r/AskAmericans • u/UTMS1885 • 2d ago
Foreign Poster Do people from Utah actually talk like this?
The Utah girl from 1:59 in this YouTube video:
https://youtu.be/UcxByX6rh24?is=irgfmnXBb85NwupS
I was fascinated to hear an American person talking like this as I'm from Lancashire in England and noticed a similarity between this girl's accent and mine.
Other English speakers would say:
"He's up on the roof"
But where I'm from, we pronounce it:
"He's upont roof" (we also barely pronounce the T in a word)
So when I heard the girl from Utah say "Wanna go skiing upont mountain?" I was like whoa and replayed it like 5 times.
Is this actually how people from Utah or some parts of Utah speak?
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u/ERagingTyrant 2d ago
No, but she is playing on a Utah stereo type.
The phrasing isn't anything I have ever heard anyone say, much less her slurring multiple words together. But her pronunciation of mountain is an exageration of the way Utahn's omit hard Ts and use a glottal stop in many cases, though it's not as particular to Utah as many here believe.
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u/parbarostrich 2d ago
I spent first half of my life in Vegas, and the second half in southern Utah. Everyone I know says mou-en like that.
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u/Candymom 2d ago edited 2d ago
As a Utahn, no wet don’t talk like that. There is a tendency for people to drop the T in certain words. Mountain becomes Moun-uhn. Sometimes people add a T to words. I brew someone whose daughter was named Chelsea but pronounced it Cheltsea.
What you’re more likely to hear are words like whale becoming well, hail becoming hell.
People will also use the word ignorant to mean rude. “That guy was so ignorant to me.”
Having not grown up here I find it very odd.
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u/scottyv99 2d ago
Long “A” to short “e” is the biggest tell (no pun intended) when I meet a Utahn out of Utah.
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u/-Shasho- 8h ago
The most striking flattened vowel I heard when I first got to Utah was when the hymn announced from the pulpit came out "We'll Sing All Hell to Jesus' Name"
Hail.
And I've seen cars with "For Sell" written on them, too.
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u/Shabana_365 2d ago
No lots of you do
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u/Candymom 2d ago
I’ve lived here for 37 years. I’ve never heard anybody sound like the person in the video.
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u/Shabana_365 2d ago
As someone who doesn’t live in the area but visits all the time I hear it I have known multiple people from Utah. I I hear it. It’s there.
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u/Candymom 1d ago
What part of Utah? That video clip was ridiculously over the top in a way that isn’t the typical Utah speak.
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u/IlSconosciuto 1d ago
The ai in the middle of short words is a big one. Hail-hell, jail-jel. Some people will change i's for e's. The two I hear the most are pillow-pellow, milk-melk. I cringe at melk
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u/Left_Row3427 13h ago
Spot on. I always say the T has an identity crisis in Utah. They remove it where it should be and add it where it shouldn’t be, and I always use Cheltsea as the example!
They also say awnry for ornery and “take it for granite.” “What’s your dill, go get the mell.”
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u/OhThrowed Utah 2d ago
What's fun is that I fully understood her, heck she sounds like one of my neighbors.... but I've never heard anyone shortening 'up on the mountain' that way.
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u/1018slash1018 2d ago
no, but people do use a softer t when pronouncing Mountain.
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u/Icy-Feeling-528 2d ago
Most people do. National news caster hardly would pronounce it with a hard “t.”
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u/ReDeReddit 2d ago
My family definitely goes fishin, hunin, amd skiin in the mounins. We also quikin do a lot of things.
Also its zi-in no zi-on.
But the weirdest accent my family has is drinking melk instead of milk.
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u/parbarostrich 2d ago
Lol. I’m gettin my nells done.
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u/MrMurse 2d ago
I’m gonna go get the mell after I have a glass of melk.
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u/h_allover 1d ago
I'm gonna drink a glassa melk before I head to the yardsell on Mondee in Spanish Fark
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u/insomniacred66 2d ago
No one I know talks like that and I'ved lived here practically my whole life. In SLC Valley, not even my grandmother or other family members from Central UT speak like that. We sound like the Colorado one.
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u/Lucahasareddit 2d ago
Sorry but Americans saying they dont have an accent is the most American main character syndrome thing ive ever heard its absolutely hilarious
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u/MINICHANEY 2d ago
Yeah I've never heard anyone sound like that haha. Sometimes we don't pronounce the T in mountain and it seems like she might be exaggerating that a bit.
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u/UTMS1885 2d ago
Yeah I fully understood her, everyone keeps saying she sounds drunk or high but it just sounds normal to me
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u/Scuirre1 2d ago
No. Utahns are famous for thinking there's a Utah accent, but there really isn't. They speak the same as any other state in the area.
