Agreed! It sounds normal for rural PA, and even the first didn't sound too far off from some.

I live in rural Western PA & when I heard the 1826 'recorded' version thought it sounded really similar to how people sound here too.

southern central PA checking in, you're spot-on. i never flagged that as foreign, though.. I was around some older folk with strong dutchy accents, *that* sounded a bit foreign. And for the life of me I can't speak like that at all. I'm too much an English ;D

Sounds like everyone I know in NorCal, the Californian accent most people think of is either a valley girl accent or a SoCal accent

@@linhou1051 I knew a guy in college from really rural Pennsylvania, and I remember when I first met him, I thought he was from somewhere besides the US

Yes, and on top of that, people move around more

@Rayyan khan There's a term for it! In linguistics it's called Langauge or Dialect Flattening!

Exactly, as Rayyan and Francophone said, young people have more standardised speech today due to increased movement of people in the modern age and the mass media, essentially. In the past it took a long time for language innovations to spread from the centres of population and prestige

Very much so because of TV and media.

@Rayyan Khan 'Standardise' would be a better word than 'normalize,' imo. You're right though. Media and the 'standardisation' of language has made it harder for unique accents to emerge unless they're noticeably separated geographically and culturally. (See AU or UK English then compare it to US.)

Actors hate him. Learn accents using this one weird trick.

That moment when he coughs and it's a pure Simon Roper cough and then straight back into the accent is incredible... Around 03:35

This man is probably a fire dungeon master

@@VoidUnderTheSun fr lol

Yeah and on top of all the speech particularities, he also varied voice and pacing, and added all the emotions to make everything sound so perfect and real! Incredible!

Even within Maine, there are nuances (but people who are not from New England sometimes think that people have the Boston accent in Maine, which is untrue)

Absolutely. To me, even Medford (north of Boston) and Marshfield (south) sound completely different, and they're only 30 or so miles apart. (I once met a random stranger in San Francisco and he hadn't said more than two or three sentences when I interrupted to ask, "Medford?" "My God!" he said, completely freaked out. "How did you know?" :)

Another lifelong New Englander here: I would say definitely all these qualify 100% as "Northern" accents, with speaker 5 being what I'd call a plausible New Englander, but certainly not from a speaker within 50 miles of the coast. Would love to hear you take a crack at recreating the old "Bert and I" recordings, Simon!

Lmao it really is a *new* England, isn't it?

@@sibellegrise7036 I should have been more precise then, they do not sound like they are from Maine, New Hampshire or eastern Massachusetts. They vowels are almost close to how some people talk, but not quite (and I think that they are farther away from how some older people talk), at least sometimes, but the accents he reconstructed are rhotic, and as I said, the vowels still miss the mark (though presumably, that is because that is not the type of accent he was reconstructing, that is why it is too vague).

This should absolutely be a thing

That would be pretty cool

I would love that!

Nice idea David! Yeah. That should be a movement on its own. They already do this for Shakespeare plays, we should do it for all sorts of books.

Please do it! Please do it!

Speaker 2 doesn't have reduced "british" influence at all. He has reduced english influence.

@@jsgwam Technically speaking, the term "British" is inclusive of English people as well as Welsh and Scottish, so it would not be wrong to say that Speaker 2 has reduced British influence.

@@efficiencygaming3494 have you heard all the accents of Britain? And what Britain pertained to at the time? His accent sounds to me like it has lots of Scottish or even Irish influences. Which are British in this case.

@@jsgwam That's mainly the reason why I chose to use the term British instead of English to describe the accent. As an American, I'm not an expert by any means when it comes to the specific dialects of Britain, but Speaker 1's accent threw me off because it sounded unlike any English accent I've heard before. In fact, I initially identified the accent as being similar to an Irish one, until he mentioned that he was from Kent, which is an English county... As for Speaker 2, his accent sounded somewhat like the first speaker's, but with reduced influence as I mentioned. In any case, it's interesting how the modern American accent evolved out of something that was originally much different.

@@efficiencygaming3494The first speakers accent was very familiar to me as there are still many accents like that today in England that I hear frequently.

faque tu parle franglais anyways ! (bonjour d'la nouvelle-angleterre)

Bonsoir venant du Québec, voisins du sud, et joyeuses fêtes!

I think he presented an excellent example of the evolution of manner of speech. Feel free to be yourselves, Vins and Sibele. This is what people cherish, and if they don't, well - just ignore them.

