.
But it wasn’t all. Spencer Tracy was originally from Wisconsin, and he just kept whatever accent he had from there. I forget where Clark Gable was from, but it was general. He didn’t have a stage background first to get standard stage english.
My uncle from New Mexico spoke like John Wayne. I never knew where the John Wayne accent comes from.
There was actually one guy who taught all the actors how to speak like a Texan. Bob Hinkle. He thought he couldn’t be in movies cause of how he sounded but they wanted him as a dialect coach 😂
He tought all the Hollywood stars in the 50s
As an American the most difficult accent I’ve ever heard came from rural Louisiana.
The accents you labeled as Minnesota and Upper Peninsula Michigan are heard all over the upper Midwest including Wisconsin. In fact one of the clips you used for Minnesota actually was a clip of someone from Wisconsin.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing haha. And I personally would have put the Louisiana accent as the most difficult. 😂😂
I knew that had to be Wisconsin. Thanks for the clarification.
Live in MN traveled to upper peninsula of Michigan
Much common but there’s subtle differences between MN Wisconsin and upper Michigan
feeling validated. I would have sworn one of those was Wisconsin.
They’re also similar to the accents spoken across the border in southern Canada.
I grew up in northeastern Wisconsin not too far from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I left when I was 9. Forty-five years later I was in the wilds of Syria and ran into some American diplomats. They asked me where I was from. I said Colorado where I currently live. The wife looked perplexed and said, “Are you sure you aren’t from Wisconsin?” That was just one of the many times strangers have pegged my accent even though I haven’t lived there for many decades!
Mine comes out with certain words and I haven’t lived there in 33 years.
I moved away from Milwaukee as a kid to North of Eau Claire, and I was ordering something in a diner in Nebraska one day, and the guy at the table next to me asked me if I was from Southern or northern Wisconsin, because I sounded like both.
That skit he played was actually about Wisconsin. He should have mentioned that.
Even though these accents differ alot, Americans can still easily understand almost all of them, aside from a few isolated areas. I’m a Connecticut natives and don’t have an accent at all. It’s basically the language of the standard television news presenter, very “correct” yet there only a couple of people in this video I had a hard time understanding
Before watching, I’m going to guess Louisiana Cajun accent as the most difficult to understand
Yeah this was kinda a destined pick because Cajun/Creole/Bayou isn’t even English. It’s the only accent on the list where half the actual words aren’t English. No wonder it is hard to understand, because it is pulling from a bunch of non-english vocabulary.
The way I explain American accents is that the majority of Americans (especially now because of the internet) are beginning to be standard American English. This is, like the video says, is the accent we hear constantly on TV. It shares vocabulary, cadence, and emphasis. Then you have regional accents which all still pull from commonly understood vocabulary, but some sounds are altered, cadence can vary, and emphasis differs. This is for places like west coast (SoCal) and East Coast too (NYC). It’s essentially the same vocab just sounding differently.
Then you got the southern accent. Which still shares the majority of its vocab with the rest of the country but southerns speak in colloquial phrases (idioms) to convey meaning. The words on their own dont carry intelligble meaning, but put them together and you’ve got a profound phrase that only southerners get.
And then you got Cajun, which doesn’t share its vocab with the rest of the country, and therefore the hardest to understand, because honestly it isn’t English. It’s an amalgamation of multiple languages where no particularly one dominates the vocabulary. So Cajun is like 30% English. 30% French, 20% Canadian emphasis, and 20% local colloquial phrases.
That’s why Southern/Appalachian and Cajun are the hardest to understand. Southererns share the same vocab, but we speak in idioms. Cajuns speak a different language altogether. And the rest of the country essentially retains the same vocab but their vowels and cadences and emphasis’ are different.
As a southerner, I feel it is honestly the best all-around accent. I can understand SoCal, Brooklyn, Boston, Minnesota, Midwest, Texas, southern states, and even Appalachia. I understood every word from the Appalachia segment. I understood every single accent in the video except for the Cajun and NC outer banks.
I stand out if I’m in a crowd of northerners or west coasters, but I understand them all quite easily. Now if I take them to rural South or Appalachia, they’d be so lost, but I’d be right at home with my southern speakers.
i guessed the same, i figured Appalachian or Louisiana
@@gtb81.Appalachian is a good vote too
By far yes!
