Advertisers often understand the importance of localizing content for each region, but it’s equally vital to recognize the significant variations within individual countries.
Just as French speakers in Paris sound distinct from those in Marseille, the United States is home to a wide range of accents and dialects.
In this article, we’ll take a look at 10 different American accents.
We’ll examine how they originated, the phonetic features of each, and practical ways to become word-perfect if you’re keen to understand or replicate any one of these US accents.
1. New York Accents
Thanks in large part to the export of American cinema (with a nod to director Martin Scorcese), New Yorkers have one of the most recognizable types of American accents. Just listen to the below audio from James L—there’s no mistaking that accent.
The standard accent, known as New York City English, has roots in the city’s rich history of ethnic diversity.
New York was the touch-down point for the world’s tired, poor, and huddled masses surging into America from the 17th century onwards.
Alongside early Dutch, French, and English settlers, these immigrants, predominantly from Ireland, Italy, Germany, and China, brought with them different languages and dialects, each with their own peculiarities of phrase and pronunciation.
This melding of influences ultimately formed the foundation of the New York accent we know today.
For instance, the “dental pronunciations” of certain consonants, where the tongue touches the upper teeth causing words like “this” or “that” to be heard as “dis” or “dat”, is often put down to early Italian and Yiddish influences.
But these phonetic patterns are only part of the story. The snobbery of the New York elite also has a significant part.
According to pioneering American linguist William Labov, some of the most recognizable features of the New York accent, such as the dropped “r” sound after vowels, emerged because the city’s late 19th-century upper classes sought to imitate the aristocratic accent of British high society.
This non-rhoticity, as it’s called, was eventually adopted by other socio-economic classes.
However, as not pronouncing your ‘r’s’ had become a city-wide characteristic by mid-century, well-to-do New Yorkers embraced the once elbowed-out ‘r’ again, and non-rhoticity became a feature of more middle-to-lower status New Yorkers.
Today, this distinctive dropped ‘r’ and raised diphthong in words such as all, talk, and walk, continues to be firmly associated with the more working-class neighborhoods of New York.
As a result, it helps highlight how accent is as much a denoter of social and economic status as the numbers in your bank account.
2. Southern Accents
Another famous American English accent is the Southern accent.
While there are no clear borders between regions with southern and non-southern accents, to avoid confusion we’re specifically singling out the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and parts of Texas, Missouri, Florida, and Maryland in this instance.
Of course, just because the people in those states have southern accents doesn’t mean they all speak exactly the same.
Texans, which sociolinguist Guy Bailey claims have a “Southern accent with a twist,” typically use very different vocabulary and speech patterns compared to someone in Missouri or Maryland.
Of course, just because the people in those states have southern accents doesn’t mean they all speak exactly the same.
A person from Texas might use very different vocabulary and speech patterns compared to someone in Kentucky or North Carolina.
Thus, the idea of a southern accent is a general classification rather than a single way of speaking.
Still, when you think of a southern accent, you probably think of a southern drawl.
The clearest sign of the southern drawl is the tendency to turn single vowels into diphthongs.
For example, many southern speakers pronounce the word “here” with two syllables (hee-yuh) instead of the single syllable common in other regions.
On the other hand, some words that are diphthongs in other regions are pronounced as single vowels in the south.
Instead of the usual diphthong in words like “my,” people from the South often contract the word to a single syllable that sounds more like “mah” to other Americans.
The video below covers diphthongs and other common features of southern accents.
The word “get” is usually spoken by southern Americans as “git,” meaning that it rhymes with the English word “lit” as opposed to “debt.”
With such distinctive features, southernaccents are one of the easiest accents for most American speakers to recognize.
3. Appalachian Accents
The Appalachian accent is often lumped in with its Southern neighbors, though the territory itself stretches from north-east Mississippi in the south up as far as sections of southwest New York!
However, when we refer to the Appalachian accent, we’re typically talking about the accent associated with the southern and central parts of this mountain region, and within that, the more rural areas.
Truth be told, the accent heard in the northern areas have more in common with the northern states than those down south.
But what is the difference between the Appalachian accent and it’s not-so-distant Dixie neighbors?
Well, one of the most obvious differences is in the pronunciation of the ‘r’ (yep, that letter again!).
A typical Southern drawl has non-rhotic tendencies wherein the ‘r’ sound is soft or ditched all together. For instance, “car” may sound like “cah”.
With the Appalachian accent, however, the “r” is strongly articulated so that the same vehicle in question will be pronounced “carr”.
This pinched-sounding pronunciation is heard in other Appalachian words too. You might hear the word “tire” as “tar” or “hired” as “hard”.
These kind of words lend themselves more easily to the faster, clipped rhythm of the accent than the more slow-moving swing of your regular-sounding Southerner.
Interestingly, while folk with typical southern accents are often associated with charm, tradition, or regional pride, Appalachian accents are frequently tied to stereotypes of poverty, isolation, and lack of education.
This has much to do with the region’s real history of economic struggle as well as its geographic remoteness.
