Detroit/Michigan Dialect revealed

[izzyindetroit]

Discovered this link via the social network. There have been multiple posts in the past regarding Detroit slang and dialect. Best explanation and description yet. One could spend hours clicking through the links.

http://aschmann.net/AmEng/#SmallMapUnitedStates



Side note: I didn't know Verne Troyer [[Mini Me) was from Michigan.

[dtowncitylover]

Well, sorry errands, now I know what I'm going to do this afternoon!

Thanks so much! I love linguistics.

[313WX]

Discovered this link via the social network. There have been multiple posts in the past regarding Detroit slang and dialect. Best explanation and description yet. One could spend hours clicking through the links.

http://aschmann.net/AmEng/#SmallMapUnitedStates



Side note: I didn't know Verne Troyer [[Mini Me) was from Michigan.

Yep, I also just discovered Tom Bodett [[Motel 6) is from Michigan as well [[Sturgis).

[rex]

i always thought we had no accent

[dtowncitylover]

i always thought we had no accent

Far from it...and even if we had "no" accent, we would still have one.

[313WX]

i always thought we had no accent

No, we definitely do.

Rick Snyder has a extreme variation of Michigan's accent.

That said, I think African Americans/Native Detroiters have accents that are far more natural than those from the Yooper region.

[ThosWolfe]

Far from it...and even if we had "no" accent, we would still have one.

At a bar in Tennessee, I was talking with friends. Guy at a table nearby said " Where y'all from, Yankee?, you got an accent"
I said "No, you got the accent" In retrospect, wrong answer. Not a friend left in that bar!

[Al Publican]

I "stay" out in the Northwest now but I lived in Detroit for a half century. Folks out here have guessed I was from the Midwest. Flat tonal affect is something of a Midwest signature, I suppose. Idioms is also a give away at times.

In conversation with a black woman in Detroit, she said she could tell that I was around black folks a good bit. How's that? I said. She said when she asked where I lived that I said, "I stay on the east side." To which I said, "Dammmmn."

[CityGirl]

i always thought we had no accent

I lived in Texas for a while, and my house was on a fairly busy road because it was a short-cut to the interstate. I was working in the yard, when a man pulled his car over and asked for directions. When I answered, he immediately asked, "Girl, where ya from? Canada? That accent of yours! I could listen to it all day!"

And, here I always thought I was the one without an accent, and everyone else in the country was the funny talker.

[[I am more of a DY reader than commenter, but I like this particular discussion! )

[Chinman]

here is the best and is older than the internet: http://www.michigannative.com/ma_pronunciations.shtml

[Chinman]

as a Michigan... try saying water with an accent on the "t". you will always make the "t" a "d" instead of a "t". how funny!

[Chinman]

worked with a guy from Texas and thought it was funny when i refereed to my door-wall as a way out of my my house. He asked "what is a door-wall?" and i said that we call it 'is a door that is a wall" he thought that is the funnest he as ever heard. end of story!

[Meddle]

"I stay on the east side."

First thought for me would be, 'you NEVER leave the eastside?'

as a Michigan... try saying water with an accent on the "t". you will always make the "t" a "d" instead of a "t". how funny!

Heard a weatherman who would always say 'sevenTy - xxx' when forecasting temps somewhere in the 70s. Never did it with the 80s or 90s or any other range.


Somebody asked a question on a forum/board --- 'do you have an accent?' Nope, but everybody around me does.

[Don K]

worked with a guy from Texas and thought it was funny when i refereed to my door-wall as a way out of my my house. He asked "what is a door-wall?" and i said that we call it 'is a door that is a wall" he thought that is the funnest he as ever heard. end of story!

Doorwall is definitely a Michiganism. I never heard of it until I moved here, and I've never met anyone from anyplace else who calls it that. I've gotten used to saying it, just like I got used to saying pop instead of soda.

[msamslex]

Years ago when I lived in E. Lansing and met some folks who were friends of a classmate. They were born and raised in Lansing. I forget how we got on the subject but one of them told me I pronounced the word syrup differently than they did. I never figured out how or why.