Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless you are a native Washingtonian, there really is none. Some African Americans (more likely to be native Washingtonians rather than transplants) have a distinctive DC accent, but it's hard to describe. Swallowing of some vowel sounds is prevalent. Like saying "Murland" instead of "Maryland." Some Maryland people have a strange way of pronouncing vowel sounds as well. For example, instead of the long O sound in "photo," they'll say what sounds like "Fowto."

I say Maryland properly, but definitely do the "o" thing. My grandfather (a white Jew) always said Murland, Balmer for Baltimore and Itly for Italy.

Itly! lol

As an Italian, I've always found that funny. So long, A!

All the middle Atlantic Italian Americans I know say Itly. Along with gabagol, proshhoot, gravy for sauce, pasta fasool, galamad, rig-ott, and a strainer is a scoolabass,

Makes me miss living in a city with old world immigrants like Philly. Here I’ve heard Washingtonians call it Warshington.

I've heard "ambulance" pronounced amba-lance quite a bit.

When people say "have a good/blessed day" I usually hear people in DC respond "you do the same now" but where I grew up in NY they would have said "you too."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DC accent is a black DC accent. There is no white DC accent for the most part.

Nonsense. There is a very distinctive Caucasian District of Columbia accent, occasionally mixed with something from the country the original family members emigrated from.

I agree.But you have to find people whose families have lived here at least 2 or three generations to hear it, since the first generation to move to DC wouldn’t have DC accents unless they moved here when they were young. Most of the white people that I know who now live in DC are transplants, but when I was in HS, I knew white people with DC accents — that were different from the range of Black DC accents, and very different from, say, white Baltimore or white Eastern Shore accents, and even from white PG county accents — which I haven’t heard in years.

Anonymous wrote:The DC accent is a black DC accent. There is no white DC accent for the most part.

Nonsense. There is a very distinctive Caucasian District of Columbia accent, occasionally mixed with something from the country the original family members emigrated from.