When I think of Los Angeles accents, I think of three things: Chicanos, surfers and Valley Girls. I?ve only been to Southern California once, so these have all come to me filtered through caricatures in movies, television and music. The exaggerated Chicano accent performed by Cheech Marin. The surfer/stoner accent performed by Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and by Keanu Reeves as Ted ?Theodore? Logan in Bill and Ted?s Excellent Adventure. The Valley Girls as parodied by Moon Unit Zappa, and as portrayed in movies and television set in the area like Clueless, Heathers and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

The surfer and Valley Girl stereotypes had a strong effect on my teenage years, not because I was directly affected by them, but because my classmates were. These characters had the glamour of sunshine, sex and disposable income. The San Fernando Valley took the country by storm in the 1980s, and teenagers everywhere were exclaiming ?Dude!? and ?Totally!? and fronting their high vowels like crazy to get in on the act. My high school was not immune.

This glamour engendered a tremendous backlash, one that started with the original ?Valley Girl? song. The Valley Girls were desirable because they were well-groomed, high-class young women, and they derived a certain power from their desirability, their money and their family connections. But while stoner boys like Spicoli and Ted were well-meaning but clueless, the Valley Girls were a threat. The Valley Girls were judging you.

?Gag me with a spoon!? Judgmental, critical phrases recur over and over again in Moon Unit Zappa?s caricature of the Valley Girl. The Valley Girl may be high status, but she works hard to maintain that status by knocking down any potential competitors. The eponymous popular girls from Heathers embodied that ruthless competitiveness, as did the characters of Cordelia and Harmony on ?Buffy the Vampire Slayer.? The character of Buffy herself, as well as that of Cher in Clueless, were written against type, as a cheerleader and a spoiled rich girl whose compulsions to save others and openness to personal growth helped them to transcend Valley Girl judgmentalism.

The funny thing is that all this Valley Girl glamour did affect me to some extent. A blonde woman getting into a car with a fronted GOAT vowel will still turn my head to this day, even if I know she?s from Wappingers Falls. So it goes.

This is part 9 of a series where I say nice things about all sixteen of the accents that Gawker?s Dayna Evans nominated for ?America?s Ugliest Accent.? Previously: Chicago. Nextly: Tallahassee.

In my last post, I gave Prince as an example of a Minneapolis native with a lovely accent. Prince is black, and you can hear it in his voice because there are at least two different kinds of Minneapolis accent, due in part to segregation. But he doesn’t just have a black accent, he has a Minneapolis black accent. There’s also a Minneapolis white accent, and maybe a Minneapolis Hmong accent too.

For many years if you took an introductory linguistics course you might be forgiven for believing that there were several accents (all spoken by white people) and one black accent. Those of us who actually listened to African Americans knew differently, and now the documentation seems to be catching up, thanks in part to social media like Twitter and YouTube. A few weeks ago, Taylor Jones presented data from Twitter showing patterns of black English that corresponded to the three streams of the Great Migration: East Coast, Ohio River, and Mississippi River/Denver/West Coast.

My sense is that most regional black accents have some features that they share with other dialects spoken in the region and some features they share with other black accents, and some features that are unique to those accents. After reading Jones?s post, I would guess that they also have features they share with their particular migration streams.

Chicago

I lived in Chicago for a year and came to appreciate all the city’s accents: black, white, Chicano and others. Chicago, being a big city, has its share of tough guys and actors who play them, full of /r/s and Northern Cities vowels. But the city also exports tough guys: as William Labov told ABC’s 20/20 in 1999, actor Dennis Franz played a detective on NYPD Blue with his native Chicago accent, and Labov seemed to be one of the few people who noticed.

This is part 8 of a series where I say nice things about all sixteen of the accents that Gawker?s Dayna Evans nominated for ?America?s Ugliest Accent.? Previously: Minneapolis. Nextly: Los Angeles.

As Josef Fruehwald pointed out, attitudes towards language often are proxy for the attitudes towards the people who speak those languages. This is a case of what John Earl Joseph termed “prestige transfer,” and it makes sense. If you have negative feelings about your interactions with a group of people – for example, if your typical interaction with them consists of them giving you unreasonable orders, or harassing you on the street – you will tend to associate those negative feelings with their speech. Conversely, if you associate their voices with good times or your aspirations for prosperity, you will tend to associate those positive feelings with their accents.

Providence

Unlike Scranton, I’ve actually been to Providence, and even tried coffee milk, but I don’t have a strong memory of the accent. My wife is from just over the state line in eastern Connecticut, though, so I have positive feelings about that accent. I remember when we were first dating and she told me over the phone that her cats were playing in boxes. That fronted short /a/ in “boxes” reminded me that New England and New York are in different dialect regions, no matter how much else we may have in common. She also doesn’t lower the “o” in “frog,” and says “are you done your dinner?”

