Worst American Accent

[Hey Adrien!]

My wife watches a lot of Discovery+ home renovation shows and two shows on their current location take place in Chicago.

While some of these shows I enjoy to watch, and at worst, tolerate, she’s been binging a show called Finding Gold. The show’s couple have an awful Chicago accent, the nasally tone I’m used to but with an aggressive grating high frequency that I find straight up repulsive. Almost sounds like a perpetual head cold.

Our great nation is filled with a variety of accents: which can’t you stand the most?

 

[Kenny11]

Baltimore for sure

 

[husky429]

I can't understand a lick of what most of my in-laws say. They're from north Georgia and North Carolina near the border. So I'll say them.

 

[Waquoit]

Western Massachusetts

 

[superjohn]

Boston, hands down. Gorgeous woman opens her mouth and there's a thick Boston accent and it's an automatic deal breaker.

 

[CTFAN4LIFE]

Tennessee.

 

[DCHuskyFan]

Boston, hands down. Gorgeous woman opens her mouth and there's a thick Boston accent and it's an automatic deal breaker.

It’s not just the Boston accent, it’s the accent combined with the Massachusetts colloquialisms.

 

[Fishy]

I wouldn’t say that they annoy me, but the dropped and added R‘s in the southeastern NE and Maine accents are jarring. Ditto for the NOLA accent….that mixes in some dropped Rs with some additions that are almost like New York City accents.

 

[fatlucy]

Alabaman

 

[RichZ]

Speaking strictly accent, the worst I've ever encountered was from the corner where Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia meet. Back when I was doing a syndicated outdoors radio program, I had a bunch of interviews with anglers from that area that I absolutely could not use, because no-one from anywhere else could understand it.

But part of accent issues is really regional dialect. I did a paper once on the concept that save for slight differences in accent, regional dialects can be very similar in disparate locales -- especially rural areas. The phrase "I'm a fixin' a git," may sound a little different in backwoods Maine than in Texas cattle country, but it always means "I'm getting ready to leave."

 

[RichZ]

I wouldn’t say that they annoy me, but the dropped and added R‘s in the southeastern NE and Maine accents are jarring. Ditto for the NOLA accent….that mixes in some dropped Rs with some additions that are almost like New York City accents.

NOLA is tough to understand, with its influences of French Canadian, Creole and Cajun, on top of Irish and maybe a little German that does bring a NY accent to mind. But it's very melodic and pleasant to listen to, even though you may not understand every word.

 

[superjohn]

My wife watches a lot of Discovery+ home renovation shows and two shows on their current location take place in Chicago.

While some of these shows I enjoy to watch, and at worst, tolerate, she’s been binging a show called Finding Gold. The show’s couple have an awful Chicago accent, the nasally tone I’m used to but with an aggressive grating high frequency that I find straight up repulsive. Almost sounds like a perpetual head cold.

Our great nation is filled with a variety of accents: which can’t you stand the most?

Weirdest thing is some Italians I know from the Waterbury/Thomaston area sound just like the guys from Chicago with the thick South Side accents.

 

[Edward Sargent]

21 years in Connecticut and I have no idear whether I picked up an accent. 25 years in New Jersey and I find myself asking “How YOU doin’”? 20 years splitting time between Florida and Massachusetts and I am all effed up! Yahall can paahhk the accent wherever

 

[mauconnfan]

Pok tha cah

 

[Spaceman213J]

I'm not a big fan of the exagerrated Queens' accent. Was set up on a blind date with a girl. She was pretty, but once she started talking, I was in hell. Her voice wasn't as nasally, but she sounded a lot like Fran Drescher. Man, I could not wait to drop her off and get her out of my car at the end of the evening.

 

[Dove]

The Adirondack accent is downright weird. I have family with it.

 

[BPT2Storrs]

Over exaggerated New York accents are the worse. We get it, you’re from New York just speak normal with your accent and stop trying so hard.

 

[SubbaBub]

Lot of east coast bias ITT. The worst is that indecipherable mumbling alien speak of the lower Mississippi delta.

