Does Iowa have a peculiar accent?
Posted by 88-81@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 67 comments
I watch a couple of youtubers from Iowa and their accents sound remarkably similar.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QarJ22H1f98&pp=ygUSSnVua3lhcmQgZGlncyBsaW1v
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk5R-6y0MKM
Pikaless225@reddit
Finally a question I’m qualified to answer. Yes. Or at least I do. I always thought I had a strange accent compared to my friends. It could also be that I speak with a slight lisp.
AshTheGoddamnRobot@reddit
Some folks have a similar accent to Minnesota and Wisconsin but milder.
HoldMyWong@reddit
Those are 2 very American channels, we are proud of you 🫡
Iowans might have a slight northern midwestern accent, kinda what it sounds like to me
NFLDolphinsGuy@reddit
Depends on where they are from in Iowa. By the time you’re north of Ames, a Northern Cities Shift like Minnesota starts to take over, O’s get very long. In the south, a Midlands, Missouri/Southern Illinois twang is more prominent. Cities, like Des Moines, tend to be more neutral than rural areas.
88-81@reddit (OP)
Your comment really put a smile on my face. Thanks.
Suppafly@reddit
Most of the midwest, until you start getting fairly north tends to have a sort of generic American accent. This is used to be what newscasters tried to emulate since it's pretty well understandable across the nation.
RsonW@reddit
I've always heard that the Iowan accent is the basis of the general American accent
AccomplishedEbb4383@reddit
Across the Midwest you'll also notice a rural/city divide, with people in the city having the neutral accent and people in the country having an accent that I can best describe as having a bit of mush in their mouth. This is the example I think of, and as someone who has spent a long time in Wisconsin and Minnesota it's the accent you hear at the gas station off the freeway in farm country.
Erotic-Career-7342@reddit
Yup
Imaginary_Ladder_917@reddit
Unless they are from Chicago. 😂
delebojr@reddit
Whaaat?!?!
Dr_Benway_89@reddit
I would caveat this too by saying GA is supposed to sound like the speaker 'could be from anywhere,' and isn't Iowa specific, though the range of dialect does cover much of Iowa. There is relatively little variation of accents in the western half of the country, as well, so there might not be ton of differences between how someone Iowa and someone in California speak (obviously lots of variables in the age, where in the state someone lives, etc etc). Conversely, parts of Iowa definitely fall outside of GA; anecdotally, some Iowans definitely have more influence from the North Central (Upper Midwestern) American English.
shelwood46@reddit
I always hear this, but as someone who has always live east of the Mississippi and grew up in the Upper Midwest, I find the various western accents distinctive and I can especially tell someone is from California by their vowels (the word "on" for example), not neutral at all and definitely not interchangeable with Iowans.
Imaginary_Ladder_917@reddit
I lived in California for the first 35 years of my life and then moved to the Midwest about 20 years ago. I have always noticed that Midwesterners pronounce the O in words like Mom and on differently than I do, but when I mention it to people here, they absolutely cannot hear a difference in how I say it and how they say it. It’s interesting that you nailed it. The California vowel is much more open with the tongue lower in the back of the mouth.
CPolland12@reddit
Every place and every person has an accent. It’s just dependent on who is hearing it.
Do I have an accent living in Texas? Yes.
Do I have an accent in comparison to all the people around me? No
Red_Beard_Rising@reddit
Yep. I hear not much of an accent at all in these clips. I lived my entire life around Chicago. Maybe whatever accent he is hearing is an entire Midwest thing, so I don't hear it?
That said, the only folks I know from Iowa are in Iowa City. They have a thick rural corn belt accent with a hint of the Oklahoma accent (which is a combination of more southern accents).
bortable@reddit
I moved to Texas from Nebraska and was told I have an accent.
DanielCallaghan5379@reddit
Say "measure."
I spent a year living in Nebraska from the East Coast, and I thought the accent sounded very standard American...except for that one word, which everyone pronounced "may-sure."
lavasca@reddit
The Texan accent is distinct. I figure it is why most Texans I’ve met lead with that fact upon introduction.
OK_Ingenue@reddit
Except a lot of Texans don’t have a strong accent. It’s kinda weird. I grew up there but didn’t have much of the twang part. I did say ya’ll. A lot of non-Texans didn’t pick up my accent but some did pick it up. Non-Texans would think l was from the South but not specifically TX. I’ve heard the TX accent is being diluted bc so many people from other states live there.
I moved and spent most my life in CA. I think that eventually took my accent away.
OK_Ingenue@reddit
Say pen.
inbigtreble30@reddit
"Say 'bag'" 🙄
Alternative-Law4626@reddit
Ask that of a Nebraskan and they'd say "sack" LOL.