Remeber that potato chip adv read by the Cajun? “… hot guar-awn-teed…”
My favorite accent story was told by my geography professor. She’s a black woman from suburban Texas. Maybe a slight accent, otherwise very standard. She married an Irish-American as pale and red-haired as can be, from downtown Milwaukee. So when people talk to them on the phone and meet in person later, they’re very confused. They completely assume that the husband was black and she was white. She had a great sense of humor about it.
Someone in a music class I took in college easily could’ve passed for Gabriel Iglesias from a distance, but hearing him talk you’d hear mostly Yooper. Half Mexican, half Brazilian, but no accent from either.
My father-in-law was raised in So. Texas but didn’t have a Texas accent. The rest of his family – almost unintelligible. Then throw in the grandparents from the Old Country and a war bride from Wales and you had a real mash-up.
@@catzenhousewhere in so Texas
There is a boxing champion from Memphis, Tennessee named Caleb Plant. For starters most American boxers aren’t white. Memphis is also mostly African American. Also the name Caleb Plant? Caleb is married to a very attractive black woman,. Caleb is white. If you gave me all the info, except his race I would have lost a lot of money on that.
A small correction. the Cajun people were never French Canadian. They were Acadians from Acadia which is today’s Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. At the time of the expulsion of 1755-63 the Nova Scotia colony was an independent colony, (New Brunswick was part of Nova Scotia until 1784). The Canada’s (Upper and Lower) were separate colonies at that time and were not connected at all to Nova Scotia. So the Acadians from Acadia that ended up in Louisiana were never Canadians.
I always think of Evangeline when people speak about the Acadian expulsion. One of my favorite pieces of poetry.
Thanks for pointing that out. It is a common mistake and rather sloppy research.
@@rooseveltnut I always think of the song by the Band “Acadian Driftwood “, which tells the story and migration to the southern US of the Acadian people. Great song.
Another Catholic People persecuted by the English
Pretty great Peter Santenello episode/interview from spring ‘24 with some useful insights on this. I learned just what the OP cited.
I was a radio operator in the Coast Guard. I was born and raised in southern Virginia. As it happened, my first duty station was located in the Eastern Shore region of Virginia. I was 100% certain I knew the hardest American accents on your list. Tangier Island’s (Chesapeake Bay) fishing boat fleet was in our area of responsibility. We had a 24/7 on-call interpreter that we could patch into our radio communications when assisting these fishing boats. I worked several search-and-rescue cases with fishing boats from Tangiers, and the interpreters were invaluable.
The Smithsonian studied it, if I recall. Tangier Island has Elizabethan English caused by isolation.
#13 “Hoi Toid’rs” I heard also on Harker’s Island, NC, below the Outer Banks. aka – Downeasters region. The accent – dialect was even stronger before a bridge was built to the isand. Isolation.
@@bustedupgrunt1177″hoi toid’rs,” the phrase, sounds, in the mouth, like West Country, UK.
I thought of Smith Island, MD when I heard that accent! Didn’t realized OBX was like that, also as I always think of upper middle class having vacation home there.
So true! I remember a local commenting that it was a “rot qua’at not”. If you understood, you know Tangier island.
Not a correction, more of an addition. The General American Accent is spoken all over the Pacific Northwest.
Indeed! PNW is the epitome of General American Accent. Midwesterners tend to flatten their vowels.
Washington State University has the Edward R Morrow school of broadcasting. That’s where journalists go if they want to be on a national stage.
@@dgoins6 I did not know that.
You just think you don’t have a recognizable accent. Listen to the way Oregonians say Oregon and Portland and many other words. Easy to understand, yes but distinctive.
Yes, and not so much in the midwest. The midwest, for the most part, doesn’t have a super heavy regional accent, but does have a number of distinct flavors. There’s the grating, nasal a’s of Chicaaago-land (especially as you travel south of the city) the swallowed vowels of WI, the Canadian-esque OUs of MN, etc. NorCal and PNW is definitely more the home of “General American,” –at least, if you ignore NorCal’s tendency to pronounce “eggs” and “legs” as “aygs” and “laygs.” [Note: these are strictly personal observations over the years, having lived in SF, Chicago, Seattle, and Minneapolis.]
