What does a Northern California accent sound like?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.พ. 2025
- I went to San Francisco to see what more I could learn about California accents, and the pronunciation of American English in general.
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I tried the link and it didn't work. I enjoy your work a lot!
I got an "error 404” when I tried the link
There are two primary difference between SoCal and NorCal accents are urban vs the general accents. SoCal accents are more sing songy and they draw out their words. In Norcal we speak faster and truncate words. Instead of focusing on the pronunciation of words you must focus on the prosody of speech The urban accents are MUCH different and would require a whole show. But it mimics the general regional accents only NorCal urban accent is much faster with an over enunciation of "R" with black vernacular and accent being dominant across all races whereas socal urban accents are even slower and more drawn out all with a hint of mexican-american accent, lexicon, and pronunciation.
San Francisco is a spanish name and title. If we spanish speakers want to call it san fran, we can, but we don't. If we wanna call it cisco, we can. If we wanna call it Saint Chico, we can. If we just wanna call it Chico, we can. You see how you didn't even know about most of these nicknames, but we do? The only ones you got right was san fran and Frisco. Those two definitely aren't names us real californians use for san Francisco, but at least you knew of them. Don't listen to what white people or black people say you can or can't call it. Even if they was born here or been here since forever, they still don't know shit. These people still think America was named after an italian. They still think arizona is short for arid zone. They still think texas and Miami are spanish words. 😅😅😅
@@freyjasvansdottir9904 19:40 I just tried it and it worked for me.
As an SF resident, I must say that we just call it The City
@@sjswitzer1
I’m an SF resident and I also call it The City, but I’m 73. I don’t know whether very young San Franciscans call it The City.
@@dancinggiraffe6058 I'm 30 and I also call it the city, so does most everyone else my age I know
I'm here too, but I've effectionately started calling it "The Shitty" ©️ some years back
As a native I’ve called it Frisco since elementary school.
Born and raised in the City and we always call it the City.
I was born and raised in Sacramento. We always called SF, the City. We used it like this. “My mom is taking me to the City for Christmas shopping”. Everyone knew exactly what that meant. No one asked which city. It was a day trip to do some activity made more special by getting to go the City. I can still see the old ship boneyard all lit on our way back home late at night. Stars twinkling in the sky. Radio on. My window down. We only went every few months. It was so special. It makes me miss those days. There was nothing like china town in the evening., or the joy my mom had eating crab from one of the many vendors at the pier. Steam pot bubbling away against the foggy mist. The hustle and bustle. We always took the cable cars. I loved it. So yes, it’s called “ the City”.
I grew up in Carmichael with a dad who was an SF native, and we always called it The City, too. We used to go to Scoma’s for dinner, down by the wharf.
I'm from Monterey, and we always say that too, "let's go to the city this weekend".
When i lived on the peninsula i would deliberately upset people by using “the city” in reference to San Jose when i was south of palo alto, in reference to San Francisco when i was north of Palo Alto and Redwood City if i was in Palo Alto.
I moved to the Bay as a kid from Brooklyn so when I first heard other kids talk about trips to 'The City', I thought they were referring to Manhattan but was fiercely and swiftly corrected. It's been The City ever since.
If you’re from Sacramento - people who live there pronounce it
‘Sacrameno’.
"Interview people HERE where there are no tourists" proceeds to the biggest tourist attraction
I think it may have been sarcasm? 🤷♂️
hahah i think he was joking
Or they're all transplants
Was he joking though? Maybe he didn't know that Alamo Square is a tourist attraction? It is hard to find a place to relax where there are only SF natives. Maybe Stern Grove or McLaren Park on a weekday? ...He did move to Duboce Park pretty quickly there.
Right? And everyone there is not SF native.
Native Californian here. It's not that we aren't good at hearing accents. It's that we dont notice our own accent because of global influence through media, particularly the movies. Movies have a large footprint globally. This includes the Californian accent through actors. The more you hear it, the more it becomes the perceived standard or norm so when you hear something different in real life, you compared it to that. If you travel abroad, People don't say "hey you have a Californian Accent" or think, you're Californian. They think American. And the American accent is Californian because it's the most exported through media.
I agree. Native Californian as well (SF East Bay). I would add that for me going to the military exacerbated this idea in that we take from everyone in the country. It became even harder through the years to remain aware of. Thankfully I like to study language and vernacular of my home has always remained close to me. Videos like these are always fun.
Oh, that makes so much sense! I'm a native Californian, from the Bay area. I still live in California, but in the Sierra.
I was born and educated in Berkeley. My Dad was of White Russian parents, born in Japan, survived the 1923 earthquake and then his family moved to Mexico when he was 3. His Dad was a famous scientist/academic who traveled widely for his work. Mom was from upstate NY. The main comment I've received about my speech is that I speak very formally, a bit like a non native. I've heard the California accent is considered the "accentless accent" in America!
I spent my childhood in Southern California, specifically San Diego, then moved away to other regions of the country. I can often tell by accent when someone is from SD and other people from there have asked me if I was from there before I told them. Maybe because I have stepped away, I can hear differences among Californians. For example, One thing that surprised me was when I heard people from NorCal saying Sierra Nevada as Ne Va Da because everyone I knew growing up said Sierra Ne Vah Da. Perhaps because we are closer to the border I think people where I grew up tended to use more Spanish pronunciations of Spanish words. I and a lot of people in my schools and neighborhoods were bilingual.
Well, not entirely. I've traveled the world and people recognized my Californian accent often. I'm a NorCal girl, born and raised. One person in particular said the Californian accent is very recognizable.
Everyone calls San Francisco “The City” if you live nearby.
Good to know. Many thanks.
Yeah, people will say that in Marin and the East Bay as well.
Many natives use the term Frisco. Herb Caen was funny and wrote a column. Not the rules.
@@andrewlove1987really? Where are you from? Serious question. I live on the Peninsula now, and spent nearly 40 years before that in the East Bay. I graduated from HS in San Jose, and college at Berkeley. I never hear local people say “Frisco”. We either say “SF” (pronounced “ess eff”) or “the City.” There is only one City in Northern California. 😂 Any other city I’ll specify it by name. FWIW, I’m White, and spent 21+ years in San Leandro, once voted the “most racist city in America” in the 1970’s. (It’s far more racially diverse these days.) We were a literal stone’s throw from the Oakland border, but there were definitely noticeable physical and linguistic differences once you crossed that border. So it’s quite possible that it’s a class or regional dialectical difference that I didn’t hear, being largely surrounded by mostly “suburban” middle class neighborhoods for most of my life. (Even when those neighborhoods were essentially within one larger urban area.)
But I am truly curious where and from whom you hear “Frisco.” It’s definitely not been my experience. 😊
@@DawnDavidson I live in the Outer Sunset (not originally from here) but I do hear city natives call it Frisco around the neighborhood. I hear it from older folks at the local dive bars and I also hear it from teenagers at the middle school behind my house. The neighborhood is mostly working class natives, many of my neighbors have owned their homes here for 3 generations now.
Nobody in that park is from the SF Bay Area. You want Folks from the Bay? Cross the bridge, check out San Leandro, Vallejo, Walnut Creek, Richmond, Concord.
Oakland would be the best place in the Bay. Area to find bay natives who are on the forefront of their expressive accent
Oakland isn't safe for any tourist wanting to find out about the Bay Area 😆 @brothertspoon5899
Nope. Go north! Sonoma county, where the immigrant (foreign and domestic) population is much less. I remember when going to The City meant hat and gloves, for shopping (The White House, City of Paris, Magnin’s and J Magnin) and lunch at Blum’s.
My husband and I were both born in San Jose and he was on a business call with someone in the Midwest and he was asked, “are you from San Jose?” Apparently the guy had worked for years with a man from SJ and he recognized the accent. Who knew there was a SJ accent?
Also when we say San Jose, we say Sanozay.
