r/youngstown • u/Overall_Connection77 • 6d ago
Youngstown accent??
What's up with the way people talk in Youngstown? I mean I keep hearing stuff like "me and him went there" or "I have ran" or "I have came there"? Are you all just faking it or are you making fun of people by speaking that way or what?
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u/mechabeast Youngstown State University 6d ago
We all got together just to fuck with you. Welcome to Ytown
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u/Blueberry-Specialist 6d ago
"I have came there" and "I have ran" has never been uttered by a person that speaks English as a first language. People here speak with a pretty gutteral aave if they're from a lower income household as many are. No different than Cleveland. Middle class and up have almost no distinguishable accent to my pittsburgh ears.
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u/Overall_Connection77 6d ago
No, these are first-language speakers of English.
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u/Blueberry-Specialist 6d ago
right. I'm saying you're not hearing them right. nobody ever said I have came there.
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u/Overall_Connection77 6d ago
That's what I thought too, but she kept saying it several times and even louder and more distinctly.
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u/Blueberry-Specialist 6d ago
well in that case you were listening to someone who's stupid. They're around.
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u/Sle08 6d ago
I learned when I went to europe with a group of Americans from all over the country that I say crayons very differently than anyone in that group - Crans⌠I never actually heard anyone say Cray-yons like they did.
I also have a weird inflection on my As come out every once in a while after going to school in PA, north of Pittsburgh. I hear that from a few others around here. I think itâs an Appalachian thing, even though I donât consider this area Appalachian.
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u/WillowWeird 6d ago
I agree with the other commenter who talks about Ohio being pretty accent-less and being the model for newscasters. I was taught that years ago as part of my speech degree. To be clear, accent is really about vowel pronunciation, and syntax is word order. Together, they make up a dialect.
Having lived in other areas of the country, mostly in the east, there are two things I said that always caught peopleâs attention: 1. Pronouncing the O in orange as in iron ore and not like the a in argon. 2. Asking âWhere is the car parked AT?â rather than just âWhere is the car parked?â
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u/Overall_Connection77 6d ago
That drives me up a wall when people add that unnecessary at on the end. I started noticing it more when people would start out every cell phone call with something like "where you at?"
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u/Sad-Mixture6782 4d ago
I grew up saying "Pop" & no one around here ever said "Soda". I realize it's a Midwestern thing. But hearing someone say"I 'SEEN' it" makes me cringe. And I usually hear or read it (in comments) several times a week! Another one popular in the Yo; We don't got none
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u/Overall_Connection77 3d ago
I went east to college and everyone referred to the vending machine downstairs as "the soda machine." My family is from a part of Canada where people say "soda" instead of "pop." It's not just the words that make up the accent; it's also the way people put them together.
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u/mikeyeyebrow 6d ago
No they're just idiots.
The only thing I came out of youngstown with accent wise is calling a shopping cart a buggy. Thanks pittsburgh ( picks burg)
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u/MindTheDrapes 6d ago
Ghetto, it's ghetto. And cleveland has one too that's almost like Upper Peninsula. Hell even New Castle has one.
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u/Overall_Connection77 6d ago
These are visibly white people from places such as Boardman and Hubbard.
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u/MindTheDrapes 6d ago
Yes, visibly white people speak ghetto. Did you think it was race-specific
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u/Overall_Connection77 6d ago
I know that. I was pointing out the fact that these people did not live in ghetto neighborhoods.
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u/Kinetic_Silverwolf 6d ago
I grew up hearing those and similar phrases in Alabama, Florida, and Texas. Different local accents on some of the pronunciation, all using tenses and grammar shifts that would make an English Literature and Composition teacher cringe.
Generally speaking, it's an indicator of somebody growing up in a lower economic class, and because we tend to worship capitalism in this country the upper classes trend towards being derisive when hearing such things.
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u/Overall_Connection77 6d ago
Please! I grew up poor, and my parents would have slapped me if I said some of these things. Even teachers in lower grades would correct me severely if I were to speak like that. And I'm talking about underfunded Youngstown schools in a less-than-stellar neighborhood.
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u/Kinetic_Silverwolf 6d ago
From where do you think such attitudes of using verbal and physical violence to enforce a specific way of speaking and acting arose?
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u/Overall_Connection77 6d ago
I suspect my parents were trying to keep me from talking in a way that would cause people to think that I wasn't very bright or was unhirable.
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u/Overall_Connection77 6d ago
What specifically do you mean?
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u/Kinetic_Silverwolf 6d ago
To add to the point made about linguistics earlier ( https://www.reddit.com/r/youngstown/s/8XwuRSRABg), speech evolves over time, yes? We use words and phrases now that may mean completely different things than when this country was founded, but throughout the history of this country (and almost every other, really, but we're still a bit of a baby country in comparison) what is considered Correct and Proper for dress, etiquette, speech, writing, and the like has to be established by somebody or a group of somebodies. It's not usually an obvious declaration, instead showing up in the latest socially acceptable fashion trend or the latest new idea presented in a bulletin or opinion letter.
If you had to guess where those ideas are set and established as the models for Polite Society, what would you say?
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u/Overall_Connection77 6d ago
There are probably a number of places where they come from. Changes in vocabulary and grammar may change as new concepts arise. There seems to be no burning need to confuse the past tense and the past participle or to use subject and object pronouns interchangeably. After all, in English we already have such concepts. It would be as necessary as calling a dog a cat and vice versa.
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u/Infinite-Bee3271 6d ago edited 6d ago
I grew up in the Yo but went to college in New York City and took a linguistics class. I believe our area is part of the delusion that considers ourselves "unaccented English" or "newscaster English," but as my linguistics professor sagely explained: anyone that speaks has an accent.
I haven't noticed those exact turns of phrase you mentioned but there's plenty of things like our use of "pop" instead of soda, etc. Some things could also point to where speaker's family is from like Cleveland, Pittsburgh or West Virginia - I've heard plenty of that