You're a frogger? What a shame.

@@ShehrozeAmeen right? How shameful of me to have learned the froggy language during childhood :D

That’s funny I had a linguist tell me that I was from upstate New York and I’ve been a Mainer all my life

Very Henry Higgins of him to do that👍

His name wasn't Henry Higgins, was it? ;)

An Intelligence consultant tried to guess where I was from after I’d lived in VA for a year. He pegged me for California, but I grew up in Mississippi! I must have lost my accent since I was hanging around with non-Southern military folks:-).

Lol people say the same thing about my accent. I'm from Dayton, Ohio, and I happen to have a Southwestern Ohio accent. For those who know accents; the Southwestern Ohio accent is a combination of the Northern Kentucky, Central Ohio, and Southern Indiana accents. I say worship as "worsh-ep", "boxes" as "bahx-iz", "caramel" as "car-mell", "Concord" as "conquered", and "Chaffee" as "Chay-fee".

Scandinavian. German. Shit, got some of that ancestry myself. Michigander here.

General American speech has gone downhill quickly, for the reason you mention. It affects accent and a loss of proper grammar, pronunciation, and definition. I grew up in Vermont, with New Jersey parents (1950s). I now live in downeast Maine, and the people here speak like my neighbors did when I was a child.

"Walfred Swanson" is the most damn Yankee name I ever saw.

Westerns had people from the south, especially in places like Texas, Kansas, New Mexico where films were set. You got more northerners in California, Oregon, Minnesota, and Dakotas. I’d think you’d see a mix of accents from all regions in the Old West with mainly Southerners who moved west mixed with some Scot/Irish Mid-Atlantics, Englishmen, Mexican Tejanos and Scandinavians.

In reality, there was no such thing as a uniform western American accent in the 19th century as it was populated almost exclusively by migrants from the various eastern states and abroad.

Why, hello there beautiful young lady! I bet your Grandad is thinking loving thoughts of you just now! *Big hug from an Auntie who loved her Grandad, too!

That's very sweet. I'm sorry for your loss, but what wonderful memories you have. It makes a difference having those loving and safe relationships. I can imagine you are a nurturing person yourself...(?). I think we internalise those sort of relationships and in turn, treat others, how we've been treated. Wish you the best.

Well I can tell you sternly that It wasn't akin to that. However he tried some amount and based on text only, it is remarkable, howevere definitely no where near how my grandparents spoke or recordings of my great grandfather and mother whom were born in 1839 and 1832. Even those recording were clear as day as to the accent, it was never the film that changed and distorted that accent, that was the accent.

@@WitchKing-Of-Angmar well please give me some insights into the accent and how to reproduce it!

@@WitchKing-Of-Angmar wonderful video! I am gonna study this closely.

@@chrisbolland5634 oh do study this one closely too, it is a perfectly wonderful ( the superior sound quality from the 1910s called kinetope ) film in which you'll be in for a treat. Although their voices may be slightly predated to whenever the picture is set, perhaps the early 1800s. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Y7B2dNGdrNC0p40.html

@@WitchKing-Of-Angmar were their parents or grandparents from the UK or somewhere else? If they were from the UK they may have had a different accent as the accents are very different and would evolve differently.

It didn't "evolve away", Brits are just in denial that we speak derived Elizabethan English. The Metropolitan French speakers admit that the Quebecois speak a more conservative Parisian, just as the Portuguese Europeans admit that the Brasilians speak more conservative, historical dialects as well. Only Brits refuse to believe that Americans speak a mix of older British dialects, which I find a hilarious cope.

@@bustavonnutz This is just not true. Conservativity of a dialect is not quantifiable, and American English has changed just as much as British English has.

@@mmmmmmmmmmmmm yeah, the "hoi-toider" dialect of the outer banks of north carolina is pretty conservative, but thats basically it

@@mmmmmmmmmmmmm "Conservativity of a dialect is not quantifiable, and American English has changed just as much as British English has" It's impossible to know whether you're right or wrong about that, but it's clear that you're wrong.

I guess colonizing the new world was way to preserve older forms of all these accents.

What is a Roperism?

@@Vengir Aw I just made up a word for how Simon Roper says stuff.

@@itsPenguinBoy Oh, that makes sense.

As a non-native speaker, I'm curious, could you give some examples of what these Roperisms would be?

I can't remember what I was thinking of when I first listened to this but Simon does say "so on and so forth" so maybe I meant that kind of thing or maybe I meant Simon's personality coming through in the way he speaks any dialect.

