It's a amusing to do a search for posts mentioning 'Wisconsin accent' on Facebook to see the banter. Like today:
"Dear Radio: It's great you have local commercials with the actual business owners on it - however you might want to make sure they don't have a horrible Wisconsin accent, especially if they are selling TOyOta COrOllas, lol."
"The people here in AZ say we have an accent. hellooo, we're from wisconsin we sound like the people on the news!!"
>LOL LOL LOL U DO have an accent!! Your from Wisscoonnnsin, all naselly. I had some one explain how we talk when I moved to AZ. I just never noticed it before it was pointed out.
"wants a wisconsin accent. It's all i've heard for the past 3 days and i can't get enough of it. i'm practicing as we speak."
"thinks it is very funny when someone with a thick WI accent says, "Comstock, Wisconsin, lol"
"It's impossible to hate a black man with a wisconsin accent."
And of course all the posts have comments from their Wisconsin friends arguing that they don't have accents. I think it's an endearing dialect.
And BB, graphic design is what has kept me in Columbus, OH - though I want to move back to Wisconsin SOOO bad. But for our field, it's not even comparable how much more stability and opportunity is here. A host of major fashion retailers and the food industry have their HQ here: Limited Brands, Victoria's Secret (my wife designs at VS), Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, Express, White Barn, Justice/Limited Too, Wendy's, White Castle, Donato's, Max & Erma's and the countless ad agencies and local marketing companies that support them. It's also a hub for insurance and banking with Nationwide and JP Morgan Chase here along with the slew of governmental and educational positions with it being the capitol and having the 2nd largest Univ in the country, Ohio State here.
We've found the economy here to outright trump any reason to move back to Wisconsin - a wealth of great paying design positions. Excluding Chicago, it's the best city for a graphic designer IMO between the coasts.
Maybe I need to move there. I really want to get out of WI. I hate really cold winters. It stopped being fun when I became an adult. Anyway, I know a few people that moved to Ohio that laugh at everything shutting down over an inch of snow. Milder than our nasty winters here.
Michigan accents are what they speak on the news. Not much different than WI really. I'm pretty sure I could find FB pages on the southern accent. Could have fun with that, ya'll. I have to be honest, I think ya'll sounds dorky and I've gotten crap for saying that before, but I can have my opinion just like everyone else.
Maybe I need to move there. I really want to get out of WI. I hate really cold winters. It stopped being fun when I became an adult. Anyway, I know a few people that moved to Ohio that laugh at everything shutting down over an inch of snow. Milder than our nasty winters here.
Michigan accents are what they speak on the news. Not much different than WI really. I'm pretty sure I could find FB pages on the southern accent. Could have fun with that, ya'll. I have to be honest, I think ya'll sounds dorky and I've gotten crap for saying that before, but I can have my opinion just like everyone else.
I'll take a Wisconsin winter over ours any day of the week! Columbus is always in the top 20 cloudiest cities in the US. Last year, we had 190 days that included "Very Heavy Cloud Cover" (4th in the nation). That's 52% of the year. We had 293 days with "Cloud Cover". That's 80% of the year (Also ranked 4th). It's slightly warmer (only by like 8-10 degrees) and we don't get as much snow. But the difference between 2 degrees and -6 degrees is pretty insignificant when it's that cold. But the question I pose is this, would you rather have sunny -6 degrees with a coat of white snow or literally 19 days straight of heavy dark dreary clouds, 2 degrees with constant wet sleet?
Though it is funny how wussy the schools are. They already had 4 half days by the end of November and the first snow didn't fall until January here, lol. They postpone school the first few frosts on the ground in October and November because of concern over the roads, haha. Quite sad.
One of my sister's families lives in Bellefontaine, Ohio. We were there for a visit about 10 years ago and I wasn't very impressed with the area. It was such a boring drive through Illinois and Indiana because it's so flat with not much to see. I am spoiled by the beautiful hills and scenery of Wisconsin.
