Actor Robert Forster talked tough. His hard consonants and elongated vowels made him perfect for the role of streetwise bail bondsman Max Cherry in Jackie Brown. Forster looked and sounded like a cop, so casting directors put him in the same category as Dennis Farina and Dennis Franz, which made people believe he shared the same background as Chicago’s all-star Dennises.
When Forster appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air in 2003, host Dave Davies quizzed him about his accent. “I always assumed you were from Chicago,” Davies said. “Maybe that’s because I saw you in the movie adaptation of David Mamet’s Lakeboat.” (Forster also starred in one of the great Chicago movies, playing a TV news photographer in Medium Cool.)
“I’m from Rochester, which is a Great Lakes accent,” Forster responded. “So Rochester, Buffalo, Erie—not Detroit so much—but Chicago, and almost all those cities have a similar accent, a long A. I know I sound that way. Not much to do about it, just got to live with what you got.”
That’s Rochester, New York, not Rochester, Michigan. Even though Chicago and Rochester are 600 miles apart, the two cities share nearly identical speech patterns. Dat’s right: what we call a Chicago accent is, in fact, an Upstate New York accent, transplanted here in the 19th Century by the city’s earliest residents. We talk more like Rochester and Buffalo than Bloomington and Peoria.
Why? Linguists say it’s because of the Erie Canal. The now-defunct waterway, which passed through Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, funneled the migration of New Yorkers westward toward Lake Erie, and from there, to the Great Lakes ports of Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee. Together, those cities form what’s known as the Inland North dialect region.
“The settlement of the Inland North was closely connected with the construction of the Erie Canal,” observed linguist William Labov and his fellow co-authors in the Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Those New Yorkers spoke with an accent derived from western Massachusetts and Vermont, the homes of their own forebears.
“[E]ven before the canal was built, visitors from the Eastern Seaboard noted the distinct accent of the villagers in Buffalo and Black Rock,” writes Buffalo journalist Jeff Z. Klein. “After the canal opened, thousands of settlers from New York State carried that accent to northern Ohio, Michigan and points west. Within a couple of decades, the Inland North accent and its shifting vowels had spread across the entire American Great Lakes region.”
It’s not hard to find cultural links between Upstate New York and northern Illinois, either. Four of the city’s first five mayors were born in New York State, beginning with William Ogden, of Walton. Northwestern University’s Garrett-Evangelical Seminary was founded by John Dempster, a Methodist preacher from the “Burned-Over District,” as the region was called because of its role in 19th Century religious revivals. Also from the Burned-Over District: Frances Willard, suffragette and founder of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which still has its headquarters in Evanston.
Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse are not Midwestern cities, but when I visit there, I hear the same speech I do in my native Midwest. The former mayor of Niagara Falls referred to his state’s governor as “Eee-yen-drew Cuomo.” (His super-strong Inland North accent begins at 25:00 in this clip.) My friend Mike Malyak, director of the Steel Plant Museum in Lackawanna, is a Dese, Dem and Dose Guy, just like his fellow white ethnics in the old steelmaking communities of South Chicago.
When Syracuse native Terry McAuliffe ran for governor of Virginia, his opponent made fun of his promise to bring “jahhhbs” to the state.
Inland North was once considered “standard” American speech, so much so that a Southern linguist dubbed it SWINE: Standard White Inland North English. This was probably due to the fact that in the early 20th Century, the nation’s leading pronunciation expert was John S. Kenyon, a philologist at Ohio’s Hiram College. Kenyon was the author of American Pronunciation: A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English, and pronunciation editor of Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language. In these roles, Kenyon championed rhoticity, the pronunciation or “r”s wherever they appear in words. He also favored pronouncing “not” like “naht,” instead of “nawt.” These were both features of the Inland North speech Kenyon heard in northeastern Ohio.
However, Inland North speech has changed dramatically since Kenyon’s time, as a result of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, a series of pronunciation changes which makes “can” sound like “cay-en,” and “father” like “faaa-ther.” Remarkably, the Shift has been consistent throughout the Inland North, and has made us sound so distinct from the rest of the country that Saturday Night Live parodied our speech in two sketches. “The Superfans” made “Da Bears” a national catchphrase, exaggerating the fronted “o”s of Chicagoans who love “Polish sahhhsage.” “1-600-LANSING” was a fake ad about a phone sex line for men turned on by women with nasal Michigan accents. Family Guy did a cutaway bit about a Wisconsin nymphomaniac who cries “Oh Gahhhd” and “Oh cray-ep” during sex.
I’ve never seen an SNL skit about the Rochester accent, but as Robert Forster demonstrated, that’s what we speak with here. Our Midwestern accents aren’t Midwestern at all: we borrowed them from somewhere else.
