Macedonia, OH native Brandon Saraniti grew up thinking he didn’t have an accent. But that all changed back in 2018, when he moved to Washington, D.C. for college. He was at a party and struck up a conversation with a girl named Amber. When he said her name, she winced.
“She's like, ‘Say it again,’” Saraniti recounts. “I'm like, ‘Amber.’ And she was like, ‘Why are you saying it like that?’”
Once he came back home to Macedonia, he noticed the accent even more.
“I would hear my friends say things, and I'm like, ‘Oh my God, you have it so intensely,’” Saraniti says. “And the funniest thing is they would say like, ‘Oh, I don't have an accent,’ which is so funny.”
Ohio’s three regional accents
Dr. Katherine Campbell-Kibler, a professor of linguistics at Ohio State University, says Ohio has three distinct accents based on the state’s different regions – Northern, Central, and Southern. Each was influenced by different settlers migrating into Ohio.
“The folks from the New England area tended to move more to the Northern areas,” Campbell-Kibler says. “The Mid-Atlantic kind of [moved] in the middle, and then the Southern areas sort of across the South, right? And those patterns show up in the language patterns today.”
Saraniti (and Amber) noticed what linguists call the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, the main characteristic of the Great Lakes accent. Cities around the Great Lakes, like Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, and Cleveland, shift how they sound their vowels. For example, a short ‘o’ sound might sound closer to a short ‘a’ sound – so “lot” would sound like ‘laht.’
Central Ohioans have a much milder accent. In fact, the Midland American accent is the closest to a general American accent – many newscasters often adopt this standard to sound both trustworthy and objective.
But there are still some distinct characteristics. Campbell-Kibler says you can hear it in the cot-caught merger.
“Those two words, cot and caught – for me, I say them the same. They both sound like caught,” Campbell-Kibler says.
Finally, the Southern region of Ohio – from Cincinnati to the Appalachian southeast part of the state – takes much of its influence from the American South.
“One of the big characteristics there is ‘i-monophonization,’” Campbell-Kibler says. “So, for example, saying pie versus pahh.”
What about African-American English?
These linguistic patterns aren’t necessarily applicable to everyone.
Black Ohioans may not follow the accent rules due to their history. During the Great Migration in the 20th century, Black families moved north to escape Jim Crow laws in the South, so many Black Ohioans may also have a Black Southern influence on their accents.
Linguist Dr. Taylor Jones studies the regional variations of African American English. He says that, while there isn’t much research on how Black Ohioans speak, he’s definitely noticed one feature across the state – the retracted ‘s.’
“The main thing that's like the most Ohio thing to me in my mind is retraction of ‘s’,” Jones says. “You're going to hear ‘shay’ instead of ‘say.’”
Jones says that many Americans subconsciously know the sound of Black Ohio through its dominance in soul and funk music. Artists like Macy Gray, The Ohio Players, The Isley Brothers, and even John Legend show examples of the retracted ‘s.’ Toledo native Anita Baker retracts her ‘s’ famously in her hit song, Sweet Love.
Prejudice, identity, and language
Jeremy Foster is a native of Southern Ohio and has a Southern Ohio accent. Similar to Saraniti, he realized he had an accent when he moved from Morgan County to Columbus in college. He noticed there were certain words he pronounced differently from other students.
Foster says he was teased for how he spoke to the point where he tried to hide his accent. He says it comes from how people perceive Southern Ohio and the Appalachia region as a whole.
“Unfortunately, Southeast Ohio has a bit of a stigma attached to it for being a little hillbilly,” Foster says. “So when I would say something that sounded hillbilly-ish to people in Columbus, they love to make fun of me for that. So I actually code-switch quite a bit these days.”
Dr. Campbell-Kibler says your feelings about an accent can show how you feel about that group of people as a whole.
“When we care about language, and especially when we don't like the way someone talks, unfortunately, it's because we don't like the people, Campbell-Kibler says. “People think they have opinions about language on its own. But miraculously, those opinions always seem to track with their thoughts and feelings about the groups of people that they're talking about.”
Campbell-Kibler says people often look to language to find differences, but the problem isn’t the language, but the prejudice that lies underneath.
In the case of Saraniti, his encounters left him curious. He started making videos on TikTok, exploring the origins of his accent and how it differs from other Midwestern accents. But, more than that, it helped him embrace his identity as a Midwesterner.
“It's definitely a part of a Great Lakes identity,” Saraniti says. “Because an accent is a part of your identity. It's a part of your heritage. It sounds, I know ours is not the most romantic, but like it sounds like home, you know?”