I second this, Newfoundland accents are incredible. There's definitely a kind of general Irish brogue that everybody uses throughout the province but then there are these incredible local dialects which are so thick to the point of being unintelligible to nonlocals. There used to be a vid on here of a Newfoundlander speaking in an English brogue, pronouncing V's like a W and "Viking" rendered as "Wiggin" but I can't find it anymore

To my ear, as someone from Ireland, the cliché Newfoundland accent is almost indistinguishable from that of Wexford here, aside from the odd difference with vocabulary and small drifts in vowel phonology towards that of Canada more generally. It's a bit freaky to listen to at times!

The Newfoundlander accent is from English settlers, not so much Irish. The English accent was very much like modern Irish accent back in the 16th/17th centuries. Just see Simon's video from last year on SE English accent development.

@@leod-sigefast A large amount of Newfoundland settlers came from the southeast of Ireland too. Irish Gaelic was even spoken natively there until not that long ago. Where you're right is that the English dialects of Ireland did pretty much develop from the English dialects of that period

@@cigh7445 I think you mean the English dialects of Ireland came from the Irish they already spoke with influence from the English oppressors. English also sounded a lot like a Celtic language for a long time because many of its speakers originally used a Celtic language (Brittonic, a cousin/ancestor of Welsh and Cornish). The Great Vowel Shift was incredible for how far it took English away from that.

I think you can tell from the video that the dialect has changed a great deal in 300 years, to the same degree as a London accent. It is not conservative at all: the innovations up to the 1820s are in common with British English, but after that diverge (as might be expected) and develop unique innovations that are not present elsewhere in English. You can see the vowel breakages and dipthongisation in the 1880s accent that are not common to even the 1820s accent (pay attention to 'ran', 'poor') or other English dialects, and by 1940s the common innovations with British English are fully present in the dipthongisation of the vowel in things like 'time' or 'pain', as well as the uniquely American loss of vowel length contrast and unrounding of short 'o' to the British 'long a' sound. Rural Irish accents can be very conservative in many ways to 1700s English, American accents as a rule are not.

@@therat1117It’s still very conservative compared to the changes that languages like German, Russian, or Bulgarian went through in the last 300 years. They’re subtle and strewn sparsely between the generations, besides maybe a couple minor differences in vocabulary, you’d be perfectly able to hold a productive conversation with the people back innige day.

@@Nova-Franconia They really aren't, and no you couldn't easily. Most Americans cannot understand Shakespeare at face value at all, whereas many British people can, and a Shakespearean accent is broadly analogous to a modern UK West Country accent, for which there is no equivalent in the modern US. Modern US people have a hard time understanding me when I authentically represent my accent. The changes 'look subtle' to you because they are normal to you, which is a bad metric. Most language changes are 'subtle and strewn sparsely', otherwise different generations of the same language community wouldn't understand each other. I can tell you that the first time I came to the US proper I could hardly understand anything because your 'conservative' dialect of English was so radically different from the accents considered conservative in the UK, that Americans and I had trouble understanding each other's basic vocabulary words. One young man I met couldn't even understand 'water' pronounced as [wɒtɚ] because the t wasn't flapped and the a was rounded.

@@therat1117 This from an outsiders perspective (German) btw, but now that you mention it, I guess I could see myself having an advantage in the fact I was taught both standard US and British RP in school. Already knowing the differences between those two accents by the time you’re out of school (usually at 16), probably alienates me from the experience a US-American might have, when encountering an accent of the same language, which turns out to be a bit different from your own, especially when you’ve solely been growing up with your native one. It’s just that with my current understanding of English, I really have no difficulties understanding these reconstructions of older accents. It’s just a bit surreal to me how well I’m able to understand them, with such “seemingly” little differences in pronunciation, at least compared to German (my native language), which underwent pretty dramatic shifts the last 300 years.

nah the second to last doesn't sound like modern american english to me at all. it's mostly american but you can hear a really decent amount of something else in there. the last one definitely sounds american, but from an old guy. a certain kind of old guy though, not like my grandpa. for context i'm from SE michigan born and raised, my parents were both born in the south but lived all over.

@@target0330 yep second to last one has a Canadian distinction to it.

@@dr.woozie7500 The last one sounds like a modern American accent out of all of them.

@@target0330 The last one sounds like a 80 year old retiree from Rhode Island if you ask me.

