What accent do you hear?

March 9, 2023 6:17 PM

Does the female host of this podcast have a discernible accent to you? More specifically, how would you describe her pronunciation of the long "i" sound? Is that particular pronunciation attached to a specific North American accent?

The podcast is Boys Like Me. If you play Episode 1 and jump to around 7:47, you should hopefully hear some of the "i" sounds that are jumping out to me:
"the kinds of things" "occasionally sidetracked" "hard to reign in sometimes"
Also at 31:20: "go live" and "at the time"
(Apologies for the poor audio controls on my selected URL. The podcast has difficult themes (violence against women) but the portions I've noted are not explicit.)

posted by Rora to Writing & Language (7 answers total)

She just sounds...nonspecifically Canadian to me, and I grew up in southeast Michigan and had access to a lot of Canadian media from Windsor (FM radio) and Ontario more generally (like, we would go on vacation to Toronto or the Stratford Festival). Which is to say that I know enough to find it familiar but a real Canadian would be more likely to offer some actual insights.

Sorry if this isn't more helpful, but I do think podcast hosting also does a thing to you where you develop a "podcast host voice" which is sort of a studied, over-enunciated version of your normal diction. Witness Karina Longworth--have you heard her say "erotic eighties?"
posted by pullayup at 6:44 PM on March 9, 2023

She sounds like someone I know who is from New Brunswick, so maybe it's a Maritimer accent?

I think pullayup might be onto something regarding the "podcast host voice." I watched a video of the host talking (cw: same difficult themes as podcast) and, while she still sounds discernibly Canadian, her pronunciation is much more neutral.
posted by Clyde Sparrow at 6:56 PM on March 9, 2023

I listened a few times. Most of the "i"s sounded standard Canuck to me, but the first example, "kinds" and the second last, "go live" sounded like "koinds" and "go loive," as if a tiny bit of Irish or Brooklynese snuck in there. Or Clyde might have nailed it positing a Maritime connection.
posted by kate4914 at 7:20 PM on March 9, 2023

I'm hearing a young, urban Canadian voice with Canadian Raising and some vocal fry. She could be from Montreal or large cities in southern Ontario, Alberta, or BC. There *might* be a slight East Coast tint in her long "i" pronunciation, but I can't be sure. I don't hear anything else that seems like the Maritimes in her voice. If she is from there, it's been a while or she made a serious effort to adjust her speech.

This is a pretty damn cool video on regional Canadian accents that starts with 3+ minutes of various people from all across the country reading the same passages of text.
posted by maudlin at 8:29 PM on March 9, 2023

I'm originally from Cleveland, OH and my initial reaction is "accent? what accent?" and then I gradually perceive her as Canadian. The "I"s don't stand out to me.

(I do know that everybody has an accent! I'm not making a linguistic claim, but reporting a perceptual experience.)

By the way, thanks for pointing out this interesting podcast.
posted by inexorably_forward at 2:22 AM on March 10, 2023

Her LinkedIn suggests she's been in Toronto since around 2008, when she graduated from Ryerson, and considering she's pretty young, she might be from there originally. She says Toronto with a Torontonian accent ("Tor-ana"), though that can be learned so as to not seem from somewhere not Toronto.

Weirdly, I am Canadian (from Vancouver, live in Ottawa) and I *do* hear an accent. The way that she pronounces some of her words (especially words ending in -ion) reminds me of a Californian accent, which has a lot in common with the Canadian raising.
posted by urbanlenny at 7:59 AM on March 10, 2023

Her accent sounds like a combo of Toronto x University* x Podcast voice to this Maritimer.

*University students have a specific accent in Canada and I have no idea why. I briefly caught it when I went to uni.
posted by Stoof at 9:58 AM on March 10, 2023