I grew up in Maryland and then moved to Nebraska at 9 years old. The local colloquialisms there very divergent from what I grew up with. Mispronouncing things like "roof" and "creek" and "root" calling soda, "pop" But, the accent itself is not strong or pronounced. In Maryland, there's quite a strong mid-Atlantic accent. I've seen some people having a hard time understanding it.
Rude-Illustrator-884@reddit
My mom moved from Nebraska to California and everyone kept asking her “where are you from” due to her accent lol
cmh_ender@reddit
what others have said. Iowa is a neutral accent, many actors are taught this "lack" of an accent as well. Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan are all similar.
Minnesota has longer o's, wisconsin is minnesota light, but iowa / nebraska are just vanilla. so no iowa doesn't have a particular accent, it's just a generic midwest, lack of accent, accent.
delebojr@reddit
The Iowa accent is a bit more nasally than what you would see in Northern Illinois or Ohio, but not anywhere near as much as Michigan
shelwood46@reddit
Western Wisconsin, not eastern WI. Very distinctly different accents (and only one half says soda and not pop).
DionBlaster123@reddit
I am from Chicago
no one ever said I had "an accent" until i moved to Wisconsin for graduate school...and met people from all across the U.S. They all said I had a thick Chicago accent lmao
Bluemonogi@reddit
Peculiar? No.
forwardobserver90@reddit
Iowa has a topical Midwest accent. There is some variation in the Midwest accent though. Especially as you go farther south in the Midwest you’ll begin to hear more of a country twang mixed in, this includes places like Iowa especially in the rural areas. As you go north you’ll get more of the stereotypical Wisconsin and Minnesota accents.
V-DaySniper@reddit
Yes, I always tell people Iowa has 3 accents. News caster in central Iowa, northern has minnesota accent like Gov. Kim Reynolds and souther has Missouri twang.
KR1735@reddit
We loathe to claim her.
Though Michelle Bachmann was/is literally from Iowa. So you can take her.
88-81@reddit (OP)
How is the Illinois accent like?
forwardobserver90@reddit
The people in my area sound essentially just like the guys in those YouTube videos you posted.
Illinois is interesting though because of how long north/south the state goes. For example you get north of interstate 80 and you get more of that light Wisconsin type accent. Similar to this but less intense. https://youtube.com/shorts/pw4cxcSVtV4?si=9Q3FZPQlK7GwWPgO
You get south of interstate 80 and you pick up more of a country twang like the videos you posted.
Then you have Chicago and it has its own accent. Here’s an example of a very heavy Chicago accent. https://youtu.be/WtXF0GsLsIk?si=SiqoUULpnrhIyg2G
Imaginary_Ladder_917@reddit
In Central Illinois, you get people whose families have been in the same community for generations and some will have a nearly southern drawl and others don’t and they might live next-door to each other. Some families drawl more than others. It does tend to be people who farm drawl, but it’s only a few of them.
lavasca@reddit
Here are the stereotypes:
Shi-caaaaaaaaaaaaaw-go
paaaaaaaaah-stah
SocksJockey@reddit
Yep. Vowels come out through the nose.
High_on_Mayonnaise@reddit
I was raised in Williamson County, IL at the far south end of the state. The general accent in southern Illinois (pretty much anywhere south of the Metro East area of St. Louis) is much closer to a Kentucky/Tennessee "southern drawl" - especially when compared to a Chicago or northern Illinois accent - despite being in the same state geographically
Dr_Benway_89@reddit
There isn't 'one' Illinois dialect per se. Two primary ones would be 'Northern Inland' and 'Midland' dialects:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Northern_American_English?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_American_English?wprov=sfla1
In layman's terms, this can vary from the stereotypical accents from Chicago to something pretty close to what you hear in the videos. I'll also caveat that a lot of different factors would shape someone's accent in Illinois such as race/ethnicity (eg speakers of African American Vernacular or Chicano English) or educational attainment (for instance, Chicago's accent was historically strongest among working class men)
WalkingTarget@reddit
I grew up in central IL and moved to Iowa for work. I barely register a difference except I always said “soda” growing up and this is “pop” country.
TheLastRulerofMerv@reddit
The Greater Chicago area of Illinois, and other parts of the upper midwest, have what is referred to as the northern cities vowel shift, or Inland North American English.
A giveaway to other North American English speakers is their pronunciation of "A" and "O". For example - when they say a word like "hockey" it sounds like "hackey" to the rest of us.
ColossusOfChoads@reddit
"Da Bears! Da Bulls! Da Cubs! Oh yeah, Mike Ditka, you bet'cha!"
webbess1@reddit
Click on any video on this YouTube channel to hear an example of a Chicago accent:
https://www.youtube.com/@CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt
KR1735@reddit
There's a stretch from around Omaha/eastern Nebraska, eastward down into central Illinois where the accent is extremely neutral. Like if you take all the words that Americans pronounce similarly and combine it with how news anchors talk.
