Great Lakes Cities

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by pj3000

I'm not well-traveled in eastern MI, but in my limited travels there, I definitely got an upstate NY vibe (excluding the Southern Tier, given topography). Accent is different in MI though -- more nasally than in upstate NY.

Yeah, this clip covers a good cross section of Detroit area accents:

• Video Link

If you've ever heard Gretchen Whitmer speak, what she has is not a Detroit area accent. Her accent is more associated with northern lower Michigan and the upper Peninsula. It's weird to me because she was born in Lansing, but her accent sounds absurdly strong.

Previous Governor Rick Snyder has an accent more like one southeastern Michigan:

• Video Link

Former Governor John Engler also has a pretty standard lower Michigan accent:

• Video Link

The other still living former governor of Michigan, who is the current U.S. Secretary of Energy, was born in Canada and grew up in California, but she also sounds like a run of the mill southeastern Michigander.

[Docere]

Irish is larger but they're probably less visible than Italians given they're NW Europeans who have been in the US longer. I think Irish is largest ancestry upstate overall. In every Midwestern metro German is the largest. German pulls ahead of Irish in Rochester (but obviously Italian is much more visible in Rochester than German as German is a very "generic American" ancestry).

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by benp

I suspect that much of the pronunciation within the Great Lakes accent is also derived from the influence of French Canadian. Years ago I knew some people who had grown up on the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation which straddles the US-Canada border between NY-Ontario-Quebec and I recall that their accent to me sounded quite a lot to what I associated as the Buffalo East Side Polish accent. The more I think about and listen to the Great Lakes accent, I begin to hear where the French influence contributes a lot (dees, dem, and dose instead of these, them, and those). After all, the French were the first European settlers in the Great Lakes.
.

That's an interesting theory. I know that that region has quite a bit of French history that included some settlement. Though it's generally completely overlooked by most people and of course almost everyone has assimilated. The latter being directly related to the former.

I know that French influences the accent of even English only speakers in a number of parts of Canada and even the US, but I never thought of this area as being one of them.

Could it instead be an influence from other languages that also tend to pronounce the "th" sound like a "d"?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Acajack

He could be from Ontario except for just a few words:

impact

Timberland

brand

Transit

Whenever I'm trying to figure out if someone is from Ontario, I wait for them to say a word like "process". They've learned to hide "about" but "process" is always a dead giveaway.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Docere

In every Midwestern metro German is the largest.

even minneapolis?

they always talked up their "scandinavian-ness" when i lived up there, but maybe that's split amongst swedes, norwegians, danes, and finns, such that germans come out on top?

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Whenever I'm trying to figure out if someone is from Ontario, I wait for them to say a word like "process". They've learned to hide "about" but "process" is always a dead giveaway.

totally.

PRO-cess is absolutely a dead giveaway for a canadian.

americans say PRAH-cess.

PRO-cess sticks out like a sore thumb in our ear.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

even minneapolis?

they always talked up their "scandanavian-ness" when i lived up there, but maybe that's split amongst swedes, norwegians, danes, and finns, such that germans come out on top?

I think Minneapolis was a century ago a more Scandinavian city. But I'm guessing it's shifted due to internal migration from and metropolitan expansion into the hinterlands. Southern Minnesota is more German than Scandinavian, and it likely took in good numbers from Wisconsin and Iowa too.

[hipster duck]

Another accent giveaway I’ve noticed:

“What are Canada’s two biggest cities?”

Canadian: “Tronno and Mun-tree-all” (in Ontario it increasingly sounds like “Chronno and Mun-chree-all”)

American: “Tor-rawn-toe and Mawn-tree-awl”

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

totally.

PRO-cess is absolutely a dead giveaway for a canadian.

americans say PRAH-cess.

PRO-cess sticks out like a sore thumb in our ear.

An easier one (well, one that comes up more commonly in regular conversation) is the word sorry. Canadians all pronounce it sore-y, while Americans all pronounce it sah-ry.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by benp

For whatever reason downstate people really have a stick up their a** regarding "pop" vs "soda." On a different thread someone even said hearing the word "pop" made them feel violent. That's why I will continue to call it "pop" for the rest of my life.

Its "pop and a hot dog" not "soda and frankfurter" where I'm from.

here too. Nobody would ever say "soda and a frankfurter" Maybe "soft drink and a weiner" but even then, much less often than "pop and a hot dog"

[JManc]

Originally Posted by pj3000

I definitely notice a more "New England" connection in Utica given the proximity, but I also feel that it has that common-throughout-upstate NY-vibe through and through that basically stretches from the Adirondacks / Catskills west to the Ohio line.

