From Boston's non-rhoticity, to the sweet southern drawl and singsongy rhythm of the Minnesotan nice, several American regions are known for their distinct accents... But what about San Francisco? It has been long debated if our west coast peninsula shares the same Californian valley girl vocal fry Los Angeles is known for, or if we have an accent all to our own.
With our city's historic multicultural intermingling, it is often questioned if such confluence of Russian, Italian, Chinese, Irish, and more ever amalgamated a specific San Francisco speaking pattern that is still heard today, or used to exist, if even at all. We've got the answers to this popular tourist quandary, with some pretty fascinatingly gobsmacking tidbits.
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An accent can be defined as the way people pronounce words, as well as their rhythm and musicality, a pattern called speech prosody. Different than dialects, which accounts for greater grammatical and language differences within the same region, accents focus on pronounciation, yet both occur due to isolation.
The longitudinal separation of groups of people, over time, will evolutionarily develop new speaking patterns, words, and audible speaking differences unique to that community's factors of location, ethnicities, social class, education levels, and more. Whether or not you notice it, everyone has an accent from their upbringing.
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Take English, Dutch, and Swedish evolving from Proto-Germanic languages, or British English's Received Pronunciation developed within elite in the late 20th century for examples. This seclusion in turn elicits an inherent "code" that can be noticeable to outsiders, either prominently (like New York or Jersey's notorious roughness), or more subtly, like perhaps ours, if any.
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Mission District in the 1960s.
The introduction of mass immigration can also contribute to how accents are generated within different locations within the same region, think of the Pennsylvanian Dutch, the Nordic roots of the Midwest, the Puerto Rican influx into New York, and French and Caribbean Patois influence of New Orlean's Creole.
For San Francisco, the confluence of Irish and Jewish people arriving to San Francisco in the Gold Rush of 1800s led to a particular sound of speech in the 20th century called the Mission Brogue.
Focused in the Mission District, these large communities of Irish workers, as Sociolinguistics in Linguistics Professor Lauren Hall-Lew explains, arose from their majority and dominance in city politics and law enforcement.
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There is no one all-encompassing SF accent, as the Mission Brogue is not representative of the rest of the cultural populations, such as the large communities of Chinese, Russians, Italians, Filipinos, and more that all have their own accents. However, the Mission Brogue accent does stand out as a peculiar Irish-SF vestige that was last noticed in former California Gov. Jerry Brown.
Hall-Lew elucidates that his cadence is "definitely reminiscent of that old Mission Brogue style," characterized by his almost East-Coast non-rhoticity in words like "store" as faintly "stohw."
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Other aspects of the archaic native SF accent are the tendencies to talk fast or to "string words together," as Chronicle reporter Carl Nolte defined in 1984. Nolte instructed how to talk like a native San Franciscan, which he admitted he was afraid of it becoming "as dead as Latin." "The first lesson - learned at birth- is never to call it Frisco or San FRANcisco." Nolted educates that "natives run the two words together and add a couple of extra sounds, and it comes out 'Sampencisco.'" Famous San Francisco Chronicle writer Herb Caen was also prone to this word condensing with describing himself as a "Sacamenna Kid," from Sacramento.
Many today continue to research the remnants and history of this obscure tidbit of city history, most recently being city native Joey Yee for SFGate. While the Mission Brogue may be long phased out, this accent was an intriguing aspect of one social class and neighborhood within the city.
It is also important to remember and appreciate the larger diversity San Francisco holds and the many authentic accents that increasingly interact here today. However you pronounce your vocabulary here in the city, just be sure not to call it "San Fran" (a fun, divisive topic for a future article).
See also: Quintessential Binge-Worthy Shows Set In San Francisco That Truly Capture Its Charm
Photography by: Casey Horner/Unsplash