@@KatherineMurray-on6kq yes, always passed through Sanozay on the way to the beach in Sanacruz
Next time ask in your videos for native San Franciscans! I’m fourth generation and a speech pathologist so I am very aware of the difference in accents between the generations. We used to call my grandmother and great aunt (born 1899 and 1901) the Gabor sisters because they called us “My Dahlings” and my sister was “Donner” not “Donna” (non rhotic) and my mother (born 1929) did what is now becoming common in younger people (bae-ul for bottle) as you mentioned in your video. You should have come to my 50th class reunion - you would have heard a great representation of San Francisco accents (which are probably subtlety different depending on the district of the city you grew up in (North Beach, Hinson, The Sunset, Excelsior, etc). And Americans are terrible at distinguishing accents - as a speech pathologist I would get referrals from teachers saying that they thought a student had trouble saying the “B” sound (which no one ever has trouble saying) and it would be the “r” or the “l”! As for me, of course I have no accent lol 😂
😂😂😂😂
@@laurenj8888 As another speech pathologist, it's amazing how people perceive/ misperceive speech! I don't know if we are relatively better having studied it, or if we studied it because it came more easily to us. Chicken/egg.
my grandparents grew up in chinatown and north beach and i always found their accent had a drawl too it
My mom was born in the City but grew up in Hayward. Most of her ancestors came to the City during the years 1868-1880. Her parents grew up in the City, as did my grandmother's sister. My cousin (raised in Richmond) and my mom used to argue as kids about which of their moms sounded more "San Francisco." I have a lot of relatives who grew up in the City, and their accents always reminded me of east coast accents, especially the way they pronounced the letter R, sort of like "ah". I'm not sure why the person who produced this interviewed people who weren't actually raised in the Bay Area.
As a native Oaklander who has lived here for 75 years, the major difference between NorCal & SoCal is in the south, words are drawn out longer than in the North where words are pronounced in a shorter, sharper way. Tuuuh in SoCal Tah in NorCal.
Interviewed all transplants. LOL. We call it "The City" or San Francisco. That's it.
@@MrMrbokchoi Stop it. There's only one city in that context. Come on, now.
Frisco is also a nickname for the city that's been well documented and represented by native San Franciscans.
Totes
@@ericaerica3638 that's mostly used by people not from the bay area
Most of the people you interviewed don’t actually live in San Francisco but in the surrounding Bay Area and we call it The City. As a Bay Area resident, San Francisco is most definitely one of our favorite places to visit for the day. And the suggestion of Rosetta Stone is an excellent idea to learn lots of languages, especially a quick review before we visit a foreign country.
Lol - "The man is a walking R" just killed me!!
Glad you appreciated that.
And "Rear Window" is a terrific movie! Raymond Burr is very frightening in his role.
As a 60-year-old native of the Bay Area who took a bunch of linguistics in college and whose grandmother had a PhD in the subject (so I pay attention to these things, but am only a hobbyist), I've noticed there are differences in accent between people _my_ age born in this area and younger natives. A key example is the glottal stop you mentioned in kitten, button, etc. (And my last name, so I hear this a lot!) I find this most noticeable in younger people, but don't hear it in Californians my age. Cheers!
I am 50 grown up in sf bay and i say the glottal thing. Always have to my knowledge
I agree. 60+, 3rd generation from the city of SF and I have only begun noticing the glottal stop ‘tt’ in the last 10 years or so and mostly from people in the northeast. I had always associated that to certain areas of the UK. Old timer San Franciscans, born before 1910 or so, had a distinctly different accent than mine.
I guess there's variation - I'm a Bay Area native in my 60s, and I've always used a glottal stop before syllabic n (kitten, mitten, sometimes mountain). I never noticed it, though, until it was brought up in a linguistics course.
I've only noticed the ki 'en and mou 'en (mountain) thing in the last 5 years among under-40s. At 66, it's odd but I figure I'm lucky to live long enough to hear the language change, so roll with it.
Plus the vocal fry, am I right?
I wouldn't have included those non-native Californians in this video. They still speak with their regional accents (Chicago, Arkansas, San Diego, etc)
San Diego is okay, but I get it
The disappearing 't' following 'n' is very apparent in the many California cities that have Spanish names. Santa Ana becomes Sanna Ana and Sacramento becomes Sacramenno.
Indeed.
Yes, I do both of those without the 't'.
i've heard that pronunciation spread to toronto as well, although i don't know how normal that particular pronunciation is over there
We also willfully mispronounce Cabrillo Arguello and Junipero Sera, this includes Spanish speakers.
You're right, I tend to do this, too!
“Hella” is old. A friend I met in 1979 grew up in Oakland, CA and was saying “hella” back then.
Aside from a few lexicons, I really don’t hear a difference between the Southern and Northern California accents.
I’m from L.A.
Yep!! “Hella” was used in Hayward area at that time too. A co-worker sussed that I had an East Bay connection because I referred to something as ‘hella cool’. She grew up in The Mission and said people in SF didn’t really say hella and that it was an East Bay thing. That was probably early 90’s. Alameda County needs to get some credit for it. 😁
Hella is a shorten version of helluva, which I hear in a wider region in Cali. Helluva is shorten for "hell of a lot of", which is shorten from "a whole hell of a lot of", which I actually still hear once in while. It doesn't really mean "very", but more a kin to a large amount or in abundance, which I think a lot of people interpret of "very". I guess at some point, it started to be used locally as "very" too.
Same.
I grew up in Berkeley in the 1980s and hella was already a fixture. It’s a very useful word. I imagine there are phd papers on it
..hella useful
These accent tours are truly fascinating Dave. Please do do more!
Thanks - I will.
Please do more traveling videos! You are helping us tune our own tone-deaf ears so we can hear the clues all around us.
What a great video! Very interesting to be so observant of accents. I lived 30 years in southern California where I was born and then nearly 40 years in Northern California until I moved to northern Idaho and then hit 70 where I live now. I never thought there was a difference between southern and Northern California accents. My parents were from the Midwest, and that’s the accent I think I internalized. Some southern Californians, like surfers and other beachy types, had their own accent, and “Valley Girls” in the San Fernando Valley where I grew up had their own accent. I have a friend in Northern California who is a native of NorCal, and your sample of the NorCal accent sounds exactly like my friend! But the trouble with California, as you found out, is that nearly everyone is from somewhere else. Thank you for your delightful video!
You want to talk to native Northern Californians, come to Sacramento. Not as many tourists or transplants.
Add to that; Santa Rosa or Petaluma.
I was going to say come up to my neck of the woods in Nevada County!
@@jacthwakk8328 Sacramento is HELLA lame. Plenty of Natives in the whole Bay Area. And, your welcome for riding on our coat tails and using our slang and style. No one outside of Northern California knows where, or what, the hell Sacramento is. Just like wack-@$$ San Jose…🤷🏻♂️… Am I lying?
@@evanbarnes9984I’m from Nevada County and have been told my accent is pretty strange and I would have to agree. The Okie influence combined with the migratory speech of northern and southern Californians to the foothills has made an odd combo
Or even in the east bay
Hey Dave! Your channel just showed up in my feeds out of the blue and I was gobsmacked. I grew up in San Francisco having lived in The City continuously for the past 48 years. The reason why this video particularly resonated with me is because I used to work with a native San Franciscan who used to tell me that I spoke with a San Franciscan accent and she couldn't believe it because she said it's very pronounced and that it's been awhile since she's heard someone talk like that. This is very surprising to me because I've only lived in San Francisco for about 6 years at that time. This was back in the early 80s. I was 18 years old and my family moved from Manila to San Francisco in 1977 when I was twelve.