Yeah, overall, there isn't that much of a divergence throughout. Even far eastern OH (Cleveland area) has a lot of similarities.

Originally Posted by Acajack

I always got the impression that Syracuse had a healthy mix of both Irish and Italian as the predominant groups there.

Same there. Lot's of Italians there. Good food.

[Steely Dan]

switching the topic back to the Great Lakes themselves, all of them are now massively down from near-record water levels one year ago.


YOY June difference:

Superior: -7"
Huron-Michigan: -22"
Erie: -14"
Ontario: -21"



Current lake levels vs. long-term June averages:

Superior: +4"
Huron-Michigan: +13"
Erie: +14"
Ontario: -14"


source: https://www.lre.usace.army.mil/Missions/...orecast/Weekly-Great-Lakes-Water-Levels/


so Superior is pretty much back to normal.

Huron-Michigan and Erie are still high, but thankfully nothing at all like last summer's erosion festival.

and Ontario is surprisingly (to me) below normal. I guess it wasn't really all that high last year like the upper lakes.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by JManc

Same there. Lot's of Italians there. Good food.

Hey, I could really go for some Delmonico's if the border gets back to normal this summer!

Not that we don't have good Italian where I live, but it's kind of a tradition for my family to have dinner there if we go to Syracuse for the weekend, or pass through town.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Hey, I could really go for some Delmonico's if the border gets back to normal this summer!

Not that we don't have good Italian where I live, but it's kind of a tradition for my family to have dinner there if we go to Syracuse for the weekend, or pass through town.

There's a Delmonico's in Utica (right off the Thruway). It is pretty good.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by pj3000

That's very interesting... I've never thought of the French influence. I've always noticed the similarities with "the Canadian accent" and the northern/Great Lakes accent, but never thought of the French Canadian part.

I hear the dees, dem, dose and associate it with Polish-Americans in the region, never thinking of the likely French background.

maybe…i think st. louis and missouri retained its francophone aspects longer than most of the great lakes though as far as i know and the long term impact was negligible. french didnt really die out with native speakers in missouri until after world war two and i dont know that great lakes cities retained a local francophone elite nearly to the extent of st. louis.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

PRO-cess is absolutely a dead giveaway for a canadian.

americans say PRAH-cess.

PRO-cess sticks out like a sore thumb in our ear.

that PRO-cess thing really rings for some reason.

[Centropolis]

regarding polish influence on midwest accents…st louis has “hard D,” think St. Louisan Harry Caray, and STL is mainly a German and Irish mix for urban derived whites.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

that PRO-cess thing really rings for some reason.

Yeah, it's funny how people pronouncing a word perfectly correctly can provoke such a reaction!

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Yeah, it's funny how people pronouncing a word perfectly correctly can provoke such a reaction!

the best part is that when americans pronounce the other meaning of the word (to walk or march), it's always "PRO-cess", and its noun "PRO-cession".

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

switching the topic back to the Great Lakes themselves, all of them are now massively down from near-record water levels one year ago.


YOY June difference:

Superior: -7"
Huron-Michigan: -22"
Erie: -14"
Ontario: -21"



Current lake levels vs. long-term June averages:

Superior: +4"
Huron-Michigan: +13"
Erie: +14"
Ontario: -14"


source: https://www.lre.usace.army.mil/Missions/...orecast/Weekly-Great-Lakes-Water-Levels/


so Superior is pretty much back to normal.

Huron-Michigan and Erie are still high, but thankfully nothing at all like last summer's erosion festival.

and Ontario is surprisingly (to me) below normal. I guess it wasn't really all that high last year like the upper lakes.

Speaking of Great Lakes erosion, not only do we get to see it in action, but also get to hear the local accent.

200-foot chunk of Pictured Rocks cliff face breaks off into Lake Superior

Amazing video. The face of a section of the Pictured Rocks cliff falls into Lake Superior.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topsto...lake-superior/ar-AALA5Cq?ocid=uxbndlbing

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

i dont know that great lakes cities retained a local francophone elite nearly to the extent of st. louis.

i can't speak for other great lakes cities, but chicago's early french settler community was utterly steamrolled by the yankee invasion in the early 19th century.

whatever was left of the french here was too little to matter much.



oddly enough (or not) i have a small amount of french chicago ancestry, but it's from Alsation immigrants who came here in the mid/late 19th century (not the much earlier 18th century french canadian culture of missionaries/explorers/fur traders).

they eventually blended (intermarried) into chicago's expansive 19th century german community (my entire maternal side). I don't know what happened to their french-speaking (or maybe they spoke some german dialect as many Alsatians back then did?), but that was all LONG before my time.