Texas has states inside the state that people not from Texas don’t know about, we got east Texas, west Texas, Central Texas, North Texas, south Texas, the panhandle, and the coast. Each one is very different
And different parts have a huge Hispanic influence.
I have lived my entire 67 years in Eastern Washington (the state, not that other Washington!)). I have been told that my part of the US (The Pacific Northwest) has NO accent at all. I am not sure how true that is.
I was in Cambodia in 2019. We were in line at one of the old temples. A man came up to me and said “Are you an American?? I just LOVE an American accent!” He was Australian. If he only knew how many accents we have here!
Texan here: I was in Germany this month, and heard an American accent from across the restaurant, and I knew they were from Texas and was pretty confident they were from Dallas. I introduced myself, and they confirmed they were from Dallas – absolutely can tell by accent where folks are from inside the state of Texas 😄
Heard a worker in Home Depot the other day in Colorado. He had to be from the Midland area. I asked and sure ’nuff, Midland.
I’m from Chicago. The Midwest definitely has variation. I can hear if someone is from Wisconsin or Minnesota or Iowa.
I’m from Ohio and you can I can attest that the Midwest accent from my state and Indiana, our neighbor to the West, is pretty different. But the difference between Buckeyes and our Southern neighbors in Kentucky is even greater. Even in Ohio you’ll hear differences depending on what part of the state the speaker is from.
@@RodericSpode I’m from Indiana (Indy) and I agree with you. I have friends who grew up in Ohio (Cleveland) and they really do pronounce some vowels consistently differently.
Yeah, these accents are far too broad. “Southern” is laughable, especially when you include Louisiana.
@@encycl07pedia- Yeah Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, North/South Florida— each distinct dialects. Locals can tell where in the south others are from.
Yes. I agree.
Talk about difficult accents, I submit to you…Cockney….
I was in Glasgow and the cabbie made like he couldn’t understand my “I watched a lot of TV” American accent. So, I leaned forward and said, “I know everyone in Europe watches ‘Star Trek’ and “Seinfeld’, so don’t even TRY to pretend you don’t understand me.” He very sheepishly took my friend and myself to the destination I requested.
As a German native speaker, Scotland was almost one of the worst regions for understanding (together with some regions of Australia). I’ve been working for US companies for a decade now and no issues there anymore but Scotland? Oh my ;).
(Besides, I never really watched Star Trek, only a bit of Seinfeld but never in English ;))
@@met0xff00Half of my family is Scottish and I still can’t understand some of them!😂
@@KiKi-tf8rv lol oh actually this is not too dissimilar from here in Austria where I struggled quite a bit with the dialects of my wife’s family for a few years. We now moved into this region and my kids… after two years my daughter I think finally starts to understand everything the teacher says
@@met0xff00 It really is difficult getting used to some dialects when it feels like it’s almost an entirely different language! I once lived in an area of the USA where I understood the Spanish speaking people better than the English speakers. I don’t speak Spanish.😂
Drove an 18 wheeler OTR, visiting each of the lower 48. Only person couldn’t comprehend was a Cajun store clerk near the Mississippi Delta.
My Waterloo was a cook in the Camelia Grill, New Orleans. He was not Cajun, tho.
Cajun accent 😂😂😂😂is the worst
Cajun accent 😂😂😂😂is the worst
Cajun accent 😂😂😂😂is the worst
I’ve never heard someone from southern California say supper unless they were transplants from somewhere else in the country. Mid-West usually.
We say dinner.
I’m from Northern California & my husband is Cajun. After 17 years together, I can understand him, but when he gets around his family, I’ll look at him and say “WHAT???”
My son in law is from central England called the Cotswalds. When he speaks rapidly, I can comprehend about 50% of his English.
I was born in California, but grew up in south Louisiana. When I was 9 years old, my parents divorced, and my dad moved back to California. I spent summers in California (San Francisco bay area) and the school year in Louisiana, near the Texas border and on the edge of Cajun country. When I was in college, I had a professor who was a connoisseur of accents and prided himself on being able to guess the place of origin by listening them. I was the only one in the classroom who stumped him.
Years ago an old fellow in the U.K. thought I was Canadian. When I told him I lived in N.Y., he said I must live right on the border of Canada. He nailed it, Buffalo!