Seattle Accent

PROOF OF THE NORTHWEST ACCENT

examples of the northwest accent-

hard on the "s" with ending constants dropped.

west seattle - pronounced: wess seattle
canned fish - pronounced: cann fish
last week - pronounced: lass week
redmond washington - pronounced: redmin washington
northwest - pronounced: northwess
"im supposed to go running" would be said "i'm suppose to go runnin"
"he likes to drive fast" is said, "he likes tuh drifast"
the "v" sound, can at times sound like "f"

"of" in between two words sounds like "uh"

can of fish - pronounced: can uh fish
first of the month - pronounced: first-uh the month

adding "s" and "making "d" sound like "t".

nordstrom - pronounced: nortstroms
fred meyer - pronounced: fred myers

other examples are in vowels.

bag - pronounced: bayg
milk - pronounced: melk

"caught" and "cot" sound identically alike

I think Northwestern accent is less General American-sounding than the accents of Denver, Phoenix, or Tucson.

MORE PROOF OF ACCENT

the word "both" is pronounced "bolth".
an L is thrown in after the vowels and before the TH

other words are, "south" - "soulth"
"mouth" - "moulth"

another observation, made of recent.

the word "months" is pronounced "munts"
"it took him "munts" to get home"

Many of the pronunciations listed exist in many varieties of English. Virtually every English speaker pronounces months as munts. Has nothing to do with Seattle.

Well peeps in Seattle are speaking in a Canadian accent, it's like, they don't pronounce talk as tak, it's more likely to be tawlk, which's pretty much alike the Canadian one.

>>Many of the pronunciations listed exist in many varieties of English. Virtually every English speaker pronounces months as munts. Has nothing to do with Seattle.<<

I agree completely - a *lot* of those features are extremely common in North American English dialects, and particularly both more northerly NAE dialects and more westerly NAE dialects.

Travis - "Has nothing to do with Seattle."

do you live in the northwest? if you do, and are a seattle native, then no, you wouldn't notice. ..and would say, that it has nothing to do with seattle or the northwest region. i travel all over the united states and europe, a few times a year, and one of the things i pick up on right away, is how people talk and use language. it doesn't take a college professor or linguistics major, to hear these sort of differences in the northwest accent compared to other regions.

also, the only people who live in washington, who would have a canadian accent, are those who live closest to the border or those who are canadians, living or visiting here.

In other words, many of the things that you listed are not unique to the Northwest, or Seattle. They are features that are found in many other areas as well.

>>the word "months" is pronounced "munts""it took him "munts" to get home" <<

Found everywhere in the English-speaking world.

>>the word "both" is pronounced "bolth" an L is thrown in after the vowels and before the TH <<

Not unique to Seattle, and not even universal in Seattle.

>> bag - pronounced: bayg milk - pronounced: melk <<

The vowel in "bag" is close to that, but not exactly. It's certainly not the same /æ/ as in "bad", but it's not the same as the /eI/ in "bay". Same as in several places in the Midwest and in Canada.

Melk is a variation of melk in many places of North American, and is not unique to Seattle, nor universal.

>> can of fish - pronounced: can uh fish first of the month - pronounced: first-uh the month <<

Are you serious? Almost all English speakers do this.

>> "caught" and "cot" sound identically alike <<

Same as everywhere else in the Western US, all of Canada, and several other places as well.

None of the things that you listed are unique to Seattle, the Pacific Northwest, or even the Western US/Canada, with the possible exception of the raised "bag" vowel, which is not found in much of the Western US.

It would be much more useful to compare the pronunciations of Seattle with nearby cities such as Portland, San Francisco, San Diego, and Vancouver, and find any differences or ways of distinguishing the accents of those places.

Vancouver cot/caught vowel: 60% rounded [Q]: 40 % unrounded [A]
Seattle realizations: 10% rounded [Q]: 90% unrounded [A]

In local news from Seattle the vowel is almost always unrounded. (as used in the US pronunciation IPA transcription of Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
In local news from Vancouver the vowel is frequently rounded (as recommended by the Canadian Oxford Dictionary)

The Seattle accent is different from "Broadcaster" GA, but it's a pretty subtle difference, not in-your-face or easily stereotyped.

>> The Seattle accent is different from "Broadcaster" GA, but it's a pretty subtle difference, not in-your-face or easily stereotyped <<


So does that mean it would be much harder for someone to put on a "Seattle accent" than a Boston or Chicago accent? I wonder why more people don't try imitating a Seattle accent: "Hello, everyone, I'm speaking with a Seattle accent."

Is there evidence of the 'Seattle accent' in shows like Frasier or Grey's Anatomy? (I guess most of the main actors aren't natives, but the other characters?).

I'm not sure if the differences qualify it to be a separate accent, as opposed to GAE or Western.

It sounds much like any Western accent, except it's a little more conservative--for example /u/ and /o/ are more like how Midwesterners pronounce them, and some speakers have some Canadian influence in certain words.

dear uh,
if you're from the northwest, you will NOT notice any of these differences.
i know many people who live in other parts of the u.s. and ALL of them, say we here in the northwest DO have an accent. to make a statement like,

"None of the things that you listed are unique to Seattle, the Pacific Northwest, or even the Western US/Canada, with the possible exception of the raised "bag" vowel, which is not found in much of the Western US."

and my personal favorite - "Almost all English speakers do this."

i find not only humorous, but wrong. get out and hear the world buddy. you'll find we all don't sound alike.