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Comment by cjslep | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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