- [Narrator] The United
States has countless accents.
But where did they all come from?
American accents have been
evolving for hundreds of years.
While Americans sound
very different today,
here's where some of those
iconic accents got their start.
Let's start with New England,
which was one of the first
US regions to develop
its own American-English accent.
Today, a speaker from
New England might say,
- Were you gonna plagiarize
the whole thing for us?
Do you have any thoughts
of your own on this matter?
Is that your thing?
You come into a bar, you
read some obscure passage
and you pretend, pawn it off as your own?
- [Narrator] For such a
geographically small area,
New York City certainly has a
bunch of distinctive accents.
But in general, its accents
evolve from a mixture
of its Dutch and English roots,
and numerous waves of immigration.
A modern speaker from New
York probably won't sound
like what you hear in the movies.
- Hey, I'm walkin' here!
I'm walking' here!
- [Narrator] They're more likely to say,
- Deep dish pizza is not only not better
than New York Pizza,
it's not pizza.
- [Narrator] New York's New
Jerseyan and Pennsylvanian
neighbors sounded quite different.
Nowadays, someone from Philly might say,
- We're your regular family.
We watch the Phillies on TV,
we go down to the Jersey shore.
But when we want great hoagies,
discount prices on beer,
and a great atmosphere,
we go to Lee's Hoagies in Horsham, PA.
(laughing)
- [Narrator] Let's take a look
at what went on down south.
The southern coast of the United States
has a variety of different accents.
One for example is Southern Coastal White.
- What concerns me
about the American Press
is this endless, endless attempt to label
the guy some kind of kook.
- [Narrator] Other southern
dialects preserve some
of the original remnants to this day.
- They come over here and get the oysters
and clam and go fishin' because
they right down the road,
they right in Brunswick, or
Savannah, or Jacksonville.
- [Narrator] Much later, a
wave of African Americans
migrated from the American
South to urban centers
in the North, mixing
their accents together.
- Being a kid from New York City,
I mean from Brooklyn and my aunt,
God bless her soul,
she used to always take
me to the Rockettes.
You know, the Easter show
and the Christmas show.
- [Narrator] The Ulster Scots
had a significant influence
on many American dialects
in the South and the West.
Most of the original
accent has disappeared,
and today an American from Tennessee
might sound like this.
- Now I just who I am.
I'm not always nice.
I choose to be good.
I choose to have a good attitude
because I want people to know.
I am a girl of many colors.
- [Narrator] The Midwest
has many diverse accents.
As the Appalachian settlers headed west,
their accents joined with speech patterns
from the North.
Today, a speaker from the
Great Lakes might say,
- I was born in the middle of the century
in the middle of the country.
A classic baby boomer.
- [Narrator] Or more famously,
- We got a full tank of gas,
half a pack of cigarettes,
it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.
- [Narrator] While another from Wisconsin,
Minnesota, the Dakotas might say,
- If either of these men draw,
I'm gonna be forced to shoot some people
and I don't wanna to do that.
- [Narrator] Down in Texas,
a very distinct accent developed.
The famous Texan accent that
we all know from the movies,
- He shot and killed a state senator
named Bibbs in Waco, Texas.
- [Narrator] Has started to level out.
Visitors to big cities like Houston
might be surprised to
hear something more like,
- Thank you to everyone who worked so hard
to beautifully capture the profundity
of Deep Southern culture.
- [Narrator] Last but not
least is the West Coast.
Which had a very different mix
of immigrants compared to the East Coast.
California doesn't come close
to having one distinct accent.
A modern day speaker might sound like,
- We woke up the next morning
on his actual birthday
and I told him I wanted
to take him somewhere
to lunch for his birthday.
- [Narrator} Or
- What's so powerful about this novel
is everyone has their own interpretation
of these characters.
- [Narrator] These are just a handful
of American accents.
And they're all still
evolving as we speak.
We'll have to check
back in a century or so
and see what happens next.