So, I asked her what a San Francisco accent is. She said that native San Franciscans talked as if they have run multiple words together into one word, like saying hellva for 'hell of a', or calling that city south of us 'Sannazé.' Back then, there were a lot of native San Franciscans who were still living in San Francisco and the Bay Area. The TV personalities were practically all native San Franciscans, like Dave McElhatton and Van Amburg. She also gave very specific examples of people who spoke with a San Francisco accent. Surprisingly, two of the people she said spoke with a San Francisco accent are Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland, both of whom grew up in the Bay Area. Others are Herb Caen, Pat Steger, and Jerry Garcia!
There is a PBS documentary, "San Francisco: The Way It Was," which is narrated by Dave McElhatton and is filled with interviews of native San Franciscans like the aforementioned Herb Caen and Pat Steger. I'll add the link below but I'm not sure it will allow me to add it. I hope that will help you identify this elusive San Francisco accent, which I still have not been able to hear or identify.
th-cam.com/video/OA0ODRGWQI4/w-d-xo.html
I just recently watched that series and couldn't believe the accents from the older generation who were interviewed. Everyone else just sounds normal to me
I wish you had run into me - then you could’ve heard an almost-native, baby boomer San Francisco accent. I was born in San Diego in 1950, my family moved to the Bay Area - Cupertino - when I was three, and into the City when I started kindergarten.
I would describe my way of saying San Francisco as starting with a French “saint”, but not opening my mouth quite that much, followed by “frncisco”. And we never called it Frisco; maybe I just didn’t know the right people. In fact, the name of the school variety show when I was in the 9th grade was “Don’t Call It Frisco!”
I do the flapped T between vowels, but I do pronounce the T in NT in words such as interesting and Internet. One exception would be in mountain, because of the reduction of the second syllable to N.
More to come.
@@dancinggiraffe6058 many thanks and I look forward to hearing more.
African Americans call it Frisco
Yeah the “its not frisco” people are racists
Not any I know.
I grew up in San Francisco but ever since the tech takeover starting around 20’yeara ago it has attracted techies from all over the country who have dissolved the native San Franciscans. Notice nobody you interviewed grew up in SF. It’s extremely rare to find adults who grew up here.
Great video!
In SF you'll mainly find lexical differences, as you noted. If you go to Santa Cruz and the inner farmlands, you'll note more pronunciation differences. For the inner farmlands, there's more of an "Okie" (Oklahoma) influence due to the migration of farmers during the Dust Bowl - as well as some Southern and Spanish influence.
In Santa Cruz - there's some SoCal Surfer influence, as well as some Seattle/Portland grunge influence among younger speakers.
Thanks for all your good work!
I’ll try to get up there soon.
We used to love going to Sanna Cruz.
Yes! So many people don't know about the Oakie influx during the dust bowl.
@@MsDarlingNicky I am from Fresno. This Oakie influence is more pronounced in the older population than in the younger ones. Also, big cities like Fresno, Bakersfield, and Stockton have them pretty much disappeared.
California's accent is based on the Midwestern accent (Midland American English) due to decades of immigration from the Midwest States. California has been a large agriculture state since its beginning and it has drawn farmers from the Midwest States. Then WWII and the Cold War caused California's population to double in 20 years. California's population 1940 was 7 million and California's population 1960 was 15 million. Most of those new arrivals came from the Midwest. - The Okie Dust Bowl immigration was nothing in comparison and it was short lived. But the Dust Bowl immigration is more popular in the minds of people due to books/movies like Grapes of Wrath.
He's interviewing mostly wealthy tourists in the middle of a famous tourist stop in a millionaire (Mostly Anglo-Saxon White, Jewish and minority wealthy Chinese) neighborhood of SF, which is not at all representative of Northern California.
He interviewed two people from wealthy parts of Northern California: Palo Alto, home of Stanford University and Facebook; Santa Cruz, (Norcal version of Malibu).
He interviewed a wealthy White tourist from San Diego, which is SoCal (mexican border)
He interviewed an Asian woman from Seattle, Washington.
He interviewed a wealthy man from Arkansas.
He interviewed a man from Chicago, Illinios.
He interviewed a tourist from Berlin Germany.
Maybe he should have tried riding the BART between Richmond and Fremont for a more representative sample. Oakland, especially my neighborhood, would have surprised him.
FYI "the BART" is not a Northern California way of talking. 🤣🤣 We just say "BART".
As a former Santa Cruz resident and lifelong Bay Arean, the comparison to Malibu is hilARious 🤣
@@GrowWildOutdoorsThere's nothing quite like Santa Cruz...and I am still not sure whether that's a good thing or not. 😂
@@IvanIvanoIvanovich Amen to that! 😆🙌 I had two Malibu Barbies as a kid, I'd be thrilled to see Mattel's take on "Santa Cruz Barbie"
@@GrowWildOutdoors 😆
I'm a fourth generation East Bay native (I'm 64). I was born in Oakland, lived on the border of the South and East Bay for 50 years, and worked my whole career in the South Bay. I've moved back to the neighborhood in Oakland that my family originally settled in after they came to the US. We talk about microclimates all the time here in the Bay Area, and it would be hella fun to dial deep to see if there's micro dialects among those of us who have grown up here.
There are...the Vallejo/north east bay accent is a thing, i.e. "mom" is pronounced "maah-uhm"
Thank you. You touched on a topic that has interested me for many years. The San Francisco city accent was in my experience, a real thing. working class white guys who grew up in the Mission district to me sounded like Boston or a version of New York. I am originally from the midwest. I haven’t heard this accent for decades.
There are a lot of transplants from Massachusetts and New York in the Bay Area
There are a lot of us still around. We just get mistaken for being from the North East.
@@lucinapearson5024 Sonomabob is talking about an old SF accent we used to hear from people born before about 1964. It was mostly heard in older folks, born a little after the turn of the century (as in 1900).
I think your observation that Americans seem less sensitive to subtle differences in pronunciation that Brits is probably true, but I suspect it's likely for the opposite reason than you've proposed - I think we're exposed to MORE accents, not fewer. Specifically, my impression is that as children, the people you'd be exposed to within your own "community" in the UK - family, school, etc., would typically all have the same accent, therefore any differences in pronunciation would stand out and mark you as an "outsider." While there are likely still some regions in the US where you'll find a classroom where everyone has the same accent, typically there will be a lot of subtle differences - exactly the sorts of things the people you interviewed didn't notice - because the kids' parents probably didn't attend that same school themselves but rather came from somewhere else in the US (or elsewhere). Therefore, accent isn't a very good marker of "outsiderness" in the US, and we rely on other cues.
@@ssolomon999 Especially true in a place like the San Francisco Bay area, where (from anecdotal experience) seemingly 75+% of people are from elsewhere. Whether from other towns, states, or countries. I imagine similar is true a big UK city like London.
Yes, I agree. Whether themselves or their parents, most have come from somewhere else - and many different elsewhere.
Important Distinction: historically and in other places, such as England, the UK, everyone in a local area had the same accent.
In California, people have been migrating from numerous places & in greater numbers than the locals for generations - so people are used to multiple accents in a single day: so long as the person understands the other’s intended communication, most people don’t look further.
Also, fewer people learn foreign languages (unless the “foreign” language is English!), so most aren’t thinking about speech or dialects, even when they encounter numerous dialects in a day.
I’m American and have become more aware of slight accent differences in the USA because of moving around. I notice people who don’t pronounce the l in almond or the t in santa. I just don’t say anything about it. However, sometimes i might get confused because I didn’t understand because of a different pronunciation of a word. For example, I am currently in the Midwest and was confused when I heard words like roof and coyotes. Where I am from coyote was always a three syllable word and I had never heard it otherwise. Roof rhymed with proof but here it roof rhymes with puff. I didn’t say anything but eventually understood what people were saying based on the context of the sentence. I had the same issues in the Southeast, but that was a little easier because my grandparents were from there. However, in Southern Louisiana, some parts of Appalachia, and in the Low Country, I can’t always understand people.
The San Francisco I knew in the 1980's died along with Beach Blanket Babylon. RIP.
