No, you’re right, we are essentially the… linguistic evolution end point of American English… the type O- blood of American accents, if you will.
Basically everyone can understand us, but we will have trouble accepting meaning transfusions from non type O- speakers.
As far as ‘unique’ things… well basically, my vote for most unique thing would be for the intonation patterns we use, or more accurately, basically the lack of them.
We tend to just stress all words in a sentence very close to the same, monotone.
We tend to have (at least what others call) falling intonation at the end of a sentence, that can make it so people don’t recognize questions… as questions.
Because they’re often expecting a tonal shift at the end of a sentence, or some other tonal pattern, as a cue that indicates a question is being asked.
Which is the opposite from a Californian, who do rising intination on even non questions, which acts as the easiest giveaway that a transplant is in fact a transplant, beyond them having no clue how to pronounce most local place names, or referring to ‘I5’ as ‘the 5’.
No, you’re right, we are essentially the… linguistic evolution end point of American English… the type O- blood of American accents, if you will.
Basically everyone can understand us, but we will have trouble accepting meaning transfusions from non type O- speakers.
As far as ‘unique’ things… well basically, my vote for most unique thing would be for the intonation patterns we use, or more accurately, basically the lack of them.
We tend to just stress all words in a sentence very close to the same, monotone.
We tend to have (at least what others call) falling intonation at the end of a sentence, that can make it so people don’t recognize questions… as questions.
Because they’re often expecting a tonal shift at the end of a sentence, or some other tonal pattern, as a cue that indicates a question is being asked.
Which is the opposite from a Californian, who do rising intination on even non questions, which acts as the easiest giveaway that a transplant is in fact a transplant, beyond them having no clue how to pronounce most local place names, or referring to ‘I5’ as ‘the 5’.