But even with Appalachia’s most famous daughter, Dolly Parton, doing her best to make folk from the mountain region seem more fun and familiar, media portrayals of Appalachia as home to “hillbillies” or oddball, impoverished rural communities… [cough] Deliverance [cough]… haven’t helped.
4. Boston Accents
After New York and the American South, Boston may be the most well-known and distinctive American accent.
Once again, the letter ‘r’ has the spotlight as this accent is generally associated with a missing “r”, especially in words that end in an “ah” sound.
People from Boston often pronounce the word “car” in a way that sounds more like “ca” to other Americans.
Just as each area of the south has a slightly different accent, the northeast is home to various accents that are similar to the one found in Boston.
This video is a perfect example of Boston, New York, and Rhode Island accents.
A 2019 study found that the Boston accent traces its roots to 17th-century British settlers.
Like many other accents in the United States and around the world, there is concern that the Boston accent is going away.
For a long time, regional accents were preserved by a relative lack of communication and movement between different areas.
If you were born in Boston in 1710, you would probably spend most of your life in or around the city.
Travel was much more expensive and time-consuming than it is today, and there were no phones, radios, or TVs to connect you with people in other places.
These factors reduced communication between people with different accents and made each region’s accent much more distinctive than it is today.
Mass media, accessible and affordable transportation, and other social and technological trends have brought people closer together, but they have also led to a decline in regional accents.
5. California Accents
California is the most populous US state and the third largest—only Alaska and Texas have more land area.
Naturally, this leads to plenty of variation in accents.
The main divide is between southern California cities like Los Angeles and San Diego and northern cities like San Francisco.
The video below covers some slang from Los Angeles, but someone from San Francisco might not know any of these examples.
Once per year, the group visits a different area to learn how people speak in that region.
They ask a series of questions—for example, having participants say the words “pin” and “pen.”
Most American English speakers pronounce them differently, but some Californians say them exactly the same.
People from Southern California also tend to replace “were” with “was.”
Along with linguistic features, the Voices of California team also studies how different communities understand themselves as a part of the state and country.
The project has been on hiatus since the COVID-19 pandemic but plans to get it motoring again are in the pipeline.
6. Pacific Northwest Accent
Up from California is the Pacific Northwest region of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington.
Here the accent seems to take the particulars of Western American English and make them much more prominent.
For example, while the “cot-caught” merger is a feature of US accents along the western coast, it’s often more apparent to the ear in the Evergreen State and its next-door neigbors.
This vowel merger makes words like “don” and “dawn”, “stock” and “stalk” and, of course, “cot” and “caught” identical to each other.
Another characteristic of this region’s accent is the subtle fronting of back vowels.
With fronting, there’s a slight shift in the articulation of traditionally “back” vowels to the front of the mouth.
As a result, words like “room,” “moon,” and “boat” sound like “rewm,” “mewn,” and “buh-oat” respectively.
7. Western Pennsylvania Accent
One of the strangest American accents that you’ve never heard comes courtesy of Steelers county!
“Pittsburghese”, as the locals of Pittsburgh affectionately call their home accent, is so particular to the Western Pennsylvanian city that many other Americans might not even recognize it.
This unique accent is thought to have developed due to the influence of early Scots-Irish settlers, along with later German and Eastern European immigrants.
A primary characteristic of Pittsburghese is the monophthongization of “ow” sounds into “ah” sounds.
For example, in Pittsburghese “down” becomes “dahn” and a “house” becomes “hahs”. So, those with a “house downtown”, might tell you they’ve a “hahs dahntahn”!
A further hint that you may be encountering someone with a Pittsburghese accent is their softened or “flapped” “t’s”.
In these instances, the “t” may sound closer to the “d” so that “butter” sounds like “budder”, “letter” becomes “ledder”, and “get in” becomes “gerrin.”
In addition, a Pittsburgh local will likely pepper their conversation with words such as “yinz” (you plural), “howescome” (how come/what’s the reason), “Stillers” (Steelers), and, if you’re staring at them in complete confusion as they talk, most likely the word “Jagoff” (idiot) too.
Some people also include Kansas and Missouri, but the core of the region is north of these two states.
While the midwestern accent is obvious to most Americans, most midwestern speakers see their accent as neutral.
According to author Edward McClelland, “an important element of Midwestern identity is believing you don’t have an accent.”
Naturally, midwest accents are at least as varied as those seen in California.
While the ten states above have much more combined land area than California, their overall population is about the same.
The midwest has a lower population density, but there are still many major cities including Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Cleveland.
In the video below, accent and dialect coach Keely Wolter discusses the core elements of midwestern accents.
The first one she mentions is the longer “o” sound compared to other American accents.
Most Americans pronounce the “o” as a diphthong in words like “go,” but midwesterners generally pronounce these as a single vowel.
The most famous example of a midwestern accent is probably the Fargo movie and TV show.
However, the “Fargo accent” is actually a subset of midwestern English that’s known as the north-central accent.
McClelland and most other linguistics see three distinct accents being used throughout the midwest: inland, midlands, and north-central.
