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Do people from Cleveland (NE Ohio) have an accent?

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Pop or Soda

  • Pop

    Votes: 53 82.8%
  • Soda

    Votes: 11 17.2%

  • Total voters
    64
I have heard that too. I go to school in Columbus and a lot of people make fun of how I say my A's as well. They say I hold it longer than other people do. I never noticed it until someone pointed it out though.
 
My uncle is a linguist, and he wrote this article. There is a part where he asked people to rank how they speak, and people from Michigan circled Michigan on a map and they said that is where people speak Normal.

http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/prejudice/attitudes/

Saying you don't have an accent is silly. If anything you have to ask what is the standard? We aren't even the country that English originated in. If anything people who speak the Queen's English don't have accents. It is not easy to hear your own, because it can only be compared to something else, and that something else is foreign to you.
 
I heard we also add words in our sentences.
Them: where is my jacket?
Us: where's my jacket at?
 
there is most definately a cleveland accent. As Chardon says, the vowels are sort of elongated. Not everyone has it though....its kind of a weird mishmash as to how thick it is. I would almost say its more tied to class (IE: working class, middle class, etc). Seems the working class is thicker to me
 
I'm from New Jersey and don't have the accent that you would imagine. I fall into the category of people you hear talking on TV and can't tell what the hell part of the country they are from. Just a neutral kind of American speech pattern that is hard to dicern.


My wife's family is from Ohio/Western PA and they all say Pop for soda and buggy for a grocery store cart. Drives me insane because nobody around here uses either term.
 
Buggy for grocery cart? That's absurd.

But as for the pop vs. soda...

We can all agree that the elongated term is soda pop, correct?

Now think about how we speak... I can talk about a blue ball, a round disc, or a swimming pool.

In any of these cases, if I were to shorten the term for the object I was talking about, would I use "Blue, round, or swimming"? No-- I'd use ball, disc, or pool.

Therefore, referring to soda pop as soda is just nonsensical. Silly East Coast. But heck, let's all just go to the West Coast and call it a soft drink.
 
I heard we also add words in our sentences.
Them: where is my jacket?
Us: where's my jacket at?

No, that's just poor grammar ...

And yes, there is a "NE Ohio" accent. Ever watch Betsy Kling on Channel 3 News? Hers is VERY noticeable. Lots of short a sounds. Same for Mark Johnson on Channel 5 News.
 
Buggy for grocery cart? That's absurd.

But as for the pop vs. soda...

We can all agree that the elongated term is soda pop, correct?

Now think about how we speak... I can talk about a blue ball, a round disc, or a swimming pool.

In any of these cases, if I were to shorten the term for the object I was talking about, would I use "Blue, round, or swimming"? No-- I'd use ball, disc, or pool.

Therefore, referring to soda pop as soda is just nonsensical. Silly East Coast. But heck, let's all just go to the West Coast and call it a soft drink.

It's a PA thing. You hear them say "warsh (or woish) your clothes" or "kellering book" instead of coloring book.

And don't even get me started on "Y'inz" :chuckles:
 
I was bartending years ago and had a patron at my bar (hotel bar) We were talking and before i told him anything he wanted to guess where i was from based on my speech pattern. He had his phd in speech pathology, and he specialized in accents. Now, I was working in Indiana at the time, so he had no knowedge of where i was from. His first guess was cuyahouga county Ohio, (where my mom and her family are from), but quickly he corrected himself to Summit. I was amazed.

Basically my point is everyone does have an accent to some degree. To the trained ear, you can pick it out in almost anyone. He explained our region has very little accent though. So basically do we have accents? Yes, but they are not thick accents.
 
I was bartending years ago and had a patron at my bar (hotel bar) We were talking and before i told him anything he wanted to guess where i was from based on my speech pattern. He had his phd in speech pathology, and he specialized in accents. Now, I was working in Indiana at the time, so he had no knowedge of where i was from. His first guess was cuyahouga county Ohio, (where my mom and her family are from), but quickly he corrected himself to Summit. I was amazed.

Basically my point is everyone does have an accent to some degree. To the trained ear, you can pick it out in almost anyone. He explained our region has very little accent though. So basically do we have accents? Yes, but they are not thick accents.

Even if like Splitz you have changed the way you speak, they can hook you up to these computers and analyze your speech patterns. They can usually get it down to a city or close area. There are artifacts even if you are say, faking another accent. It is really amazing. It all gets set in stone when you are very young.
 
Lived in Tennessee for a stint. They call pacifiers or "binkys" pacys (passys). They ask me to 'cut' on a tv or a radio instead of turn it on. If you're tooo close to someone they will tell you to "go sit on your own breakfast." If you do something that they think is disgusting, they call it "buzzardry." They put cole slaw on bbq sandwiches. There's my bid to nuke the south.
 
The cleveland accent is most noticeable when someone says the word dad. It comes out sounding like "deeaad..."
 
Even if like Splitz you have changed the way you speak, they can hook you up to these computers and analyze your speech patterns. They can usually get it down to a city or close area. There are artifacts even if you are say, faking another accent. It is really amazing. It all gets you stoned when you are very young.

That is slander. I was never stoned when i was very young. You will be hearing from my lawyer. :chuckles:
 
There is an accent and I get made fun of when I travel down south (to Texas especially). I had a waitress that thought it was cute I would order a "Pop" instead of "soda". Whatever I don't really care. Now I just say Coke/Pepsi or whatever Cola product they have.

Yes we do have an accent. To this day I still have trouble saying the word Pretty. It comes out Pirty or Pretie. It is more of a regional thing though. My wife's family is wanna-be south (from Kentucky and WV) and they say Fix dinner. Now being from Cleveland when you say you want to fix something that usually means it is broken so a lot of times I ask them if it is broken.

The Texas/Southern accents of Y'all, All'yall and All'Y'Alls kinda drive me crazy.
 

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