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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

It depends on who you talk to really. I remember visiting Boston and talking to a girl selling t-shirts on the street and being completely unable to understand her. I asked a gas station attendant in Atlanta for directions once and same thing. My friends from Chicago have very discernible accents. My wife, who grew up in rural Iowa, pronounces "stock" and "stalk" differently (among other things).

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This happened to me in Rhode Island. I'm very used to Boston, New York (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island), and various New Jersey accents, but the Rhode Island accent really had me mystified. I just learned about the Maine accent recently (the stereotypical Steven King accent).

That's interesting. I actually grew up in Chicago, but have most recently lived in Iowa. I don't have much of a "chicago" accent with the notable exception of saying "rough" and "roof" exactly the same way.

Oh, there is a very distinctive Chicago accent. One property of that is that 'chicaago' is more likely to be the pronunciation than 'chicogo'.

What got me, as an east coast transplant, was the use of "pop" versus "coke" or "soda." I literally wouldn't register it when people would ask me: "hey do you want a pop?" I'd be like, <pause> "wait, what about your father?" This is even though I knew they called it pop in the Midwest, and over a period of years. It would just catch me off guard.

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