I hear Chicawgo, not Chicaaaaago in Chicago.
Furthermore, Buffalo and Rochester are in Western New York, not Upstate New York. Syracuse is in Central New York, and when referring to the State, we should always say New York State. To us, New York, is New York City.
Recent linguistic evidence published in the last couple years in scientific sources has shown this story is not correct on Linguistic Grounds.
First, off, Labov acknowledges in his book Dialect Diversity in America, on page 112, which the article McClelland links to draws on, since Labov’s presentation takes his material directly from this book: “Our most likely guess is the conditions for the Northern Cities Shift originated at the time of the building of the Erie Canal.”
Why does he say “likely guess”–because it is what is known as a “working hypothesis” made based on the best available material at the time. That does not mean it has been proven as fact.
Since Labov published that book in 2012, more recent linguistic research has shown that the Northern Cities Shift does not appear to have actually begun until the late 1800s, roughly 50 years *after* the building of the Erie Canal.
This evidence comes from recent studies investigating the actual recorded speech of people born in the 1870s in Michigan and Chicago. This same research has also shown definitely that Lee Pederson’s analysis of his own data, which is where the basis of the claim that the Northern Cities Shift was not underway until the 1950s in Chicago come from, is not correct.
What this evidence shows is that The Northern Cities *began* in the late 1800s in Chicago, and has done so using *modern methods of analysis* employed in the mid-2010s, and using Pederson’s actual recordings to do so.
Evidence from a parallel study of Michigan, using similar methods and analyzing speakers of similar age in Michigan, has shown similar findings.
So how do we know this means the Erie Canal hypothesis is not correct? If it were the case that this developed first during the construction of the Erie Canal, then the data from Chicago and Michigan would not be showing what actually appears to be the actual beginning on the North Cities Shift in Chicago and Michigan, concurrently, at that time. If it began with the Erie Canal, then it would have already have had to have been underway–first–in New York, because it would have had to have been “brought”–under development–to Chicago and Michigan to New York.
This is not the case.
How do I know this is what the research shows? My name is David Durian, I am a professional linguist, with a Ph D in Linguistics. I am one of the researchers who actually conducted the research on Chicago I discuss above. I don’t report on it second hand, like McClelland has to. If you want to read this study, please google me, and I will send a copy.
Whoops–there’s an important typo in what I just wrote to make sure to catch–“that should say to Chicago and Michigan *from* New York”
Western NYers settled the region too — the Napers were from Western NY. And with them came the people who gave names to Aurora, Batavia, and Geneva. All cities in Western NY.
I grew up in Niagara Falls and Buffalo, NY WhenI moved to Chicago I felt right at home because we have the exact same accent!
I grew up & have spent 70 of my 71 years on the Far North Side & I can’t stand it when people say “sha-caah-go”!
The correct pronunciation is “sha-caw-go”!
Caw, like how a crow sounds.
In most of Canada and half the States, that distinction cannot be made.
“Northwestern University’s Garrett-Evangelical Seminary was founded by John Dempster, a Methodist preacher from the “Burned-Over District,” as the region was called because of its role in 19th Century religious revivals. ”
As a seminarian of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, I’m annoyed to no end when people say that the seminary is Northwestern’s. We are not Northwestern Divinity School. Furthermore, our namesake, Eliza Garrett, is credited with founding what was at the time Garrett Biblical Institute. Dempster was certainly involved in “organizing” it, but give credit where it is due.
When I was a kid, my landlord’s grandchildren, who were growing up in New York, told me that I sounded as if I came from there. Have you ever noticed that there is a difference in “white” Chicago accents as well, depending on whether you grew up on the North, West, or South side? Your ethnic group can make a difference, too.
(I’m a Chicagoan.) A colleague and I had an ongoing quest for the most Inland North – sounding phrase. One we enjoyed is the name of a haircut chain: Fantastic Sam’s. It’s fee-yun tee-us tee-ick see-yums.
You are assuming Chicagoans all sound similar. What you miss is that this accent you speak about is how white Chicagoans sound. African Americans in Chicago sound totally different than white Chicagoans. Case in point…Bernie Mac for example. Black folks in Chicago can hear differences between Southside, Westside even Northside Blacks. You can hear it in our Chicago Black newscasters though they change their speech patterns to fit white patterns of speech on T.V. But talk to them personally….totally different. So when are you doing an article on how the Great Migration affected Black speech patterns that remained separate from white speech patterns?
Good question. I had the same thought.
He’s from Western New York, not Upstate New York.
100% Correct.
Its a big difference if you’re a New Yorker.
Thank you !