What about 'Chicago Accent'?

What do you think about 'Chicago Accent?'

Do you think it's close to 'General American(Standard American accent)'?

*additional question
Are there any celebrities who speak Chicago accent?

<<Do you think it's close to 'General American(Standard American accent)'?>>

The Chicago accent has what's called the Northern Cities Vowel Shift or NCVS ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shift ), so it sounds different from what's usually considered General American.
(My fellow poster Travis is from Wisconsin, so he'd probably be able to tell you more about the Chicago accent.)

<<Are there any celebrities who speak Chicago accent?>>

There are tons of famous people from Chicago: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Chicago . Some of them have a more noticeable Chicago accent, and some of them have a more "regionally neutral" General American-type accent.

''Do you think it's close to 'General American(Standard American accent)'? ''

nope
1. it has Northern cities shift
2. final /z/ devoicing: ice and eyes are both [aIs]

I cannot be too helpful on this one, actually, as I myself am not directly familiar with any dialects spoken in the Chicago area. However, the dialects there are definitely NCVS-affected (and probably moreso than the dialects here in the Milwaukee area, as it sometimes go as far as fronting historical [A] to [{], which does not happen here), have Canadian Raising of /aI/, and also tend towards having initial interdental hardening and final devoicing (as in "da Bearsss"). They also have all the expected mergers (or lack thereof) which one would expect from a dialect in the Midwest east of the Mississippi, such as being Mary-merry-marry merged and cot-caught unmerged.

I really do not specifically know of any notable differences from the dialect here offhand simply due insufficient familiarity, except that anecdotally dialects there likely lack as strong of a phonetic vowel length distinction as those here (as apparently people here sound like they use "long vowels" according to people from Chicago). There are likely still definitely underlying differences at some level though, as supposedly people from here in Milwaukee "sound funny" to people from Chicago, but I cannot delineate these differences in detail here.

I know someone from Chicago. He does not have as extreme an accent as female speakers that I've met from Chicago. Everyone was surprised at how he could say "cot" and "caught" differently, how he said "cot" like we say "cat". He also would occasionally say "duffenetly" for "definitely". His r's sounded like the people on Fargo, and his u's and o's sounded more like people say them here, than in the Southwest. He also had some funny pronunciations: he said "bag" with an "a" sound like in "bad", "ban" like "beeyan" (people that are from here almost always say it [bæn]), he said "tomahrow" for "tomorrow", and pronounced his -ing endings as -in', rather than -een like we do here.

As for pronunciation details, though, one thing that I do remember offhand as being present in the speech of people from Chicago (which is shared by the dialect here) is the pronunciation of unstressed "any" as [E:I] or [E:I~] (that's a falling diphthong), especially as part of a compound.

''What do you think about 'Chicago Accent?'

Do you think it's close to 'General American(Standard American accent)'?''


No, it is not. It sounds weird: flash pronounced as ''flash'' and cot as ''cat''...
General American (GA) is spoken only in Nebraska and Iowa.
Modified GA is spoken in the West and parts of New England.
Even Canadian English is now closer to Modified GA than Chicago accent is to GA. Differences between Vancouver and Seattle English are minimal.
Differences between Detroit and Windsor (Ontario) English are drastic:

''Boberg (2000) sums up the result rather succinctly: the word stack is pronounced in Windsor, Ontario (indeed, in the rest of Canada) with the same vowel of the word stock as pronounced in Detroit, just across the river.''

''What do you think about 'Chicago Accent?'

Do you think it's close to 'General American(Standard American accent)'?''


No, it is not. It sounds weird: flash pronounced as ''flesh'' and cot as ''cat''...
General American (GA) is spoken only in Nebraska and Iowa.
Modified GA is spoken in the West and parts of Eastern New England.
Even Canadian English is now closer to Modified GA than Chicago accent is. Differences between Vancouver and Seattle English are minimal.
Differences between Detroit and Windsor (Ontario) English are drastic:

''Boberg (2000) sums up the result rather succinctly: the word stack is pronounced in Windsor, Ontario (indeed, in the rest of Canada) with the same vowel of the word stock as pronounced in Detroit, just across the river.''

