Sarah Palin's accent

I've read all sorts of speculation about Mrs Palin's accent: "It's Canadian." "It's Minnesotan." "It's Midwestern."

No it's not. It is typically Northwestern.

I've travelled across the USA six times by car and have observed accents. (These are very superficial observations. I could get into more detail but will restrain myself.)

The Western accent starts (naturally) west of the Rockies. It is somewhat like some of the Midwestern accents but has fewer "ethnic idiosyncracies" (such as those of Chicago, Wisconsin and Minnesota.) Westerners pronounce their "R's" a lot like the Midwesterners whose speech was influenced by the Germans who roll their "'R's" a lot more than the original English settlers on the East Coast. (Southerners pronounce their "R's" a little bit more than the Yankees because of the Scots-Irish influence but not as gutturally as the Midwesterners.)

But the West was populated by all sorts of people and, while the Germanic Midwestern "R" has survived west of the Rockies, the "ethnic idiosyncracies" had to be sacrificed in order to communicate clearly with all these different folks. The Western accent is therefore a pretty bland "generic American English."

The southern California accent is well-known because of movies but, as you move north, it becomes less bland. (Native San Franciscans are unusual in that they have a very distinctive Irish lilt.) But Northern Californians, Oregonians and Washingtonians sound a lot like Palin. If you want to hear what Northwesterners sound like just listen to the newscasters on our local TV stations like the local affiliates of ABC, CBS and NBC.

The Northwest accent is clear, precise and perfectly understandable unlike certain regional accents such as the various "Down East," Dixie and British accents which are completely incomprehensible to outsiders (except for the educated Scottish and Welsh accents which are almost as perfect as the Northwest accent.)