Same. I left Berkeley in 1986, and never have regretted it.
What's Beach Blanket Babylon?
@@ajs41 At the time it was the longest running musical theater production in the world. And it was very San Francisco.
Im so mad at myself for never going to see that even though it ran for what..30 years?
@@elizabethbarton3047 Thirty-five.
My God Father was born in SF in 1913 and had the coolest SF accent. He grew up there when cattle still trotted down the streets to the slaughter house. He had wonderful stories, and his beautiful accent will always live on in recorded Stanford lectures.
I grew up in the Bay Area (Marin County), living there from 1979 - 2005, and San Francisco was always referred to as “The City”. Calling it “Frisco” was a sure sign the speaker was from elsewhere. I believe this originated with San Francisco’s iconic newspaper columnist Herb Caen (who is said to have also coined the term “Beatnik”).
I'm just north of you in Southern Sonoma County, and I completely agree. It has always been "the city," and the term Frisco was something a tourist would say, just like how they call our great state Cali.
Marin isn't San Francisco. And yes, Frisco is one of the oldest nicknames for the city and is well documented and represented by native San Franciscans.
Sonoma isn't San Francisco either.
@ Hahahhaaa… OK! Whatever gets you through the day (for those playing along at home, Marin County is literally just over the Golden Gate Bridge. Sonoma is the next county north, up the 101, not exactly far removed with regards to The City). You might want to Google who Herb Caen was.
@@ericaerica3638 My family has lived in SF for generations going back to the 1800s, and I'm a native. Only people I've ever heard call San Francisco "Frisco" are foreigners. Herb Caen, our beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning legendary columnist even wrote a book titled, "Don't Call It Frisco."
Fascinating video. Thank you for posting it. In my experience, San Francisco has such an itinerate population that identifying a characteristic accent for most of the people here here is impossible. But, as you mentioned, there is an old working-class accent here that's remarkably close to what I'd call a Brooklyn accent, and it's very much alive.
Yes, its like a mild Brooklyn accent. Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown speak this was, and so do I sometimes. We are all old natives of SF.
I was raised very near San Francisco and have the traditional cot v. caught. My daughters who grew up about 2 hours east of San Francisco have the merger. Other linguists have cited the east coast shipping trade from Boston/New York City to San Francisco during the Gold Rush as the progeniture of the traditional cot v. caught that was still in play when I last lived near San Francisco in the early 1980s. The range of that doesn't encompass the entirety of the SF Bay Area but a smaller belt ending north of San Jose and not encompassing the lower Bay Area nor Santa Cruz/Monterey to the more southern coast. My school friends that I still have contact with have the same traditional (non-merger) pronunciations of cot and caught. Fascinating stuff! Thank you for sharing!
@@lindah5910 I grew up in the mid-Atlantic East Coast, adult life in the SF Bay area, and I've always had the cot/caught, don/dawn merger.
When a friend and I did a NYT accent quiz, she couldn't believe I pronounced them the same and I couldn't believe she pronounced them differently. We grew up together in the mid-Atlantic region, both moved to "northern" California, but her parents are New Yorkers through and through (never lost that distinct accent), and they really influenced her pronunciation. Interesting side note: her dad was a renowned linguist!
That quiz was the first time it occurred to me that the merger was the anomaly, and the seemingly-quirky New York or Pennsylvania or Chicago pronunciations were not
In 1968 upon my arrival at Stanford University in Palo Alto I learned to distinguish those from the Los Angeles area, those from the general SF area and those from Oregon by their speech.
SO true! I moved up here to SF almost 30 years ago. I learned quickly not to say "The" in front of a freeway number. SoCal and NorCal are hella different! 🤣
@@Please_Dont_Call_It_Frisco I grew up in SF and Marin. I only remember stoners guys using the "hella" term. I guess it's migrated into more general use, or there are more stoner guys than there used to be.
@@letsbereal9455 Well, I'm neither a stoner nor a guy. :)
I was born and raised on the SF Peninsula and I love listening to accents! Your comment about a “San Francisco accent” reminded me of an old man I met in the 1970s. Because I thought he had an accent (sounded East Coast to me) I asked him where he was from. He told me he was born in San Francisco and raised in a neighborhood called “Butchertown”. That gave me something to ponder!
I’m from NorCal , about 50mins drive from the City (SF 😁). I found this video very interesting. I subbed and look forward to seeing more of your content. It’s true, being Californian I don’t notice too many language differences when I know there are many. I hope your channel can help me understand the subtle differences more. Great stuff! Thanks!
Great stuff! When I came to San Francisco from L.A. in 1969 there were still three distinctive San Francisco accents in English. There was a North Beach Italian accent and one called South of Market or 'south of the slot' (cable car tracks). The second one was more like a Boston Irish accent. When I was asked by a bank clerk with a Texas drawl where I was from I was so astonished that I didn't sound like a San Franciscan that I immediately set about getting rid of the L.A. accent. The process was actually quite simple. I stopped sounding like I fell asleep in the sun and learned to speak more distinctly.
By the way we do not pronounce 'stop' anything like the way it is pronounced in the upper midwest. That nasal A is the way we identify people from that part of the country. There is a real distinction between 'stap', 'stawp' and 'stop'. Finally, young people really do speak very differently from us old ones, and it isn't just their filling every gap with 'like'.
My Dad spoke South of Market with a touch of North Beach.
Okay so I would love for you to do a video on the accent of Americans (West coast mainly or urban areas) around the 1970’s. I never see anyone talk about this! When I see old clips of interviews of people especially young women around that time, there’s a really distinct difference in accent. Like the Marsha Brady accent or something like that.
I definitely say mirror as two syllables. The only people I noticed pronouncing it like mere were a lot of the Chinese kids in my schools. A few of them pronounced it mirro.
I grew up using the cot-caught merger, but I slightly modified my pronunciation after living in New York for eight years. I don’t think I make a consistent difference, but I say lawyer so that it doesn’t sound so close to liar.
I also break from the merger when I say the word/name Dawn. I guess that stems from my experience of asking someone at work in New York whether Dawn was coming into work that day. “Who?” “Your friend Dawn.” “0h, you mean DOOan!”
When I was growing up, I thought my accent was just the general American accent. But when I was in Europe for the summer in 1970, I started noticing that I could distinguish Southern California accents. And then one day, I was sitting at an outdoor café, and I heard someone behind me speaking, and I felt as if I were back in SF. I asked her whether she was San Francisco, and she said she was from Berkeley. Same difference. I really couldn’t tell you what it was about her speech that I recognized as being like my own, but I just knew it.
When I spent 3 months in Spain, I could distinguish American and specifically NorCal and socal accents for the first time. It was this amazing epiphany as I thought Californians didn’t have an accent. My own accent is hodgepodge from moving so much as a child but I did the NYT accent test and was placed firmly in the Bay Area, where I have spent the majority of my life.
@@faithharrison3755
I’ll have to try that accent test.
He missed the pronunciation of San Jose being Zano Zay.
This video would have been better if he went to the other SF Bay Area cities where he would come across people raised in the SF Bay Area.
😂😂😂😂Zano Zay, accurate and hilarious!
I was thinking of that but I have seen it as “sannosay” lol
@@josueramirez7247 - same thing, different spelling.
More interesting than the extreme northern California accent video, as, to be honest, there are some interesting things up there, but you'll find it not too dissimilar to Oregon; I think would be the minorities of CA.
Seeing as it is the most diverse state, maybe except Hawaii, the young Hispanic, Asian, Black, and some White communities can find themselves speaking a shared vocabulary, that sometimes finds itself spreading to the rest of the country via Hollywood and Television. I almost refer to it as my High School accent,but it's more pervasive across the entire state than you'd expect.
I'd love to investigate the any multi-ethnic accents there might be.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages Yeah, that would be really interesting.
