Chicago-area accent - a relative of the Minnesota accent?

[ilikeverin]

Chicago, like many cities around the Great Lakes, has the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.  Its spread is something like this, although I've usually seen a tendril extend to St. Louis:



Although Minnesota is starting to be affected by some of the changes that occurred in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, it also has some differences of its own from surrounding locations, as well as some changes that are oozing in from the west.  I'd put the dividing line between the dialect that characterizes Minneapolis and the dialect that characterizes Chicago at somewhere around Eau Claire.  See also Benson, Fox, and Balkman (2011).

[ilikeverin]

All Midwestern accents are related, including the Inland North "Chicago/Wisconsin accent" that dominates where I come from (and most would say I talk with.)

Chicago, like many cities around the Great Lakes, has the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.  Its spread is something like this, although I've usually seen a tendril extend to St. Louis:



Although Minnesota is starting to be affected by some of the changes that occurred in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, it also has some differences of its own from surrounding locations, as well as some changes that are oozing in from the west.  I'd put the dividing line between the dialect that characterizes Minneapolis and the dialect that characterizes Chicago at somewhere around Eau Claire.  See also Benson, Fox, and Balkman (2011).

I've heard about the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, but I've never noticed it wherever I live.  At least half the people around me don't speak like that at all.

Some of that's just your own sociolinguistic norms.  A few studies have found that Michiganders have some of the highest self-opinions of their own "correctness" of just about every state in the country, despite the fact many of you vowel shift like mad.  However, you might also be in the wrong demographic group to hear a lot of these sorts of changes; it tends to be lower-middle-class young women who change the most in almost every linguistic change that has been observed.