I'm a native Chicagoan, with a definitive Chicago accent. (Although some things--like roof with a short vowel--have gone after decades away.) A few observations:

There is not just one Chicago accent. Their is a difference, for example, between Bridgeport (where Mayor Daley was from), and the far North Side (my old neighborhood.) A lot of people will not have all the pronunciations mentioned by Sarcastic Northwesterner.

The most obvious (even when I hear myself speak), are the strong pronunciations of "æ" and "aw." I can hear it strongly when I say "Chicago accent." (Chicawgo Æccent) On the other hand, as mentioned elsewhere, funny is in the eye of the beholder. Pronouncing cot and cought or Don and Dawn the same sounds funny to Chicagoans.

And yes, there is a range--many Chicagoans sound close to the mythical General American (which many Nebraskans and Iowans--with there drawls--do NOT sound like.) A guy I went to school with in Chicago was hired as a newscaster in Wyoming--specifically because he had a "standard" accent, which the local candidates supposedly did not.

Around here in Milwaukee we seem to really not get as strong NCVS features as down in Chicago, due to our normally using just [a] for historical /A:/ rather than the more progressive [{], our maintaining the roundedness of historical /O:/ as [Q], and that our historical /{/ normally does not undergo centering but normally maintains an ending point as a diphthong of [{] or [{_r] (aside from the unstressed pronunciations [E@] and [E]) and in more careful speech has a very short glide (it's hard to even hear even though it's there).

Of course, though, we have plenty of other things to make our speech up here weird, especially our realization of /l/.

''Pronouncing cot and cought or Don and Dawn the same sounds funny to Chicagoans. ''

I don't know...
Here's why:

in Chicago: Don [dan or daen]; Dawn [dAn or dan]

/dan/ can be either DON or DAWN, depending on NCVSness of the speaker... So, you do have DON/DAWN merger between the speakers...
for most women in Chicago /dan/ is DAWN, for most men /dan/ is DON.
So, you must see it from the context.

//
in California: Don [dAn or DQn]; Dawn [dAn or DQn]

Chicagoan Dawn /dAn/ wouldn't sound funny in California.
Californian Dawn /dAn/ wouldn't sound funny in Chicago.
G.A. Don /dAn/ wouldn't sound funny in California, but it would (?) sound funny in Chicago

''A guy I went to school with in Chicago was hired as a newscaster in Wyoming--specifically because he had a "standard" accent, which the local candidates supposedly did not.''

I hope his accent was more ''standard'' than this one:


http://voiceoversavvy.com/download.php?id=79

I had a composition teacher in college who had spent a great deal of time in California. We had a guy in class named "Don"(you can see where this is going) and, when taking attendence the first day, we all were wondering who this new girl "Dawn" was, until the professor said Don's last name and we figured it out. What's really strange is that this particular professor grew up in Iowa, which means she either never had a midwestern accent(highly unlikely, as there are very urban centers in Iowa where non-natives might congregate) or she spent so much time in CA that she lost her accent(this is frightening for me as a Chicagoan, as I am quite proud of my accent[though it is already fading as a result of living in Lincoln Park, where nearly everyone is not from Chicago], but wish to work in Los Angeles. Friends of mine who have lived exclusively in our old neighborhood from birth to the present(we are all nearly 30 yrs. old) have retained and, in some cases, strengthened their accents to the point that I feel as though I'm being put on when I run into them. Even going to the beef stand by my parents house is like walking into an episode of Saturday Night Live's Superfanssssssss.

In response to Donna, I'm guessing that clip is supposed to be of a thick Chicago accent? I barely even noticed it, although I will say that it has a somewhat soothing quality which I did notice immediately, and is the only thing that really tipped me off to it.

''I'm guessing that clip is supposed to be of a thick Chicago accent? I barely even noticed it''

people from Chicago/Detroit/Buffalo/Rochester pronounce

''ADOPT, IMPOSSIBLE'' the same way people from

California or Canada pronounce

''ADAPT', IMPASSIBLE''

;)
but even people from NYC notice NCVS, they laught at the way people from upstate New York pronounce: COT as (General American) CAT, ROCHESTER as ''RACHESTER'' ;) and so on...