2 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2021–2025score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN recommends it as an enjoyable overview of American accents and what accent signals socially.
Dialect coach Erik Singer and several linguists tour distinct accents across English-speaking North America. It is the first part of a WIRED series on US accents.
“I loved this video which does a tour of US accents.” (HN, 2025)
Really good article. For those interested in this sort of thing, wired did a pretty good series on accents in the US recently on youtube: [this video] [link] [link]
If folks find accents interesting, I loved this video which does a tour of US accents. Part 1: [this video] (Okracoke Island is at 13:40) Part 2: [link]
While there isn’t a formal definition of “sounding white” anecdotally I have plenty of friends of color that routinely joke about pulling out their “white voice” in certain settings (professional, addressing “authority”, etc). This YouTube series covers it quite a bit: [this video] Myself I have a very vanilla non-regional American accent (think Walter Cronkite) and they often point out just how “white” I sound. I also have family with more regional American accents (Upper Midwest, Southern) and as a child they’d often make fun of my “accent”. My response was always “turn on your TV, they sound like I do everywhere”: [link] This can be seen in a somewhat-humorous old YouTube clip: [link]
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