This is part 6 of a series where I say nice things about all sixteen of the accents that Gawker?s Dayna Evans nominated for ?America?s Ugliest Accent.? Previously: Philadelphia. Nextly: Minneapolis.

Science is objective, but scientists tend to like things they study; in a notable scene from the 2008 adaptation of Journey to the Center of the Earth, the characters emerge into a cave. One exclaims, “Diamonds!” another “Emeralds!” And then Trevor the geologist (played by Brendan Fraser) remarks, “Feldspar!”

It?s natural for geologists to delight in rocks, and it’s natural for linguists to delight in languages. This is why it’s not hard for me to come up with something nice to say about almost any accent.

Philadelphia

Ah, Philadelphia, the gateway of the American Midland dialect! David Hackett Fischer tells us how Philadelphia was the landing point for the Quaker migration from the British Midlands to the Midwest, and also for the later Scotch-Irish migration from the Borderlands and Northern Ireland to the Appalachians and the Ozarks. My ancestors, the Dowdles, were part of that later migration. In my lifetime, several of my Jewish cousins from New York have moved to the area as well.

When I think “Philadelphia accent,” there’s one name that comes to mind, and that’s the Dead Milkmen. A friend gave me a tape of theirs in high school, and I was particularly intrigued by the boyish, melancholy voice of Joe “Jack Talcum” Genaro, who sang lead on a number of their songs, including their biggest hit, “Punk Rock Girl.”

I was fascinated by the accents of both Joe Jack and the band’s other lead singer, “Rodney Anonymous,” particularly what I would now refer to as the raising of the PRICE vowel (which you can hear in “wild” and “child”) and the fronting of the GOAT vowel (in “although” and “know”). These guys were from England? No, that’s just the Midland accent undergoing the same shift as in the southeast of England.

A few months ago I discovered this 2002 interview with Joe Jack, where he discusses what it was like to be a gay man in a macho punk band. What about the “Punk Rock Girl”? “With the Dead Milkmen I was collaborating with three guys who were not gay, so I did not feel comfortable writing anything from an obviously gay point of view. ‘Punk Rock Girl’ for instance was written with Dave [Blood], who sings backups.”

The late eighties was not a great time to be queer, especially in the punk scene. “I can honestly say that for part of the time with the Dead Milkmen I was making an effort to not be queer, though it did not work,” Joe Jack told Mark Prindle. When I was most listening to the Dead Milkmen I was also most conflicted about my own queerness, and it didn’t work with me either. I’m glad to know that Joe Jack Talcum made it through too. And just so you know he’s done other stuff, you can also hear him playing the Guitar Song.

This is part 5 of a series where I say nice things about all sixteen of the accents that Gawker?s Dayna Evans nominated for ?America?s Ugliest Accent.? Previously: Pittsburgh. Nextly: Providence.

One thing I have to mention at this point: It?s okay to not like an accent. This is a matter of taste. You like what you like, and you dislike what you dislike. If you think an accent is ugly, or lovely, that?s completely your prerogative.

On the other hand, patterns of likes and dislikes can be telling. If all the accents you dislike are from cities, maybe you?ve got something against cities or the people who live in them.

New York City

This one is very personal for me. My family has lived in New York for over a hundred years. My grandfather talked about ?turlet seats? and putting ?earl? on his salad. I was born in New York City, and I live here now. Many of my close friends have New York accents. My son has one. I could write a book about this accent.

New York accents are used in movies and television as shorthand for thugs and con artists and Jewish Princesses. They?re used in cartoons for villains and comic relief (I?m lookin? at you, Gilbert Gottfried). What?s worse, New Yorkers have internalized this hate, as William Labov documented extensively in his dissertation. Alan Chartock, in a pathetic display of this self-hate, regularly suggests that Andrew Cuomo will not win the presidency without taking ?elocution lessons.?

My mom received a steady drip of criticism and mockery for her accent until one day she snapped and said to her boyfriend, ?You know, I speak very good Bronx.? New Yorkers are smart, funny and creative. There are so many great New York voices, it?s hard to choose just one. Woody Allen, Isaac Asimov, Lenny Bruce, the Shangri-Las, Salt-n-Pepa, Paul Simon, Lou Reed and Alan Alda all come to mind. But for this post, I?m choosing Washington Heights?s own Lin-Manuel Miranda to represent the New York accent, teaching children about language on public television:

Previously: Scranton. Nextly: Pittsburgh.