How has the Black Chicago accent retained its Southern roots?

I’m from the South Side of Chicago. And when I’m on the radio or on a podcast, you can absolutely tell. When I’m answering a Curious City question and I’m trying to say that a listener asked a question, it sometimes comes out sounding like “ax.” That’s something linguists call metathesis: Sounds in a word swap places, and it’s common in Southern speech.

But I didn’t grow up in the southern part of the country. I’m two generations removed from Greenwood, Mississippi, on my mother’s side and Sunflower, Mississippi, on my father’s. And yet, when I fully relax into how I naturally speak, I can sound pretty Southern.

I’m not an outlier. Many Black Chicagoans talk just like I do. That led a Curious City listener to ask: Why have Black Chicagoans kept so many features of Southern dialect?

This answer goes back to the Great Migration, roughly between 1915 and 1970, during which a half-million Black people moved from Southern states to Chicago, creating a Black Chicago English you can still hear in the dialect of their children, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Hearing the Black Chicago accent

How Black Chicagoans speak is a variation of African American English, which also has Southern roots.

“It's partly the language that comes from descendants of enslaved peoples,” said Sharese King, one of two researchers leading the Chicagoland Language Project. “That is why you see a lot of overlap even between African American English and Southern varieties of English.”

As part of this project, King has been collecting data on how we, today’s Black Chicagoans, speak. In her research, many participants talk just like I do. Let’s take the word “car” — I naturally pronounce it “cah.” King says that “r-lessness” comes up a lot in her interviews and is “a hallmark of the Black Chicagoan dialect.”

Another attribute often found in Black Chicago speech is monophthongization: When we say a double vowel, also known as a diphthong, it sounds like just one. So Black Chicagoans will often say a word like “I,” which often sounds like “ai,” as just “ah.”

King notes while there are strong patterns, more research is needed. Black Chicagoans might not be the only people who have these aspects of speech.

“It is likely that both the r-lessness and the monophthongization present different in Black Chicago English based on technical details we haven't measured yet (e.g. where the nucleus of the vowel is located in the mouth or the environment where it more likely deletes),” King said. “But it's hard to say without having reached the stage of measuring these vowels using our fancy software. That project is on the docket, though.”

A connection to the South

But why has the Southern accent remained so prevalent? King offers three reasons.

First, when it comes to Chicago, segregation has actually preserved those Southern aspects of speech. A 2023 WBEZ analysis shows Chicago is still the most segregated city in America. And although many Black Chicagoans are generations removed from Great Migration elders, we are more likely to still live in neighborhoods with each other.

King says that proximity within the group matters.

“One of the things that is really important about maintaining any kind of dialect or language variety is the idea that you're in close, close-up proximity with a particular group of people,” she said.

The second reason is that while Black families may have moved to Chicago, many never lost connection with relatives who stayed in the South, and our accents stay as strong as those relationships. Summer trips to visit family in Mississippi or Louisiana, for example, remain a commonality.

“You also still have people who express so many connections still to their family who are not up North or who are not in the Midwest,” King said.

And the last reason: We like how we talk. We like ourselves. We’re not trying to emulate other people’s speeches because the people who we see as cool are also Black Chicagoans.

“People are not always aware in their linguistic performance that they're drawing on or what exact features they're drawing on,” King said. “Sometimes, we like to sound like people we like.”

So if I end up performing an accent, it’s that of people I like. I might want to sound like Common when he leans into his love for Chicago in an interview, or like a girl from my high school who always had the coolest confidence, or like Chicago kids that pop up on my TikTok “For You” page.

And for me, as a Black Chicagoan who at one point thought I’d have to change how I spoke to be a journalist, King’s research is comforting. It’s a reminder that how I speak means connection. It means history, family and community. And those are things I never want to lose.

Arionne Nettles is a journalism professor, culture reporter and audio aficionado. She is the author of “We Are the Culture: Black Chicago’s Influence on Everything” and “Journalism for Dummies.” Follow her @arionnenettles.