Question about a Michigan accent ?

Jules this guy who talks like this is a home grown Michigan guy...a lawyer... ..I looked him up to see if perhaps he'd migrated from somewhere else.. but no according to his bio, even his parents are from Michigan..
 

Tommy said:
No Holly. I was born and raised in Michigan, lived there or many years, and never heard it pronounced that way.
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Thanks Tommy... well I'm gonna get the Video and let you listen for yourself.. and maybe you can explain why he's pronouncing it that way... Don't get me wrong I love the accent, not critisising... I just notice he continually pronounces... words like Prepare as prepeer.. and Where as Weer... and I wondered if it was specific to a Michigan accent

I'm subscribed to this lawyer...and I watch his videos several times a week..

Prepare ( prepeer ) between 1.32 and 1.35 on this video

..and Where ( weer ) at between 6.40 and 6.50

..and he says it several times through the video

 
I'm at a loss to explain it, Holly. I've never heard that before,, either in Michigan or elsewhere. To me, the man's speech sounds a bit stilted. He seems to "over-enunciate" many of his words. But that doesn't explain the "weer"/"prepeer" thing. Probably just a personal idiosyncrasy.
 
Tommy said:
I'm at a loss to explain it, Holly. I've never heard that before,, either in Michigan or elsewhere. To me, the man's speech sounds a bit stilted. He seems to "over-enunciate" many of his words. But that doesn't explain the "weer"/"prepeer" thing. Probably just a personal idiosyncrasy.
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Thanks muchly Tommy.. that probably explains it..
 
Yeah, that's an odd one to me as well. The jumpy manner with rapid blinking and biting off his phrases suggests "Ann Arbor native" or possibly Adrian or a Toledo-adjacent suburb. He's probably from a family that "white flighted" out of Detroit and environs back in the 1960s, I'd guess slumlords because the auto retailing barons tend to be a different sort of fast talkers. I had one of the latter as a suite mate in the college dormitory days, odd speech and mannerisms but not quite like this case. The more I listen the more I smell Toledo.

But a lot may be personal quirks, or affectations acquired late in life.
 
I looked him up on Google because he's an eminent lawyer in Michigan, and so is his father...and according to what I read the family ( the parents who have been married 50 years) have always lived in Michigan
 
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There are lots of micro-accents though.

The "East Grand Rapids" accent is a little weird because it only really exists in the one well-heeled community. A kind of slurred, not-quite-lisping speech:

 
hollydolly said:
I looked him up on Google because he's an eminent lawyer in Michigan, and so is his father...and according to what I read the family ( the parents wh have been married 50 years) have always lived in Michigan
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Perhaps schooled somewhere else? People do tend to pick up things like this from their formative period which often extends though young adulthood.
 
dilettante said:
Perhaps schooled somewhere else? People do tend to pick up things like this from their formative period which often extends though young adulthood.
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I have a particular ear for accents.. it's not useful to me very much , but it's a skill if I want to call it that, so I do notice even smaller nuances

In the Uk our accents change from very short distances.. so the accent here where I live is very different to the accent in London which is just 20 miles away.... and an accent a hundred miles away is almost incomprehensible to most people...here
 
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Here there are several individuals, all speaking in a more standard accent for West Michigan.


The interviewer here has a touch of that "East Grand Rapids Lisp."
 
I was raised in Michigan and when I met my late husband back in 1975, he said I had an accent like Canadians. For example, I pronounce the word "about" as "aboot". I never noticed it until he said something...haha. He was raised in CA so he said some words differently, too. He'd say "wash" like "worsh". We'd pick up on each other's pronunciations all the time :)
 
Colleen said:
I was raised in Michigan and when I met my late husband back in 1975, he said I had an accent like Canadians. For example, I pronounce the word "about" as "aboot". I never noticed it until he said something...haha. He was raised in CA so he said some words differently, too. He'd say "wash" like "worsh". We'd pick up on each other's pronunciations all the time :)
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I hear someone else say Worsh.. first time I ever heard it, and she was from Virginia, now living in Florida..
 
Colleen said:
I was raised in Michigan and when I met my late husband back in 1975, he said I had an accent like Canadians. For example, I pronounce the word "about" as "aboot". I never noticed it until he said something...haha. He was raised in CA so he said some words differently, too. He'd say "wash" like "worsh". We'd pick up on each other's pronunciations all the time :)
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Canadians in general don't say "aboot" .. I would venture to say that you may hear it in our East Coast where there are transplants from overseas - Scots, for instance.
 
Yeah, my mother had a friend from "down South" somewhere who had moved here. She said Worsh and Worsht and other odd phrasings and idioms and her husband had an accent so thick I could barely understand him.

Aboot doesn't even sound Yooper to me, maybe Sault Ste. Marie but more likely a Canadian influence somewhere near either Sarnia or Windsor.
 
People can be touchy about accents. Our East Coasters get particularly riled with seemingly no comprehension that they speak like people in a bubblegum comic strip.
 
I can understand most everyone with their accents. The younger ones that try to talk all hip or, whatever they call it. I can't understand.
 

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