⁠@@Hooga89 Someone who is 80 and from Rhode Island wouldn’t have some Boston in their accent?

Irish is believable, but I've yet to hear any Englishman with "American-like" rhotacization. I believe it is a long dead sound in Britain. Links?

@@Veritas-dq2hs look up Original Pronunciation

@@O-sa-car I have. My statement still stands. There are no Englishmen who speak with the accents reconstructed by linguists today. I believe it is a dead accent in England. West Midland speakers are said to currently retain it, but I haven't heard it from current speakers. They have been too influenced by received pronunciation.

@@Veritas-dq2hs west country?

@@Veritas-dq2hs kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iLOKjdqEnbmVqZc.html

My mom and her whole family were born in southeastern Kentucky but moved to Chicago when she was little. We went "down home" every summer with my mammaw and papaw when I was a kid. I remember once when one of my mammaw's sisters poked (good natured!) fun at her for sounding like a yank after so many years away from home.

@@tinuviel42 We have the exact opposite story. Unusually, my family moved from the northeast to Appalachia. He got sick of city life and moved us to the smack dab middle of nowhere...well, that's not accurate. We actually lived on the edge of nowhere. We were literally the last house. The road ended at our house and after that, just miles and miles of woods, waterfalls, deer, bear, pileated woodpeckers, bobcats, caves... When we went back north, people would say we sounded like hicks. They weren't particularly good natured about it. I have the strongest accent as I was very little when we moved. Now, I can switch back and forth between a "proper" and a "hick" accent at will.

@@tinuviel42 I was born in the middle of England, but the first place I have memory of visiting in the United States was Kentucky. My friend, a local to a fairly wealthy city called Middletown (at least in my eyes, you guys have massive houses!) told me that there was nothing interesting outside of the big areas like where we were in Louisville, that everyone is a boring country bumpkin. But I loved talking to people in the middle of nowhere. I say "grandmother" but this person I met walking her dog called her grandmother "mee-maw". It's so interesting to me! Everyone was so friendly and answered all my strange questions about the way they speak. I actively changed the way I said "water" wōtuh to wa-turr. Else I'd go thirsty!

Same here! I grew up in the Chestnut Ridge of northern WV, and there is quite a distinct accent here!

@@TheRagingPlatypus It is sad that people get picked on and called a "hick" because of how they pronounce things.

Same here, as a fellow Aussie. It would be interesting to see the evolution of NZ accents too as they would start at a very similar place, but with more Scottish influence in NZ, particularly in the South Island.

@@abc1DiLy I find the interesting is the similarity between Tasmanian and NZ accents. It is subtle but clearly there.

@@Minstrel88 nah about 20% of NZ’s original settlers were Scottish so it’s a well documented thing. Even now in the far south, there are variants of the accent that are rhotic and have retained other features from Scottish settlers

I'm curious, being from SA, which are the distinctive features of a South Australian accent?

Yes please do this!

I live in West Virginia and was born here. This is so true. Both from observation and research!

My great grandmother grew up in the tiny desert mountain pass towns of New Mexico, all spanish speaking communities dating back to the early 1700s. She speaks a very strange dialect of Spanish that my modern trained ear (spanish was lost in my family for my dad's generation, I learned it from school/tutoring) and I often wonder if it's closer to Colonial era Spanish or more divergent.

Not a hillbilly. I live in an isolated community. We have our own way of speaking. We can speak regular American too.

The L's sound fine to me as someone who grew up in northwestern Vermont and the lakes region of New Hampshire

Well keep on mind this was someone born in 1938, at least a generation older so many they pronounced Ls heavier when he was growing up.

@@dr.woozie7500 in the far north east I’ve heard 30 year olds have that dark of an L

Just thinking this!

Yes, I was thinking of the "John Adams" series as well. They did a lot of work on the accents of the various people and it was so interesting to watch.

The KZfaq Linguist channel called AZ Foreman called it inaccurate (even anachronistic) if any of you were wondering (when I talked to him). You can find the comment in one of his reconstructed spoken English videos.

