Stanford University Researchers to Determine if Central California Residents Have Accent

Stanford University researchers studying the way people in Central California speak are interviewing longtime Sacramento residents to determine any distinctive twangs, words and grammar they may have, a newspaper reported.

More than a dozen researchers participating in the university's Voices of California project will be talking to native-born Sacramento residents through Sept. 13, the Sacramento Bee reported. The goal of the project is to understand how the community views itself, its region and the rest of the state and how that's reflected in the way it speaks.

"It's amazing what people do with language,'' researcher Annette D'Onofrio said.

Participants are asked about their lives, their jobs, their memories of Sacramento and how they feel about the city. They are also asked to pronounce a list of words, including "apricot,'' "coop,'' "pecan,'' "Coke,'' "Beth,'' "colt,'' "cult'' and "almond,'' the Bee reported. The results are later analyzed for vowel sounds and word choice.

The researchers have so far gone to Merced, Bakersfield and Redding. In Bakersfield and Redding, they found people's pronunciation and word choice were more influenced by the South than those of people on California's coast. The legacy of Dust Bowl migration to the areas around Redding and Bakersfield appears to have played a role in establishing that pattern.

"A lot has to do with the way people orient themselves to the place they live,'' researcher Teresa Pratt said.

When people like their communities, they want to sound like people there.

Sacramento native Ron Vrilakas recently sat down with some of the researchers for an interview. His grandfather moved to Sacramento in the 1930s.

"Nobody thinks they have an accent,'' said Vrilakas, 51. "I don't. Anybody who speaks differently than I do is the one who has the accent.''

The Stanford researchers say prior studies about how Californians speak focused on Los Angeles and San Francisco. The Central Valley was left out, though it has a unique set of values and has experienced considerable immigration from across the country and world.

"We decided that if we didn't gather serious data, nobody would,'' said Penny Eckert, a Stanford professor of linguistics and anthropology who initiated the multiyear project. "And it's particularly interesting in California, because California is so big, so environmentally diverse and so socially diverse.''