 

[superjohn]

NOLA is tough to understand, with its influences of French Canadian, Creole and Cajun, on top of Irish and maybe a little German that does bring a NY accent to mind. But it's very melodic and pleasant to listen to, even though you may not understand every word.

I love the way they speak.

 

[elmcityboy]

Baltimore for sure

this is the answer. the whole mid-atlantic region is full of some terrible, terrible accents.

 

[cohenzone]

Philadelphia. Totally unpleasant. Worse than Jersey.

 

[Get a Job]

Entertaining and fascinating.

 

[Improviser]

Over exaggerated New York accents are the worse. We get it, you’re from New York just speak normal with your accent and stop trying so hard.

They don't try to exaggerate their accents. They just sound that way. One side of my family came from New York.

Maybe Fran Drescher from the Nanny exaggerated the accent on the show, but in a Youtube interview, she still sounded like the New Yorkers from the family.

Interestingly, my father's sister married a man from Salem, New York near Glens Falls,, and she barely had the NY accent. Maybe the move to the other region, toned it down from her hearing the local accent or non-accent.

 

[CL82]

Pok tha cah

That would be “pock da cah”.

Still say that Southern California “Valley girl”accent is worse.

 

[Improviser]

Even in Connecticut, people from Nah Wich, have an accent different from the rest of Connecticut, IMO.

 

[HooperScooper]

Boston, hands down. Gorgeous woman opens her mouth and there's a thick Boston accent and it's an automatic deal breaker.

I can buy this. I live near Boston but almost nobody I know talks like that.

The New York accent is even worse. Anytime I see a good looking girl start talking with a New York accent it makes me cringe.




I rest my case.

 

[AZHuskiePop]

The worst
In the North
New York City / LI
Boston / Eastern Mass
for some reason I kind of like the RI Eastern CT accent
Southern
New Orleans / Southern Louisiana / How they un understand each other is a mystery.
Favorite
Southern
North Carolina
SouthWest
Texas
Northern
Connecticut / Western Mass because I’m a Homer
Western
Hawaiian

Speaking strictly accent, the worst I've ever encountered was from the corner where Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia meet. Back when I was doing a syndicated outdoors radio program, I had a bunch of interviews with anglers from that area that I absolutely could not use, because no-one from anywhere else could understand it.

But part of accent issues is really regional dialect. I did a paper once on the concept that save for slight differences in accent, regional dialects can be very similar in disparate locales -- especially rural areas. The phrase "I'm a fixin' a git," may sound a little different in backwoods Maine than in Texas cattle country, but it always means "I'm getting ready to leave."

Rural areas have a flair of their own .
i noticed those similarities even in a towns like Monroe CT ( (pronounced Menroe by the old timers ) among the rural areas
throughout the country I dubbed it 4H speak.

 

[husky429]

Speaking strictly accent, the worst I've ever encountered was from the corner where Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia meet. Back when I was doing a syndicated outdoors radio program, I had a bunch of interviews with anglers from that area that I absolutely could not use, because no-one from anywhere else could understand it.

But part of accent issues is really regional dialect. I did a paper once on the concept that save for slight differences in accent, regional dialects can be very similar in disparate locales -- especially rural areas. The phrase "I'm a fixin' a git," may sound a little different in backwoods Maine than in Texas cattle country, but it always means "I'm getting ready to leave."

That is exactly where my wife grew up. She's in NC but less than an hour from GA and Tenn. It is unintelligible. My wife literally has to translate for me. It's awkward as hell.

 

[uconnfan68]

I'm not a big fan of the exagerrated Queens' accent. Was set up on a blind date with a girl. She was pretty, but once she started talking, I was in hell. Her voice wasn't as nasally, but she sounded a lot like Fran Drescher. Man, I could not wait to drop her off and get her out of my car at the end of the evening.

A young Fran would have been worth earplugs.

 

[temery]

The Old Money, Ivy League Accent.