New Orleans accent
Bayou city drawl
The New Orleans accent is a distinctive way of speaking native to the city, often surprising outsiders who expect a Southern drawl.
The traditional working-class accent, called Yat, sounds closer to Brooklyn or Boston than to Mississippi—a legacy of the city's port-city immigration patterns.
Where y'at? is the characteristic greeting that gives Yat its name.
The accent varies by neighborhood, class, and ethnicity, with different sounds in the Irish Channel, the Ninth Ward, and Uptown.
Features include dropping r's after vowels, distinctive vowel shifts, and local vocabulary like neutral ground for median and making groceries for grocery shopping.
- CajunLouisiana's French descendants
- CreoleFused language, stabilized
- drawlUnhurried, elongated speech pattern
- bayouMarshy, slow-moving waterway
- FrenchOf or from Paris's nation
patois · Southern · dialect · twang · Big Easy · Mardi Gras · second line · jazz · gumbo · beignet · po boy · streetcar · voodoo · bourbon · jambalaya · crawfish · zydeco · Mississippi
New Orleans accentMidwestern accent
Regional American speech pattern
Boston accent · Minnesota accent · Mid-Atlantic accent · California accent · New York accent
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