Native and current resident here. Late Herb Caen wrote an article in the Chronicle about the name. A number of natives from the 1970s to 1990s look with disdain when people say Frisco. That is a city in Texas! 🤠
I have yet to find anybody to say Sisco. BTW Sysco is a food distributor. Cisco Systems moved from the Bay Area to Texas.
Some celebrities born here: Gracie Allen, Clint Eastwood, 10 years later Bruce Lee, Bill Bixby, Nancy Wilson of Heart ❤, Ronnie Montrose, Leslie Mann, Rob Schneider, Gabrielle Cateris, Alicia Silverstone, Jason Kidd.
And Colorado
I am a 73 year old S.F Bay Area native. I grew up in Saratoga near San Jose. In 1966 when I went to boardung school in La Jolla (San Diego), I noticed and commented on the fact that the locals drawled. It was slight but noticeable to me although my classmates denied it vigorously. I still hear it when I go to southern California. The book "Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fish😮er explains this, at least in part, by tracing the source of the different migrations to each end of the state.
I believe that there is still a perceptible southern California drawl. In part this is probably due to their proximity to the American Southwest - after all, Arizona is much closer to San Diego than San Francisco is. Also, in san Diego you can look directly into Mexico. In that area, a car with BC license plates is inevitably from Baja California whereas the occasional BC plates up here are from British Columbia.
Also, southern Californians put the article the before freeway or highway numbers, "the I-5" whereas that is never heard in northern California where it woukd be I-80 or just 80, as in 80 closed due to blowing snow.
While it's true that San Francisco is frequently referred to as the city, as in:
"We went into the city for Fleet Week to see the Blue Angels"
I don't think that is unique to the SF Bay Area. People in the New York suburbs refer to New York as the city. Town (no article) is also heard in both places although probably more often in New York as, :
"I took a train into town to see a Broadway show "
I remember reading a linguistic breakdown ages ago that said the regional accent in the SF Bay Area was like that of southern New England, ie Connecticut.
Also, accents change perceptibly as you move east or farther north in the state.
I come from Shasta County (north-north), and we commonly refer to Interstate Five as “the I-5” or “the 5.” The I-5 is the only interstate highway that exists there, so I think its influence is marked by giving it an article.
We may or may not use “the” in front of other highway… pretty interchangeable.
I also have lived many years in Sacramento, San Francisco, and other Bay Area cities, and I think “the” gets used plenty (but not exclusively) in front of highway numbers.
Fisher's book is tops.
Coming from NY to AZ and teaching here, I had many children from Southern California. My biggest bugaboo was with adults and their kids saying "exspecially" for especially and "drawling" for drawing. I believe it is either a listening problem or just copying the way others pronounce, creating a dialect. I was taught that if teaching a consonant sound to kids, for example "b" to just sound B with lips, where many teachers will teach "BA." If Ba is taught, kids will misspell thinking there's an "a" sound. Dialects are different from place to place. In NY we had many in NYC area alone. In the Bronx they don't pronounce an "r" in car, or they will place an "r" in a word like "saw" and say "sawr" in Brooklyn. They will say "earl" for oil or "terlet" for toilet. Being from 100 miles north of the NYC, I never thought I had an accent until I moved out West. 😊
I like your post. Exspecially because I used to pronounce the word especially exspecially. I learned to pronounce it that way from my Mom, that’s how she pronounces it.
@ We learn what we live and
no one should correct their Mom. 😉 This is one way dialects take root anywhere. As a teacher we were taught to ignore these differences and speak properly ourselves, and never make fun or light of a dialect or cultural behaviors different from our own. Sadly, many teachers no longer learn this.
I love you for teaching everyone how to properly pronounce the city!!!! You’re a real gem for that, for sure!!!!
I say this as an actual native, too!
Frisco is a city in Texas. Most locals call it "The City", actual residents call it SF.
Hells Angels Frisco since 1954 say otherwise...
Natives do indeed use the term Frisco. And newspapers long before Herb Caen graced the pages of the Chronicle did as well.
@@andrewlove1987
Yes, historically people said Frisco. Its been “uncool” to say that for at least 40 years. Its a little like wearing a Hawaiian shirt in Hawaii. Yes its done but it marks you as someone not in the “KNOW” if you know what I mean. Yes Hawaiians do wear Hawaiian shirts, but generally they do not. Did Herb Caen say Frisco sure. Emperor Norton probably did. Joseph Alioto probably did. Sutter probably said i need to go to Frisco to get some parts for my Mill on more then one occasion. The point is its an archaism today. People do use archaisms. I know someone who calls automatic transmissions Hydromatic. People watch this video because they want to use the words most people use. People mostly say “The City” or “SF” to people they know. And San Francisco to strangers. Captain Kirk said “The City”
Native here. I say SF or city as a shortcut.
I don’t know why the algorithm sent me here… but I am LOVING THIS!!! Fascinating…
I’ve never ever heard a native Californian say “Cali”
I say it all the time.
I am a third generation San Franciscan and never heard or said Cali ever. I think maybe it’s a college student thing. Definitely something young people might say.
@redwoods7370 I'm 53
@@redwoods7370 Here's the thing... LL Cool J said Cali, need I say more?
Im 3rd generation Californian and I always type out Cali... Cause im lazy lol
⭐️✨ This was my favorite video of yours so far. And I’m born and raised and watched (and loved) your southern ca accent video already. In this video, I found your explanation on ‘tn’ kitten/button the most fascinating bc it’s something i’ve always wondered about myself. How am I hearing myself say these words with a little bit of ‘t’ sound yet I know I don’t clearly enunciate the ‘t’ when I say kitten and button? You explained the difference in air flow in the mouth /nose so perfectly! I’ll never forget that now.
I also find your videos useful when I’m trying to help my 11 yr old son with his speech. He’s on the spectrum. You’ve given me words to describe how, when, and where my mouth / tongue moves when saying specific sounds.
You’ve also given me just a deeper general understanding of how humans pronounce sounds and how it varies geographically.
Your videos are always so interesting- packed with tons of fascinating information.
So glad I found your channel!! ❤
Bay Area native here, in my 60s... when I'm not just saying 'the city,' I do use the pronunciation you mention at 0:41 (I think it's 3 syllables, though).
Same. Except I do say four syllables. I don't get how you say it in three. 😆
Quite honestly, in the older days "Frisco" is what they called it. Thats what my Dad called it, he was born in Oakland in 1912. I was born in Oakland, ca in 1962
Going to SF to make a video about native Nor Cal accents is like going to Disneyland on Safari. You won't get the real thing. Go to the towns outside or around SF like El Cerrito, Vallejo, Martinez, Pittsburg, etc. for a genuine Bay Area accent.
Carl Nolte has written in the SF Chronicle about the distinct neighborhood accents that used to exist in the city. Easy to look up and an interesting read.
North Beach used to have a thing, I remember. Everything has homogenized some since.
You should check out Stanford University's Voices of California project. I'd link it but TH-cam won't let me. But they have recordings of accents from all across the state!
Thanks for the suggestion! I’m from San Diego and I can definitely hear the difference between Southern, Central, and Northern California accents. I’m excited to check out more!
i'll check it out!
@@malieshaojie502 I wasn’t able to find the video. Would you mind linking it?
Yes, by all means come and visit us in far northern Humboldt County, California.
Here you can experience the "marijuana accent," which seems to result from chronic cannabis use.
It's a shame. That plant has ruined many lives. Raised in California. It should still be illegal. Crushes the lives of many men -- makes them adolescents until they die. Tragic.
There was a poll of cities and towns a few years ago along the coast about whether they were north and south. The line is between Santa Barbara and Ventura…
I’m 21, born and raised in the bay. The ‘tn’ shortening was probably the most interesting part of this for me because I do both versions
Kitten -> ki-in
Water -> wa-dur
Button -> bu-in (VERY soft i)
But for words like:
Shorten-> shor-n
I don’t add the vowel
I even do this with sn in
reason->ree-zn
A big reason I think that we believe we don’t have accents is how similar we sound to national TV and media. (Just a guess!)
