Accents in the wrong place

[Jamie (K)]

On Thanksgiving I had dinner with friends, and I met an old woman who I thought was from Ireland. I listened to her very hard and concluded definitively that she was an Irish immigrant. Finally I asked her where she was born and raised, and it turned out I was all wrong. She was from a small town near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

When I was a child, my parents took the whole family on a trip through Pennsylvania, and I thought some of the people we met in the mountainous rural areas were from England, but they weren't.

[Torsten]

Hi Jamie, so are you saying that some Americans who born in the US still have a European accent? That's fascinating, isn't it? I mean, many Irish people have a very distinct accent and especially their intonation is unique in that they tend to raise their voices at the end of each sentence. At least, that's my impression.

How do you think it is possible for an American to preserve a 'European' accent when they are exposed to 'American' accents through the mass media?
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[prezbucky]

well when they came over from Europe, they had the accent.

In nearly every place in America, the original accent has since evolved away from a standard british accent... but apparently there are pockets where this evolution has not happened. That's neat.
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[prezbucky]

Or... in the case of Wisconsin/Minnesota/UP of Michigan (and the Mitten to an extent), since many of the settlers were Scandinavian or German, the accent base was Northern Germanic (as opposed to Brit/Irish/French, as in the South).
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[Yankee]

Hi Jamie

Do you happen to remember the name of the town?

I remember being out in the Midwest once and striking up a conversation with a stranger. After just a minute or two I asked her if she was from the Philadelphia area. Her eyes widened and she asked me in amazement how I knew. I'd suspected she was possibly from the Philly area almost right away since I'd lived in the Philly area as a kid. But it had ultimately been the woman's pronunciation of the word 'coat' that clinched it for me. I have yet to run into quite the same pronunciation of that particular 'o' sound anywhere else in the US.

Out of curiosity, how familiar are you (if at all) with the way people speak in Connecticut?

Amy
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Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Englishuser]

Hi Yankee,

You wrote:

[prezbucky]

The entire South has, basically, the same accent... in varying degrees. (Southern Florida is not really considered part of the South -- at least the Orlando and Miami areas)

Well, okay, there are subtle differences between, say, Alabama and Georgia... but to the untrained ear, they might be hard to comprehend. That is to say, a Southern accent is a Southern accent, basically.

There is one notable exception:

New Orleans, where it's been said that its denizens speak with a Northeast (New Yawk, New Joysey, Bastin, etc.) accent.

How the heck did that happen?

Enquiring minds want to know.
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