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I wonder if this could be connected to Colin Woodard's argument in his book American Nations (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670022969/) that there are eleven basic regional cultures in North America. According to his map (https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/55b273a2371d2211008b9...), North Carolina sits right at the intersection of three of them -- Tidewater in the north, Deep South in the south, and Greater Appalachia in the west. You'd expect to see lots of linguistic diversity in a place where different cultures are rubbing up against each other.

Interestingly, Woodard's book echoes an earlier work, Joel Garreau's 1981 The Nine Nations of North America (https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Nations-North-America/dp/0380578...). Garreau, however, put all of NC inside his "Dixie" nation, the analogue to Woodard's "Deep South." I wonder how much of this can be chalked up to differences in methodology, and how much to demographic shifts in the three decades separating Woodard's work from Garreau's.

Thanks for linking these - I'd seen them before, but hadn't caught the name of the book. I'll be picking it up :)

For what it's worth, my own experience says that the area for "Greater Appalachia" is pretty much 100% correct. The borders aren't quite sharp, and interesting things definitely happen where two or more "nations" meet.

I also know that West Virginia and middle Tennessee feel like "home" to me, and I'm from the Arkansas Ozarks.

I haven't read either of them, but from a glance I definitely agree with Woodard separating Appalachia into it's own region. Western NC has a very distinct culture and history. I don't think there's been any point in the last 100 years where natives of that region wouldn't view people from Raleigh as "outsiders".

I am an out of stater that moved to Raleigh. I saw a lecture about the language diversity within the state here at one time on our public access channel by a professor from North Carolina State University. One thing I remember from this was that in various parts across the state these three words can all end up with the same pronunciation:

pin, pen, pan

all sounding a bit like "pe~an"

https://english.chass.ncsu.edu/faculty_staff/wolfram https://linguistics.chass.ncsu.edu/thinkanddo/dialecteducati... https://linguistics.chass.ncsu.edu/thinkanddo/vonc.php#video... https://www.ncfieldfamily.org/nc-living/different-dialects-n... https://languageandlife.org/ https://ocracokepreservation.org/

I lived in RTP for 9 years. Never could figure those people out. Anywhere outside the cities everyone talked like they had a mouthful of marbles. Nothing really cultured going on there, just hoi polloi.

Born and raised in Charlotte, wound up with no accent. Californians didn't know I was Southern until I said "Y'all".

Also the pen/pin thing sounding the same is definitely a thing.

When I was a boy, if I ever said 'pin' when I meant 'pen', my parents and teachers would 'correct' me. All entirely Yankee & California. I felt vindicated when I learned there was a whole accent that conflated the two words.

I'm from NC and it blew my mind to learn that some people pronounce those two differently. I've even specifically asked people from other places to say both and I can only barely hear a difference if I strain. I hear that the pin/pen merger pretty widespread though. I have friends from as far as New Mexico and Washington state that also merge them.

Woah, another native Charlottean! I hear we're like unicorns.

But that's similar to what I experienced in Seattle, except they say "y'all" too to be gender-inclusive now. You can spot a WA state accent by the way the say "bag" though (sounds like "beg"). My favorite give-aways for southern without accent though is saying "might could".

> by the way the say "bag" though (sounds like "beg")

The infamous "northwest vowel shift"! I do this too (grew up in the suburbs of Portland) and it's common from Oregon up into BC. Didn't realize it was different until I moved to the midwest for undergrad.

Is that really a thing? I’m as native as one gets (3rd generation, dad is from Walla Walla and grandpa is from Colville), and I’ve never noticed that bag/beg thing. If anything, it might just be a Seattle quirk, or maybe west of the mountains.

I did have a hard time in the Deep South, especially the way they would say things like ve-hi-cle and such.

I know someone from the Aberdeen area who says it that way, and I swear I've heard people in Spokane do it too, so it's not just Seattle at least. Though it's very possible the Spokane people weren't native to Spokane, I didn't ask.

My question for you, is do you notice it when eastern WA people say it? Does it stand out to your ear? If not it's possible that you're just used to hearing it either way and not attuned to the difference. I'm like that when people say "pen" and "pin" differently, I can't hear a difference at all. But the "bag" thing stands out a lot since it's different to me.

No, nothing stands out to me at all, it’s all just normal English. My mom is born/raised from Ketchikan, which is about PNW as one can get, and I swear she has no accent either. It’s all very Midwest neutral.

Heh, I couldn't figure out what my daughter meant when she was in kindergarten in RTP and said they go to different "sinners" throughout the day (she meant centers).

Can confirm... grew up there. A drink 75% of the time meant sweet tea.

Also, we said "Coke" for any type of soda. For example, you would say, "Do you want a Coke?" and someone would say "What do you have?" and we would answer "Pepsi, RC Cola, Dr. Pepper..."

I enjoy it too. It's always interesting and surprising to encounter these people, though I can never place the accents geographically. I once worked with a woman from Oxford, NC, who pronounced it "awksfud."

> One thing I noticed from looking at the data for the accent quiz, is that North Carolinians are far more likely to NOT say soda/pop/coke in actual conversation.

My family has been in NC for generations and my father's side of the family refers to any soft drink as a co-cola. Every soft drink is a co-cola.

Also, my grandfather always used to purposefully mispronounce Ocracoke as O-row-key-coke. Everytime I see Ocracoke I instinctively pronounce it in my grandfather's manner.

My family refers to all carbonated beverages as a "coke" despite pepsi being the state drink. lol

That's funny, I've heard of that being a thing but it really must be regional. My family goes back a long time in western NC, and the way my papa (gran-dad) called it it sounded like "sodey-pop". In Charlotte it was never pop or coke, and even though "soda" is understood, at restaurants people almost always said "drinks" or "soft drinks" b/c sweet tea was so preferred.