Inland
The inland region starts from around Rochester on the east and goes all the way to the state of Iowa on the west.
Inland accents are related to the northern cities’ vowel shift, which leads to unique pronunciations of a variety of vowels.
Inland speakers pronounce the word “naturally” in a way that sounds closer to “neturally” to people from other areas.
Midlands
The midlands are located south and west of the inland region, stretching from cities like Columbus and Indianapolis in the east to Omaha, Wichita, and even Oklahoma City in the west.
This is considered the most linguistically diverse of the three main midwest regions.
Midlands accents are also the closest of the three to a “general American” accent, especially in the northern midlands.
One clear example of the unique midlands accent is an “r” sound after the “a” in words like “wash,” “squash,” and “Washington.”
This may stem from Scottish and Irish influence due to the unique history of immigration in the midlands region.
North-Central
Finally, the north-central or upper midwestern accent is what Americans think of as the “Fargo” accent.
It is most closely associated with Minnesota and Wisconsin, but it also pops up in other northern states.
North-central speakers often pronounce “absurd” with more of a “z” sound than the typical “s.”
They may also add a “t” sound to the end of words like “across,” making them rhyme with “tossed.”
Given these significant differences, the midwestern accent is really three different American accents with some common features.
If you’re aiming for hyper-localization, you need to be sensitive to the differences within this region as well as the differences between the Midwest and the rest of the country.
9. Upper Peninsula of Michigan Accent
With the vast country of Canada adjacent to the US, it makes sense that it would leave a mark on the American accents of some of the bordering states.
This is certainly the case with the Upper Peninsula (U.P.) of Michigan, which boasts a heavy Ontarian influence in its “Yooper” accent.
The name “Yooper” is derived from the abbreviation U.P. (Upper Peninsula), and one of its most recognizable characteristics is the raised diphthongs. This feature causes words like “about” and “house” to sound like “a-boot” and “hoose,” resembling Ontario’s pronunciation.
Yoopers also commonly add “eh” at the end of sentences, a speech pattern directly borrowed from Canadian English.
But it’s not just America’s northern neighbor that influences this particular US accent. The area’s unique immigration history also plays a part.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian immigrants settled in the region to work in the booming mining and lumber industries.
The staccato-like rhythm and evenly stressed syllables particular to Scandinavian speech patterns remain a part of the Yooper pronunciation today.
Additionally, the “ee” in “feel”, is typically elongated, while the “th” sounds in words like “that” and “there” are softened, making them sound like “dat” and “dare.”
10. Hawaii English Accent
There are so many English accents in the US but for our final example we’re going to step off the mainland and onto the “Aloha State” of Hawaii.
The English accent and dialect in America’s 50th state boasts a unique blend of the islands’ multicultural heritage.
Native Hawaiian, Hawai’i Creole English (HCE or Pidgin), and influences from Asian, Pacific Islander, and Western languages are all blended together to produce a very distinctive US accent.
Probably its most noticeable aspect is the flat tone, which gives it a less varied pitch in comparison to Standard American English.
According to one study carried out at the university of Calgary, this typical trait is influenced by Hawaiian and Hawaiʻi Creole English, and the falling intonation is common even in everyday questions, such as “What are you doing?” or “Where you going?”
Maintaining the HCE influence, hard consonants like “t’, “d,” and “r” are also softened, so that a word like “brother” might sound like “bruddah” or “thing” is pronounced “ting.”
In particular, the softened, or dropped “r”, is similar to the Boston accent.
However, while the delivery in Boston has a slight nasal quality, the Hawaiian pronunciation is more guttural, giving it its distinctive clipped sound.
Applying the Different American Accents Accurately
Understanding the subtle variations in the different types of American accents is one thing.
Actually being able to apply them? Quite another.
Exaggerating the better-known Bawston or New Yoick speech patterns is relatively easy. But to get the nuances down pat, it’s crucial to listen closely to native speakers, study phonetic patterns, and practice the different rhythms and pronunciations.
Using audio examples from professional voice actors native to the particular American region you’re interested will be hugely helpful.
These approaches aren’t just for voice actors either. They’re also valuable for businesses targeting specific regions who need to ensure they use accents that sound wholly authentic to their audience.
Final Thoughts
We all know that accents vary between regions, but most people aren’t aware of the sheer linguistic diversity in the United States.
Accents can make a substantial difference in the way a character is perceived.
Downton Abbey would have been much less captivating if half the actors were Americans doing fake British accents.
In the same way, Americans from a particular region will be able to tell if someone’s accent is real or not.
Understanding the different types of American accents and the distinctions between them, will go a long way to helping you localize content for your unique audience.
Need an American voice actor for your project? Then check out the many great professionals you’ll find on the Voice Crafters website.
You canalso post your project on our online platform. Make sure you request custom auditions based on your script (it’s free!) to really hone in on the voice that’s right for your brand and message.
Additionally, if you need help casting the right talent for you, drop us a line and we’ll be happy to help!
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