Loved this video! Thanks for sharing and hope you had a great time in the city!
I was born and raised in San Francisco, and growing up I thought that we didn't have an obvious accident the way that the south, midwest, or north east USA have. I assumed that because the western part of the United States is the "newest" part of the country and has such a wide variety of immigrant groups bringing different linguistic characteristics with them, a specific regional accent never developed. Obviously, this is an incorrect observation on my part!
I felt very validated by your observation that "Francisco" is pronounced like it has only one syllable, something that I have noticed in my own pronunciation. I remember years ago watching the classic film "Miracle on 34th Street" and noticed the actor playing Mr Macy pronounces "San Francisco" with three distinct syllables in the word "Francisco" like Fran-cis-co. That pronunciation sounded so odd to me. Here some people even merge the sounds in San Francisco to sound like it's all one word: "Snfrnsko." I wonder if this reflects a regional tendency to not enunciate words and sort of smush sounds together. I'm curious if my own habit of not enunciating can be blamed on my regional accent!
The second I saw you go to Alamo Square Park I realized that you'd have a hard time find anyone born and raised in the Bay Area. Unfortunately the tech industry powered gentrification has made it impossible for most locals to stay anymore. I think only two people I went to hight school with even live in the city anymore, as most have moved to cheeper places. Now the city is filled with tech workers from around the country and world, making it hard to find true locals anymore. In fact, the population of dogs in the city is now higher than the number of children, meaning few people will get to grow up here the way I was able to. I wonder if the East Bay or Santa Cruz may be a better location to find native Northern Californians. In fact, those two places are said to be where a lot of regional lingo originated. "Hella" is said to have originated from the African American community in Oakland, and a lot of surfer/skater lingo comes from Santa Cruz. I'm curious what other norcal people think of my observations?
Fascinating observations - thank you so much.
Dang, YT cut off your comment here "groups bringing different linguistic........" I hate that.
I grew up in the Bay Area too and we were sure we had no accent especially compared to our cousins in MN. We thought we sounded exactly like everyone on TV and the movies unless they were obviously from a different region.
@@websurfer5772 I also had cousins in Minnesota! One of them pronounced "no" like "kneeowwahh" which I was amused by. To me, that kind of obvious vocal affect was the sign of a true regional accent, and lacking that in the Bay Area, I figured it meant we had a more generic or default American accent. Also, at the bottom of my comment it should say "show more" that will reveal the rest of my comment, or at least it does for me on my laptop. Perhaps viewing comments on the phone app is different
@@colinneagle4495 Now I can see your whole comment in this drop-down message box on my laptop. Let me go read it.
Okay I read it. I've always pronounced it, and heard it pronounced, 'San Fran-cis-co'. I didn't even catch that he said people were pronouncing it differently except for those who say 'Frisco' but that's lexicon, not accent.
There are some people I have randomly met around here, usually in bars or at parties, that I just cannot understand, and yeah, they do smoosh their words together. I have to ask them to keep repeating themselves and sometimes after they do a few times I pretend to understand them because it gets embarrassing.
I've never had any problem understanding business people, doctors, teachers, principles, lawyers, superintendents, my parent's friends, insurance people, financial experts, people on TV, my parents, my friends, my sibiling's friends, cousins etc. from the Bay Area.
That's weird.
Do you understand people when they smoosh their words together?
@@websurfer5772 I was born and raised in San Francisco and I can't recall having trouble understanding other locals, but I haven't lived there in 20 years. I do recall people from other places telling me that I didn't enunciate enough, which I assumed was just a characteristic of my own speaking. However, a few years ago I saw an article about the features of the Norcal or Bay Area accent that discussed a regional propensity to smoosh place name words together and I began to wonder if that's where I got it!
This is the video I’ve been waiting for
As a native northern Californian who was born in SF, I would never say they "rang me back".
Exactly! ‘They called me back’ would be more accurate.
@@loucollins6367🏆🏆🏆 Bingo! I've never said "rang you/me back" either. We use "call". Or in the last decade or so..."hit you back" or "hit me up".
I’m from Southern California but my wife is from Northern California; Marin specifically. I noticed she says things with a short A like “can” and “cat” more like “cy-an” and “cy-at”. • I had a talk with a college professor who spoke about the San Francisco accent and he made a valiant attempt to replicate it. To me it sounded like something that you would hear from New England because it was very nasally, very clipped and very much from the front of the mouth. It’s hard to describe but that’s my memory of it.
I would wade for a bus to see a hella sick Dave Huxtable video. On a more-serious note, the controversy over “Frisco” stems from an influential screed by humorist and columnist Herb Caen. “Frisco” was in widespread use before the screed’s publication and remains so today.
Yep! I use “Frisco” occasionally. My dad, born in Oakland 1933. I was also born in Oakland. Among my dad’s friends, who were multi racial, from all over the Bay Area, and longshoremen, would use “Frisco”. So, the low class label, turned into, “that term isn’t used here”. Wrong! But, over time, younger people have lost the context of the disapproval.
@@Nubianette 🫡
Wow, so nice of you to say so. As for 'Frisco', thanks for pointing that out. I'm sorry I picked up on that myth and further propagated it.
@nubianette Thanks for that. Someone else pointed out that it was a working class and African-American term. My great uncles were all longshoremen in London.
I say, "I would 'wai' for a bus with some sort of stop on the end, but not a 't' or a 'd'. Maybe a glottal stop?
As a native San Franciscan, we always referred to it as the City. South San Francisco was called South City. I really don't like hearing Southern/Northern California called SoCal/NorCal, or the Bay Area called, the Bay, or California called Cali. I never use the word, "hella" for "very" and I noticed that it was more of an adolescent way of speaking that became trendy.
That's interesting, I was born in SF and raised mostly in Marin and I feel the same way. And I've only ever known one person to say "hella."
Bay area native (born in SF, lived in the East Bay my whole life). I'm sure you know this but I think it's very hard to find native San Franciscans because of the terrible cost of living and how desirable it is for wealthier people who move there for tech jobs. Many people in the city are not from there originally. Maybe if you had more time you could have travelled around other parts of the bay and met some more natives? Normally people don't have much interesting to say about NorCal accents because they're not that distinct from general American (imo) so people often bring up stuff like hella (like the people in the video) or older features which aren't super relevant anymore, but you brought up some really relevant stuff and made some great observations. Also, wrt your desire to talk to older SF natives, my dad (around 70 yrs) is an SF native and I've always thought his speech was weirdly Midwest sounding lol. I would not compare it to New Orleans though I don't know that accent well. And I know he has travelled around the country a lot in his life though I don't think simply travelling to different places should have impacted his accent so deeply. But one of the things that stands out to me about his pronunciation is that he says "warsh" instead of "wash." He lives in Alabama right now though but if you actually wanted to get ahold of him I'm sure he'd be down to talk. Thanks for making such a great video! Come back and visit more cities in the bay next time for a better look at bay area natives' English
"warsh" is definitely and older californians thing, both north and south. You also hear older folks saying the phrase "very definitely" a lot and the boomers/gen-xers say "absolutely" instead. A great place to study the various accents of california is by watching California's Gold with Huell Howser since he actually talked to average people in tons of small towns, especially old folks (many of whom are dead now)
There are several accents in New Orleans, or at least there were before Katrina laid waste to it.
I was going to say the same thing about the cost of living. Even if they haven't been forced to move away, they're probably too busy working multiple jobs to be out and about, let alone stop for a random youtube interview. I suggested he try places like community colleges next time.
You are my people❤
Dude, u can find a native if u tried harder. We here.
You really must have a blast doing this! I can’t stop laughing at hearing these people say sentences with so many repeats of the same sound. What a fun hobby! But I think it helps to be English because you are already attuned to hearing so many different accents. I’ll never forget going to England and being asked if I was American. I said yes, and the fellow replied “We geh loh luik you ear.” (We get a lot like you here.)