Iowa would fit squarely in this region.
So it's peculiar in that it's not peculiar.
MarquetteXTX2@reddit
I always heard Midwest states people have an accent.. everywhere I go people ask me where I’m from I tell them Wisconsin.. and they say I sound different. Which I don’t understand how.. I sound like any other regular mf lol
signedupfornightmode@reddit
“Melk” instead of milk
Valen_Celcia@reddit
POUR ME A GLASS OF MALK!
V-DaySniper@reddit
Who says Melk?
Tom__mm@reddit
I had grey hair before I realized that the white stuff from a cow was supposed to rhyme with silk instead of whelk.
deebville86ed@reddit
Honestly, if lived in the states my entire life, yet in not sure if I've ever met anyone who was from Iowa. Not that I know of, at least
V-DaySniper@reddit
Great Iowa youtube channels by the way, might I also suggest to you "The Fat Electrician" if you don't already watch him. He does a great job of telling historical stories in a very entertaining way.
Curmudgy@reddit
When I hear mention of an Iowa accent, I always think of the best known Ann Landers (Esther “Eppie” Lederer) and her twin sister, Dear Abby aka Abigail van Buren (Pauline Lederer), who grew up together in Sioux City, IA. They both have an older midwestern accent.
warneagle@reddit
I couldn’t pick out someone from Iowa versus someone from like Nebraska or Illinois, no. They all just sound kind of generically Midwestern to me.
Alternative-Law4626@reddit
Yeah, Minnesota bleeds into Iowa pretty heavily. So I guess it may depend which part of Iowa. If you live in East Omaha (LOL....Council Bluffs) then probably not. But up north, yeah.
Almajanna256@reddit
It's considered the "canonical" accent but there is no "caught-cot" distinction and all "l"s are dark instead of having light-dark contrast.
Dilweed87@reddit
I had a former coworker from Iowa, she had the 'classic newscaster american' voice, except the word trash, which she pronounced: Traysh
ButterFace225@reddit
It depends on who you ask. Everyone has some type of regional accent. To my ears, they have mildly thick Midwestern accents without the extra "twang". My cousin from Missouri has an accent similar to this, but its heavier.
Rbkelley1@reddit
Wife is from Iowa. She has a watered down Canadian accent but less than Minnesota. Her O’s can get long on certain words or if she’s excited her E’s can get longer but that’s all I’ve really noticed.
bryku@reddit
Iowa has a "General American Accent", but you might find a few words that are pronounced a bit differently.
Additionally, you may find some phrases or where they are pronounced in a non-iowan accent. This is because, they only know the phrase from non-iowan speakers (tv, radio, travelers). This isn't specific to Iowa, you may see someone from California using a Boston Accent for a specific phrase as a joke. However, Iowians will accently do it. You see this more often with southern phrases, but it happens with other ones as well.
G00dSh0tJans0n@reddit
Haha you're right, because when I clicked the first video I thought, "he sounds like Honest Outlaw" before I even knew what the second link was to. I do feel like I hear a slight bit of upper Midwest accent in there, similar to Minnesota but not as distinct or pronounced.
88-81@reddit (OP)
So this accent isn't unique to Iowa?
CupBeEmpty@reddit
No it’s a kind of central Midwest accent. You hear it in cities in the Midwest. Often times out in the country you hear a bit more of a “twang.”
It isn’t localized to just one part of the Midwest.
inbigtreble30@reddit
No, this is what most people in the Midwest (Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana) and Great Plains (North & South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas) sound like. Some people (especially in the northern part of the region) have a much stronger Midwestern accent, but most of us sound like this.
Sarcastic_Rocket@reddit
Everyone has an accent just depends on who you are talking too. Here's a vid talking about every US accent and the exact sounds and tones that make up the accent. I don't believe Iowa is specifically called out, but he does go into detail on many of the Midwest plains states
https://youtu.be/H1KP4ztKK0A?si=4IJMTAqTxnujB8fS
Lower_Kick268@reddit
Somehow i knew it was gonna be Junkyard Digs before i clicked lol, most of the midwest sounds a lot like Iowa though, with some regional differences.
thor12022@reddit
Having lived in both rural New York and Iowa, I did not notice any real accent difference.
There were some word differences such as sneakers/tennis shoes, and soda/pop.
New York and Iowa might have the same (unremarkable) accent, but there are many more famous and notable variations in the country.
If you want to deep-dive American regional accents this is a great resource.
Wafflebot17@reddit
Iowa has a very neutral Midwest accent.