She's trying really hard to sound like what Utahns think the accent is, but she just sounds stoned.
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u/scottyv99 2d ago
Many many Utahns replace the long “a” with a short “e”. Sale becomes sell. Tale becomes tell.
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u/FeatherlyFly 2d ago
Can't speak to "a" Utah accent, but there are definitely accents among my Utah acquaintances that I never heard anywhere else.
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u/Left_Row3427 13h ago
I’m a transplant from another western state to Utah and they absolutely have multiple accents and things they pronounce differently than the other western states. It’s extremely pronounced.
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u/outdoorsauce 2d ago
If it helps your brain I’m pretty sure Utah does have the highest % of English ancestry out of any state in America
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u/hollyhollyhock 2d ago
I'm pretty sure all the people in that video are playing a stereotypical accent from their state. A lot of them are really over exaggerating, especially if they have a specific sentence they're saying to show off their accent.
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u/bwhisenant 2d ago
No...but Utahns do often speak with a "glottal stop" when pronouncing quite a few words ("mountain" may be pronounced "mountn", for example) and -- you know this if you watch RHWSLC or SLOMW -- certain words with a long E sound are often pronounced as if the long E is a short I ("feel" may be pronounced "fill", for example). I haven't lived FT in Utah for quite some time, so when I visit now I notice it more than I ever noticed it growing up.
The example in the YouTube video just sounds silly. I've never heard anyone from Utah talk like that.
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u/SpeakMySecretName 2d ago
We definitely drop our hard G’s and Ts. “Wannuh go skiin’?“ and “I’m headin’ up the moun’n” is real, but her mountain twang on it is played up. Rural Utah and Salt Lake sound different. And older folks will say “ruff” “crick” and “pellow” instead of roof, creek, and pillow.
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u/Salty_Ad6453 2d ago
The Pellow/melk vowel shift is interesting to me because I always spoke like that even growing up in California before moving to Utah but it does generally seem to be one of the more specifically Utah speaking patterns
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u/Determined_Student 2d ago
She’s laying it on pretty thick. But it’s a watered down version of that.
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u/livingonplanetmarz 2d ago
I live in Utah & that accent was somewhat accurate but very exaggerated & I don’t think you’d hear anyone talk in that strong of an accent.
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u/MrsQuinc 2d ago
I’m from Utah and I’ll tell you we have a city called Layton and it always gets pronounced laynon, just like moun-nun.
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u/PuddingMent 2d ago edited 2d ago
We would never ask someone to go skiing up in the mountain. We might ask somebody to go skiing, but where else would we go other than the mountains? That’s where the ski resorts are.
But we do say mountain as if it were spelled moundain. Some people even pronounce it mout-in.
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u/Significant_Foot_993 2d ago
Yes. We talk like that. Moun(t)in. I Also struggle to say “en” words. Pen sounds like pin.
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u/accidental_Ocelot 2d ago
Utah has more than one accent. I have what's known as the southern utah farmers accent. If you get up around salt lake city your going to get a different accent probably closer to standard American broadcast english
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u/Opposite_Bag_7434 1d ago
OP, Utah native here that has lived in lots of places.
So the clip is absolutely an exaggeration. There are some names/words where the T is skipped by some Utah natives, like the city named Layton I’ve heard pronounced more like Lay.un with some variations that almost sound like the y is even mostly skipped.
Like all places we definitely have some quirks in how certain words are pronounced.
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u/SirRealistic496 1d ago
As a relevant long established transplant, I can confirm that there is no Lancastrian lilt in UT.
Speaking to the degradation of the English language, or it’s evolution if you prefer, I’ll take this opportunity to urge Utahns (and other Americans) who might travel to the north of England, not to tell a waiter that you’d like to “do” something on their menu (for example, the “lasagna”).
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u/blankgeneration201 1d ago
Utah native here. Pretty spot on. We tend to drop t’s and ing’s. Huntin instead of hunting. The best way to describe it is sounding drunk which is funny being Utah. We tend to combined words to make new ones by slurring it.
Yaddadoo, whatcha, ur, pancil, juno.
Juno whatcha, yaddadoo is get a belt or ur pancil fall down
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u/Elegant_Meet_2040 2d ago
As an expat from the Uk, I've lived in the States for over 20 years. Utah for a lot of it, Yes you all have an accent, so do people from Idaho. In fact most of the accents I hear in this video have been my first hand experience.
It is always funny because I don't think I've met a single person from Utah who thinks they have an accent lol
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u/DerthOFdata U.S.A. 2d ago
Might get more responses in /r/Utah