Comment on We dunking on England again
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days agoYeah, I’m with trackball_fetish, that’s not really a PNW thing as much as it is a Midwest thing.
Now, in many ways, the PNW accent is a kind of… less exciting version of the Midwest accent, watered down Midwest.
The only time I can remember PNW people using ‘ya know’, its either because they just actually are from the Midwest, or they are intentionally trying to sound folksy.
A good portion of the PNW was originally settled (cough colonized) by… basically originally Germans and Nordics who moved from the East Coast to approximately Minnesota, but then moved even further east to basically either Portland or Seattle.
… maybe you could say ‘ya know’ is part of the rural/eastern PNW accent, as the sparser areas of the PNW today tend to be more affordable for a Midwesterner to move to, just by way of economics, relative cost of living.
cmbabul@slrpnk.net 5 days ago
‘Like’ is definitely over used out here but not the same as the Cali one, I can usually pick out Californians in Washington… partially because as a southerner they recognize another person who is aggressively talkative to strangers.
I actually do agree with your take that PNW accent a restrained Midwest accent which actually tracks pretty well. And just to be clear I don’t mean “dontcha know” or “don’t ya know” that is Midwestern as hell, what I mean specifically is y’all tend to add “ya know” to the end a lot of sentences”. When I first pointed out to my best friend, who grew up out here, she sent me a text later that night saying, “Fuck you I hear it everywhere now, ya know”
The other big one that comes to mind is “pre-funk” which is apparently just slang for pre-gaming but I’d never heard it in the south or northeast
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
Huh.
Ok… I think I have an explanation for ‘ya know’.
Its a zoomer/alpha thing, not a millenial thing.
PNW is kind of notoriously ‘way too online’ and we suck at / hate talking to people we don’t know already, in person.
I think the ‘ya know’ thing that you are talking about, I think that was basically a tiktok thing for a while, basically a meme.
So… that’s my guess there.
‘Pre-funk’… yeah I remember that starting to catch on, and being annoyed by it, lol, because it literally just is ‘pre-game’… I don’t use that phrase, but yeah, a lot PNW people do.
cmbabul@slrpnk.net 5 days ago
Hate to poke hole in your theory, but I don’t even know anyone Gen Z or alphas, these are all millennials and older
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
Well, I tried.
Maybe I just don’t/didn’t know people who commonly use ‘ya know’.
cmbabul@slrpnk.net 5 days ago
Sorry I didn’t have time to completely respond to your whole comment earlier, got pinged and had to wrap it up.
I’ve literally had a conversation with a stranger at a bar in Cap Hill when I first moved here, and my accent makes me stick out like a sore thumb here so I get asked where I’m from all the time, after she asked and I told her where, she said “cool I’m from California and that’s why I’m speaking to you right now”. Which was hyperbolic but it does ring true coming from Atlanta to Seattle in that regard.
You my friend are an anomaly as far as my experience with the PNW if you can hang with a midwesterner in idle chit chat, they give us a run for our money in the south. Congratulations on the social skills lol!
You do gotta be careful with southern folks that ain’t from the big city, once we get comfortable we drop the fake accent and start speaking “proper”
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
See that also tracks with why we hate Californians…
Cap Hill used to be affordable, and considerably more weird.
Yes, its weird, it used to be more weird.
Like uh, I remember one time about 15 years ago now (rent in Cap Hill was roughly 1/3 of what it is now), I saw an actual freak on a leash, like just full BDSM gear dude walking another BDSM dude down the street.
They were going to QFC, to get groceries, just normal stuff, most people were like ‘huh. sure. neat.’ and just went on as normal.
Then the California hipster trust fund babies moved in, raised the rent, the Seattle natives moved out, now Cap Hill is basically a tourist area, masquerading as ‘the most coolest Seattleist part of the city’.
Like, I’m in the midwest now in large part because of the real estate bubble caused by rich transplant gentrifiers.
But yeah, anyway, I did interperet the uh, full blast accent drop as a sign he was uh… comfortable talking to me, so i was genuienly happy, but also very confused, hahah!