Cleveland, Tennessee
The Cleveland Accent
Cleveland sits inside the Southern Appalachian dialect area, which covers Tennessee, Kentucky, western North Carolina and West Virginia, United States. No other dialect area in the survey comes close to it.
Take the quiz and see how close your accent is →
What people in Cleveland sound like
- Monophthongal “price”: “ride” as “rahd”, “time” as “tahm”.
- The pin–pen merger — “pin” and “pen” sound the same.
- “Y’all” for a group, and “all y’all” for emphasis.
- Double modals: “might could”, “used to could”.
These are the markers of the Southern Appalachian accent as a whole. No survey claims every speaker in Cleveland has all of them — the full Southern Appalachian profile sets out where the region varies.
Is your accent from Cleveland?
There is no way to answer that from a description. The test asks 29 questions about the words you use and how you say them, scores your answers against the Southern Appalachian English profile and every other profile in the survey, and shows you where people who answer the way you do actually live.