@@Urlocallordandsavior I really respect Foreman, but I disagree with him on some points. David Crystal, the famous linguist, recreated Shakespeare’s dialect from general Elizabethan sources and by analyzing contemporaneous poetry which no longer rhymes today (but rhymed in Shakespeare’s own day). Foreman was very critical of Crystal’s work, and, while I think that Foreman has some good points (i.e. that Crystal made his version of the OP Shakespearean dialect “easier” on modern ears), I totally disagree with his characterization of rhyme analysis as a waste of time. He feels that it just isn’t useful due to inconsistency across geographical regions, but I’d counter that with the existence of regional dialects to begin with. Plus, if you can accurately predict rhyming patterns from a bygone era (or region), then using that analysis technique is probably the best way to figure out regional variance (such as the r-dropping in Boston, employed by regional poets there). Anyway, all of that said, I agree with Foreman on John Adams, but for opposite reasons. I think the series was a hit and miss, in terms of linguistic historicity. The true colonial dialect was much more blunt and rugged (almost Irish sounding in parts, but only very superficially). Many of the words which rhymed in Shakespeare’s day (“prove”/“love”, “line/loin”, etc) still rhymed in George Washington’s day, but the language (obviously) evolved well past the point where it was 200 years prior. Yes, in some places, the John Adams series does capture the “line/loin” merger (and approximates the New Englanders’ non-rhotic speech patterns - albeit incorrectly), thats about it. The Boston rebels’ non-rhotic speech wasn’t marked by long vowels (like modern RP) but was closer to the Boston accent today (it was described as a “whine” - similar to Maine speakers). Look up ACE linguist’s reconstruction of colonial American English for a pretty good approximation of a general colonial American accent.

@@alicethedestroyer1287 Totally agree with that in general (I'm not going to disect your analysis piecemeal since I'm the very amateur of amateur linguists (even if you can call me that). Just by going through the voice recordings of 19th century Americans (especially rural people), you can't really hear Foreman's reconstructed speech in any of that (aside from 1900 upper-class American politicians, given that the Transatlantic accent was also artificially constructed by the upper classes from both sides of the ocean, I think that's a given.) In Foreman's history of English video, I was highly skeptical of his reconstructed Byron late-18th century English (and how so little of that seems to have survived in recordings, even if it is true). I also cannot see this dramatic shift between his Franklin and his Poe dialects, it might be hard-pressed to not argue that Foreman, in essence, "moved" the Great Vowel Shift hypothesis from the 1400s-1600s to the 1600s-1800s, after American Independence (if so, why does it seem that American and Canadian English sound so similar? Even Maritime Canada doesn't sound any bit Scottish)! Don't get me wrong, I like Foreman's body of work overall. With Ace Linguist's interpretation, at least you can hear Rockefeller's 1930s voice in that. One last thing, do you think that John Adams series did a better interpretation of 18th century English dialects than AZ Foreman's? Overall?

it's always funny to watch something in swedish without understanding it, yet recognizing patterns and cadences you hear in minnesota.

The cenral Utah accent has a strong Scandinavian accent influence. .

@@KoriEmerson yes all non-southern American dialects/accents have gotten huge influence from German and Scandinavian which makes sense since most Americans are of German and Scandinavian descent

@@Steve-zc9ht what? I doubt this applies to the Western US states

@@silentsmurf It depends there's 330 million people in the US.

Yes, I’m from Wisconsin and the third accent reminds me of my parents who were born there about 1921. So some good similarities remain, in certain areas.

FACTS

I’m from Jersey and I’m definitely somewhere around 5, maybe 50 years in the future they could lend my voice to this. My grandma(born 1941) sounds similar to speaker 4. She grew up throughout New York State but eventually spending about half her childhood and youth in New York City. My grandfather has a strong Brooklyn accent. My accent sounds more like a refined and educated Tony Soprano.

I've researched this as best I can over the years and due to something called "levelling", immigrant accents can develop very quickly, within a couple of generations.

They sound very west country

@@yerdasellsavon9232 It's certainly not all the way there, but if I weren't listening closely, I could be fooled. That's what's surprising to me.

None of these sound American to me except the final one

@@dessertstorm7476 Cool

Looking up this accent rn!!!!! Love the comment section on these videos.

Oh what? I spent some time in Maryland a few years back and I should've gotten out and spoken to some more locals, that sounds interesting

I'm from Cornwall/Devon region of the UK. I've heard the Tidewater accent from recordings. Many of the original settlers in the 1680s came from north Cornwall, around Padstow, only a few miles from my home town. I find the Tidewater accent, a heavily modified generic Westcountry (Cornwall and Devon) accent, which has lost much of its original characteristics, (vowels, diphthongs etc), adopting some more modern American characteristics. Not surprising considering the time elapsed. There is also a remnant accent found on Newfoundland, Canada, that came from Devon in the 18th, due to the Cod Fisheries. I've heard that, and again, it is like a heavily modified and diluted Westcountry type accent.