Keep in mind that, unlike the East Coast, there were practically no English speakers in SF/NorCal 175 years ago. There are relatively few native San Franciscans, and most of them had moved out of The City by the 1980s. As you found, most everyone you interviewed came from somewhere else. (BTW, I lived on the edge of DuBoce park in the 80’s. It’s not a tourist attraction, but it sure has gentrified since then.)
I’ve read claims that one night have heard a “San Francisco” accent through the 50s and 60s, and that in some ways it’s a bit like a Brooklyn accent, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered it.
Im 74, and San Francisco born and raised. Listen to Jerry Brown or Gavin Newsom. They are both natives and have real SF accents.
I'm a 3rd generation Northern Californian (Red Bluff). I do not notice the accent, except for dropping the "t" in Sacramento and Monterey. We also pronounce almond different with a (short "a") + (mon)... like salmon without the "s". Your videos are SO INTERESTING. Thanks dude!😆
Just a suggestion but maybe you could try going to somewhere like a community college next time? You might have better luck finding locals, but still hopefully with some age range (though older adult students are usually pretty busy and might not be able to stop for an interview... Maybe waiting at the bus stop out front of the college? lol)
😂 Locals at a community college? Not lately! Seems every college kid is from another country these days.
A big hell o to Tracy from Menlo Park!
7:57 this is usually what we use as a dead giveaway if you’re a local here in Sacramento - do you pronounce the “t” in our city’s name? If so, you’re definitely not from here.
I am from Sonoma County, but I do say Sacramento with a T (?) How do you say it?
@joymontague251 Sacramenno - just drop the T and lazily gloss over the last syllable
@DrumlineArchives OH, Your right I think I do say it your way. Unless I am reading or emphasosing it saying with purpose like- we need to go to Dixon in Sacramento to the Veterans Memorial Cemetery to visit our parents soon.
I was born and raised in the real Northern California (City of Eureka, 300 miles north of San Francisco). We always referred to the rest of California as “down below” and San Francisco specifically as “The City.” Although I’m 5th generation, much of the population here is now from elsewhere. My Mom had a doctor from Los Angeles who asked me where she was from. I told him she was a 4th generation local, and he asked, “Then where did she get that Mary Poppins accent?” I’d never noticed any “Mary Poppins” inflection, LOL, but I’d always observed that people from down below, e.g., the central CA or mid-Pacific (Bay Area), or Southern CA, did speak more slowly and with less of a clipped speech pattern.
Those people were not SF natives
👆🏽
Yeah, absolutely NAH 😅
Great video, as a Native I have been told I had an accent, yet did not take them seriously, because I don't think Californians have an accent. This was nice to watch and listen to. Fun Travels, Cheers.
I am a 68 year old native Northern Californian, 3rd generation, born in San Jose, the hart of silicon valley. My generation and the previouse generations here were taught strict english pronuncitaion and enunciation, with a strong British and Irish influence. We also have influnce from spanish speakers. We tend to complete words with strong consonants, and use a full rounded "R" sound. Southern California has strong influence from Oklahoman settlers, and Spanish, and mixed English speakers. They tend to under enunciate, and cut shourt conconants, however, do use full "R" sounds also.
Born and raised in Sacramento, California (born in ‘84) if you need more feedback in the area, be happy to help. Also, thank you for this video!
Having lived in both halves of the state, I was amazed how the first person you talk to he started speaking and I just immediately recognised it as northern. The very restricted use of uptalk is part of it but there's something more general about the quality of the vowels which I immediately recognized from bay area punk rock music. I think it might be a specifically Gen X thing.
Also "rang back van" kind of blew my mind because we on the West coast tend to imagine that our way of pronouncing this words is the universal one but once you notice those vowel changes it becomes very clear that we do in fact have a particular dialect which differs from News Anchor GA.
There are two primary difference between SoCal and NorCal accents are urban vs the general accents. SoCal accents are more sing songy and they draw out their words. In Norcal we speak faster and truncate words. Instead of focusing on the pronunciation of words you must focus on the prosody of speech The urban accents are MUCH different and would require a whole show. But it mimics the general regional accents only NorCal urban accent is much faster with an over enunciation of "R" with black vernacular and accent being dominant across all races whereas socal urban accents are even slower and more drawn out all with a hint of mexican-american accent, lexicon, and pronunciation.
@joelcarrillo294 "You must focus on the prosody of speech." Wonderful phrase.
@@AMRARDvermebrungruppe Thanks! It's the primary difference between norcal and socal. I was born and raised in the bay and then lived in socal for a little more than two decades. The differences are fairly obvious to my ear, especially in urban areas where they are more pronounced. Think of the cholo or surfer accent in socal compared to the Mission/Oakland/East San Jose accent of norcal. The socal accents are MUCH slower and the vocal inflection rises up as the sentences end. Not so in the bay area where speech is quicker, words get pushed into one another. Think "sanuzay" which is how we pronounce "San Jose". THe focus on the way words are pronounced isn't really it for CA IMO.
I am in Fairfield Ca...a year back I was in home depot, and some English (maybe australian?) Dude was working there, and I heard him talking and call someone a Wanker..this made my day
I’m a 6th generation SF native and baby boomer. I’m aware people supposedly use the word “hella” here, but I have never heard it spoken by a friend or family member. I think it’s a relatively recent development. I can also verify that the old “Mission” or “South o’ the Slot” accent is a real thing. Several older relatives sounded like they were raised in Brooklyn rather than The City.
Like Joe DiMaggio, amirite?
In tbe 1980s ,A lot of SF truck drivers & shipyard workers that delivered to a San Leandro factory I worked at, spoke as though they were New Yorkers, even if they were born here. Wonder if you're looking at any class aspect of accents?
Life long northern Californian here and I'll tell you the truth- we Northern Californians will start talking like whoever we're around. If you have an accent, we will start talking like you.
I never thought of it, but realized I did it, then noticed my girlfriend does that, and the majority of my friends (we all grew up in SF and No bay) mimics strangers. Kinda shook my head up a bit
@ 😂
Ok, glad it's not only me.
My family is native SF, back to the 1850s , they have an almost east coast accent. My Grandmother says draaawrs not drawers thing like that. I grew up south of the city in Half Moon Bay, that place has its own surfer/mixed with the tradition SF accent. Go to the Old Princeton Landing and find the locals there. Very interesting inflections.
Yes! Hang out in the Portola or Visitacion Valley districts and talk to some older lifelong San Francisco residents who were born here. They have a nasally New York Jew accent.
@ or deep sunset!
Exactly! Mine came from Ireland in 1850s. Ran saloons down town. Then my grandfather grew up on Haight and became a Navy dentist. They had that sort of NYC or Boston like accent you never hear any more.
I'm north of that a couple hours from the border and it is like a farm surfer
I am from So Cal and had a college buddy here who was a Bay Area native. I swear he sounded like he was from the east coast.
Go to Booneville. They have an accent called Boont. It's about 2 hours drive North of the City.
I was born in The City and live a bit north now, in Sonoma County, and we definitely say "Anartica" -- in fact, i even spelled it that way once when i was young, until i was corrected to "Antarctica" by the teacher -- and i was sure that the teacher was wrong, because she pronounced it "Anartica" too! My generation of non-Latino Californians pronounces "Santa Ana" as "Sana Ana" and says, "I cot a fish." But I didn't realize that i say "Wading for a bus" until i saw this video -- and, yes, i do!
Indeed. Guilty on all charges.
Yes! We would never call San Francisco “frisco”. Most of the time we just call it “The City”.
