From a Chicago Boyz blogger Lexington Green comes a link to this fascinating Chicago Magazine blogpost on the development of the Chicago accent—or, rather, the Inland North accent, which is found in western Upstate New York, northern Ohio, southern Michigan and the Chicago area. Coming from Detroit, I speak this way myself, with flat As and hard Rs that I can exaggerate when I want to sound particularly Midwestern. This accent prevails in areas that were originally settled by New England Yankees and by Upstate New Yorkers who were of Yankee stock, and thus, as a Chicagoan married to a woman from Syracuse notes, they have very similar accents.
The writer includes a link to this very interesting Power Point presentation by William Labov, an editor of the Linguistic Accent Project. Great stuff for those interested in why we talk the way we do.
