Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc
There's very little variation between accents from the upper Midwest (sans MN who all sound like Sarah Palin and Marge Gunderson) through Central New York. Utica and Albany tend to diverge a little but my aunt and step-mom have that classic nasally grating accent where as my brothers sound like they are from downstate. I couldn't tell difference between an Chicago accent and someone from Upstate NY until they mention 'pop' and da Bears.
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Yeah, my relatives in Buffalo have it, so does my neighbor who's from further east in Cortland, NY (home of Ronnie James Dio
) originally, and coworkers from Rochester and Ithaca. It is very Chicago-sounding.
I hear it a little bit in Cleveland too, but it doesn't seem quite as nasally. What's strange to me is that I grew up in Erie, which is right between Buffalo and Cleveland, but that nasally 'a' thing accent doesn't exist there. I always remember when I was growing up, hearing family from Pittsburgh and family from Buffalo speaking, and wondering why they talked that way.
Maybe the NW PA accent is a combo of both, with the nasal tone drown out by the western PA/Pittsburgh accent to the point that it's just flat, with no discernible sounds. I don't know, Erie's weird.
Same with the Soda/Pop thing... I heard both when I was growing up there. And that map displays it I guess, with that greenish soda blob on an island in NW PA. Again, Erie's weird. I never knew what to call it, since if I said 'pop', someone would say, 'it's soda!"... and if I said 'soda', someone would say, 'it's pop!". So I just called it by whatever actual brand name and avoided saying the general term out of fear of being made fun of.