Multiple academics and journalists have tried to pin down an almost mythical, early 20th century “South-of-Market” or “Mission” Accent. At one point I conducted an oral history recording with a woman who was frequently touted with having it. Often I have heard it, and other hyper local California accents described in terms of specific ways of pronouncing local place and street names. For example, in this supposed Mission district accent, the streets “Valencia” and “Duboce” were rendered “Va-len-sha” and “Duh-boyce.” I definitely heard my grandparents say the former and my oral history interviewee say the latter. Then again, there’s a famous bit of local San Francisco doggerel dating from at least the 1920s about the 8-9 different ways to pronounce “Gough Street.”
A friend of mine grew up in The Mission living with her grandmother. She spoke "Mission Irish" and was often asked, "How long you been on the coast?" Four generations. Unfortunately she passed a few years ago. I had plenty of cousins with the accent, but they are now all gone too.
I’m from Portland Oregon. We pronounce hard “r’s”. I moved to Napa CA in 1993 and lived for 14 years. I was a vocal student (singing) and studied pronunciation too. I always noticed a softer r in the Bay Area. Now I live near Oregon, rural Mennonites. The older folks have a sing-songy pitch variation and charming colloquialisms. “I SEE! I SEE!” They don’t pronounce “L” with tongue against the front palate but round their lips. “Old” winds up sounding like “owed.”
If you're looking for a native northern Californian, I can volunteer my son. He was born here in Santa Rosa in 1996. I can't help you, though, as I was born in San Diego and have only lived up here for 40 or so years. But, dude, you should have known you'd find many more immigrants+ in a big, expensive city like SF than in some of the (relatively) less costly satellite cities in the greater Bay Area.
SoCal? NorCal? Cali? Sick? Ummm... No.🙄Immigrants+, maybe. But not the rest of us.
I was a high school teacher forever, and my students used to say "hella," but no actual adults.
+By "immigrants," I mean anyone born/raised anywhere but here in northern California.
I have joked to Southerners "I guess you have difficulty with my strong California accent." I am a San Francisco native. 😊
By the way, I love your beads and the flowers in your hair 😄
Everyone in Nor Cal know San Francisco as " The City" plain and simple nothing else.
I can tell you right now as a lifelong Californian I have never and will never say “Cali” that is the quickest way to show you are a transplant
I say Cali
interesting! I couldn't stop watching your video. I have never paid attention to subtle pronunciation differences but the way you describe it with a little samples - absolutely captivating.
People from north of San Francisco get upset when you call SF northern california. It's like the 500 square miles of people don't exist haha
We local Northern Californians call it
‘the city’ going to the city, just came from the city, I lived in the city.
SanFrancisco is my favorite city, where the woman are smart and the men are pretty.
I lived in both central CA (Merced) and in the Extreme Northern part (Mount Shasta and Dunsmuir). Anything above Sacramento is very rural because there are a lot of mountainous and forested areas. It also has a lot of protected land. It's a different way of life and a different group of people. It's 1040 miles long. I would say there are some distinct accents. CA is a little bit less than half the width of the U S (2800 miles) and there are a lot of accents along its width.
Unrelated tidbit:
I lived in CA long enough for people to ask me about the warm weather year round. The winters are milder in Central CA and frigid in the mountains where snow comes by the foot. And no, I haven't been to LA, but I did make it as far south as Monterey.
My husband and I are both Native San Franciscans. We moved around a bit for school, and lived in Las Vegas NV, and Columbus, OH for a while, but knew we would be settling back in SF eventually. I actually grew up near Duboce park and it made me so excited to see it in your video!
Dave, did you play back the audio to any of the people in the video so they could hear how they pronounced the test lines? It would be great to see how Americans react to realising that they do, in fact, speak with an accent.
Good idea, but I didn't have time on this occasion. I might try that in future.
I'm a Bay Area native and I said everything aloud along with this video as I watched it and I'm astounded at how similar I say words that I know are spelled differently. But my friends and parents had to train me to say things this way. I used to pronounce my 't's really hard for instance.
I'm adopted and might have been with my bio mom for about a year first and she and my bio dad are both Scots-Irish here in SF, but I never met them or was around that culture after that. I never heard their accents from anyone around me once I was adopted but after watching movies with English accents I would then sound like I was from there for awhile. I pick up that accent really easily. 🤷♀
I am fascinated by language ACCENTS. Accents are like clues to the history of tribal movements. For example, - I suspect that the Australian accent is because the country was populated by the poor and underclasses of Britain. The accents of Northwest England like Liverpool, was formed by the influx of Irish (largely during the Irish potato famine??). I have yet to solve the origin of the accent in the American South
I've wondered the same. There are a lot of southern accents. I hear a lot of the British r in the drawl. I also think I hear some Irish in the Texan twang.
😉 I feel there needs to be more native Californians in the examples. Generations native Californian here. 👋🏽 I think you’d get a more true accent not ones with other states influencing an accent.
Fascinating observation!!! I'm sorry I missed you in San Francisco. I'm originally from Los Angeles, we live in San Francisco and Charleston South Carolina, which I believe I have combined both accents. If you need to hear English spoken with the broken sound, speak to my husband who is from Maryland. It reminds me of the Neopolitan dialect. The family joke is that I am his translator 😂
Yes, we say "Saaamcisco,". Or even, " Saaacisco.". I am the genuine article, a native San Franciscan born in 1950, grew up in North Beach, went to Lowell High School, class of 1968. If you want to hear a real San Francisco accent, listen to Governor Gavin Newsom, a 5th generation San Franciscan.
With the exception of Willie Brown, all San Francisco mayors in the past 60 years were native San Franciscans. John Shelley, Joe Alioto, George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein, Frank Jordan, Gavin, and London Breed.
Curiously, I'm a fourth generation San Franciscan. My great-grandfather, Patrick Finnegan a Sheriff on the Barberry Coast, San Francisco during the gold rush. I was born in the early 60's and I believe my generation SF natives were perhaps the beginning to the end of our prior San Franciscan dialect. Throughout my life I could be traveling far from home and recognize a San Franciscan native from a random crowd just from their accent. My parents generation from the late 1920's and prior most certainly had a very unique accent, I believe was unrecognizable to them.... When I do have the delight to hear the voice of an ol' San Franciscan it melts my heart in the sweetest way.
I've lived in San Francisco and the Sierra Nevada throughout my life, full time in the mountains for the past forty years (a beautiful back a fourth lifestyle of "old time" San Franciscans since the 1800's). Over recent years I've come to realize that my brothers (especially one in particular, all of my cousins, all of my childhood/neighborhood friends and peers of my generation ( multi- generational SF natives), continue to have a unique and distinct SF dialect, although I believe more subtle than our parents generation prior. Another fascination, I've always been aware of that "SF native" accent wasn't heard from other parts of the Bay (East, South and Northbay ) unless they were SF natives that migrated to Marin, Berkeley, etc.
Although delightful, those interviewed seem to be transplants and most likely don't have the "ear" for our fading accent and apparently only recognize words and slang from our vast and diverse California regions. SF old timers in their sixties and essentially those in their eighties and nineties may be the last of the accent keepers and surely to be found in outer city neighborhoods, parish spaghetti dinners, Little Childrens Aid organization, etc.....
I by no means am a linguist, but as your channel popped up as I am sipping some morning coffee, I find myself delighted and writing about a few observations that I've never even spoken of......
As I find myself giggling, it's time to warm up my coffee.....
Thank you for the delightful morning detour.
The word 'measure' is an easy tell for older West Coast people.
In what way? How would it be different elsewhere?
@@DawnDavidson They pronounce it as 'maysure'
Older meaning.... What?
I am 64, siblings older and younger, mother 88, cousins my range.
Born and raised in the greater Bay Area. All of us.
Absolutely NONE of us say maysure. Neither did my maternal grandmother born 1910 in Berkeley and never lived outside the region.
To be quite honest, I have only rarely heard that- from Okie dust bowl immigrant descendants. 💁
@@seaneendelong8065 The West Coast is bigger than the Bay Area. Sorry for the misunderstanding.