Years back I had a close friend that lived in Toledo, Ohio. He was a boilermaker and traveled alot for his job. I never noticed he had much of a different accent except for maybe a few words with a more southern slang. He never mentioned people here sounding different to him either. Interesting.
Saying 'Root' and 'roof' with the same vowel sound as in 'good'. The rest of the country says those with the 'oo' sound in 'loop'. Though, this can be found in Chicago as well.
Many in Wisconsin pronounce 'creek' as 'crik'.
After more in-depth reading on the Wisconsin accent, the key to the accent, which I've been calling "hard closed vowels" is technically called a Monophthong. Not surprisingly, German and Scandinavian dialects are unique because they are Monophthongal.
An example is going back to the word 'bag'. Most in the US pronounce this word as a Diphthong. A Diphthong is a vowel sound that is actually two sounds gliding into one such as in the word 'boil', the vowel is the two sounds 'oy' and 'uh' merged to be 'b-oy-uh-l').
But as in the example of 'bag', Wisconsinites change the two sound vowel into a one sound vowel. So as the rest of North America would generally say 'b-a-uh-g' (with the 'a' being the 'a' sound in bat), Wisconsinites change it to one vowel: b-ay-g.
The same is done in the Wisconsin pronunciation of all long 'o' vowels like 'boat', 'road', 'coat', etc. Differentiating the Northern Wisconsin and Yooper accent from the more Central and Southern dialect, the Yoopers have a tendency to create Diphthongs out of common Monophthongs.
I was camping this weekend and while talking to a woman around the fire for a while she asked me where I was from. When I said Wisconsin, she said "That makes sense". I was really paying attention to how I was speaking and didn't say any long Wisconsin 'o's and wondered why she asked. She pointed out how I said 'opportunity', 'not' and the word 'yah'. I was using the same sound in all three: 'AH-per-tunity', 'naht' and 'yah'.
For some reason the wide Wisconsin 'ah' sound is very glaring even though it seems like such a miniscule barely noticeable thing to me. Even though most in America bend that sound ever so slightly closer to 'aw', the stressed version of the 'ah' sound sticks out to them because it simply doesn't exist in most US dialects. And again notice the soft 'or' in 'opportunity' becoming a hard 'er' sound in the Wisconsin accent. The hard clear German r's are so prevalent when yer away from Wisconsin fer a while.
I found out today that the reason Wisconsinites use the word 'yah' is it's a straight lift from the German 'jah'.
I'm curious. Is there anybody here that can't identify the Wisconsin accent? Because this is STRONG to me. When I commented on it, my family said they couldn't pick up on anything which is almost unbelievable to me.
The Canadian vowel shift: 'cat' bending more toward 'keeyat', 'fer', up dere, dat, yah, stahp, the closed 'o' in 'Oh no'...
I realize there are far thicker Wisconsin accents than even this. But to hear that this guy doesn't have a clear-as-day Wisconsin accent is very interesting to me. Within a few words most of the country would instantly identify him as being from Wisconsin.
Doesn't sound like most people around here to me. Sounds more northern Minnesota accent. You never know where that guy grew up either.
I don't say dere, dat, dis, that sounds dumb to me. I'm more likely to say for than fer. My yah sounds more like yeah. Keeyat sounds southern since they tend to take one syllable words and make them into two.
I'll take a WI accent any day over southern drawl. Now that's something I make fun of. Sorry for all you that love the southern accent, but it drives me nuts.
Certainly that guy has a thicker accent and has the more central/northern WI Scandinavian influences (cat becoming keyat, that becoming thyeat). Any time I go to Appleton or anywhere in central WI I hear countless people that sound like this. But yes the southern drawl is far worse, there's a lot of that where I live. Being from Kenosha, below is an example of what I would call a standard far SE Wisconsin accent. Virtually all of my friends from Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee sound just like this. They would all claim they don't have an accent but again notice how he is subtly doing all of the things mentioned in this thread.
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I have to be honest, I think ya'll sounds dorky and I've gotten crap for saying that before, but I can have my opinion just like everyone else.
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