@@kernowforester811 absolutely! and I’ve also read that there are more Gaelic speaking peoples living in the Canadian Maritimes than parts of Scotland/Ireland today. Thanks for the little history lesson too :)

I think he mentioned Tidewater accents in a video once. Really cool accents to hear and read about.

The USA is so large and has such a varied and spotty history that I think that there's tons of things that go unnoticed by people. I'm more into politics and the history of it than linguistics, but I would imagine that there's tons of examples of distinct utahn words that I use that isn't really used elsewhere. And my Lexicon and accent is different than my grandfather, who literally grew up on a homesteaded farm in Utah. one phrase that still sticks out to me is "hey is for horses".

You guys in southern Maryland have really beautiful accents

i love his voice honestly. it's calming.

I find it interesting that he still says things like ‘the zeebras in Keenya’ for ‘the zebras in Kenya’, instead of ‘the zebbras in Kennya’ - in very old-fashioned British films this was part of RP but it sounds very American now, I’m not sure if there’s any other Brit left alive who says it like this! (I certainly don’t).

Read Albion’s Seed. Unfortunately New Englanders have always been at the forefront of various revolutionary movements.

Well the Quebec sovereignty movement does exist and has for some time

The thing about Quebec history that contributes to separatism is frankly how the British are very sore winners. Canada was the name for Quebec until the Crown government lifted it. The Crown attempted to erase French from the province even centuries after the Acadian Clearances did it to the Maritime Provinces. Linguistically, Quebecois French began as a mix of several French dialects and pre-French regional languages. They had at least mostly standardized on the King's French before the Revolution and the split began from there.

Even today the “toim” pronunciation is still pretty noticeable in the New York, West Virginia and Newfoundland accents, and isolated pockets in southern Appalachia, Chesapeake Bay, Outer Banks, downeast Maine and Canadian Maritimes too

@@Kevin-wq3kj there are very interesting artifacts from that early period that linguist David Crystal (famous for the Shakespearean OP) was rather surprised to see matched up with Elizabethan dialects of 200 years prior. Obviously, it’s not the same accent, but there is obviously a direct line there. If you ever get bored, find some 18th century American poems (or rough poetry from continental soldiers) and compare the rhymes. Look at the rhyming patterns and you’ll see that the word “prove” is still pronounced in a way that rhymes with “love” (“pruv”). Even Thomas Jefferson wrote a few poems in his day and when he used the word “tear” (as in teardrops) it rhymed with “care”. Ben Franklin’s phonetic alphabet is likewise a treasure trove of information. He even went as far as describing the individual phonemes and how the mouth and tongue were positioned to produce them. The R’s (outside of the New England area) were often trilled, a lot like the Scots today. That lasted until early sound recording and became not only regionally dependent but class dependent too (google a wax cylinder speech by Eugene Debs to hear that one).

Yup, the “Northern Cities Vowel Shift” is real and fascinating! People from pronounce my first name as “Juff” for example.

My father was born in western CT, and most of his family (maternal & paternal) was from NY, MA, CT, basically between the Hudson and the CT rivers. My fathers family was dispersed and I met many of them but did not know them well, but these "speakers" I all envisioned as perhaps having lived in that area. On the other hand my mother's family was all from the Delmarva peninsula and "tidewater" Virginia. The old timer relatives (when I was a kid in the 1970's/80's), sometimes I had no idea what they were saying. Even today, my mom, now 76, says stuff I sometimes have to backtrack and re-run it in my brain. The peninsula was rather isolated for a long time, so I guess there was a lot of old Scots & Irish accents that persisted.

yo i was raised in ct too haha

I find Irish accents much easier to understand than Scottish or rural English accents. I’ve assumed that’s because of the huge Irish immigration to the US in the 19th century influencing the standard American accent.

@@Minstrel88 quiet, anglo

It seems plausible, but I'm struggling to think of any phonetic features that are clearly Irish in origin. The difficulty is that the stand-out things that Irish and American English share (rhoticity with an approximant, sometimes retroflex, R and unrounded 'LOT' vowel) are also shared historically by Southern English English.

Well, that would be a nice mixing bowl of accents! 🥰

What's a northern plains accent? Squeaky Fargoese? I speak a melange of Minnesota squeak and the Milwaukee version of the Northern Cities shift.