Q: Do Indianapolis dwellers have a distinguishable accent?
A: If you’re hoping for something as distinctive as Chicago (where “this” is “dis”) or Boston (where a “yard” is a “yad”), the answer is no. Linguists put Indy squarely in the Midland dialect region, where Northern and Southern speech patterns meet and mix. In the southern part of the state, you’ll hear a lot more “y’alls.” Go far enough north and Hoosiers start trading “the” for “da.” But here in the great gray middle of the state, speaker’s accents sound mostly like generic TV news anchors. Research at Indiana University finds that Indiana natives can sometimes detect the subtle regional differences found in Indianapolis as opposed to other parts of the state, but to outsiders, they’re as hard to identify as the taste of mayonnaise in egg salad.
