Medford, Oregon
The Medford Accent
Medford sits inside the California dialect area, which covers California, 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 Medford sound like
- “Cot” and “caught” sound the same.
- Fronted “goose” vowel — “dude”, “food”, “too”.
- Uptalk: rising pitch at the end of statements.
- Quotative “like”: “and I was like…”.
These are the markers of the California accent as a whole. No survey claims every speaker in Medford has all of them — the full California profile sets out where the region varies.
How Oregon answered the Harvard Dialect Survey
The Harvard Dialect Survey, collected by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder in 2002–2003, recorded how respondents in every US state answered the same questions. These are Oregon’s answers, most common first.
| Question | Answers in Oregon |
|---|---|
| Soda, Pop or Coke? The Map of How America Orders a Fizzy Drink | pop 47% · soda 39% · coke 4% |
| Traffic Circle, Roundabout or Rotary? | traffic circle 37% · roundabout 37% · rotary 5% |
| Water Fountain, Drinking Fountain or Bubbler? | drinking fountain 73% · water fountain 24% · bubbler 0% |
| Lightning Bug or Firefly? | firefly 63% · lightning bug 8% |
| Crawfish, Crawdad or Crayfish? | crawdad 55% · crawfish 27% · crayfish 10% |
| Roly Poly or Potato Bug? | potato bug 60% · roly poly 8% |
| You Guys, Y'all or You All? | you guys 57% · you all 9% · y'all 6% |
| Kitty-Corner or Catty-Corner? | kitty-corner 75% · catty-corner 11% |
| Garage Sale or Yard Sale? | garage sale 67% · yard sale 26% |
| Tennis Shoes or Sneakers? | tennis shoes 68% · sneakers 16% |
| Frosting or Icing? | frosting 46% · icing 4% |
| Frontage Road, Service Road or Access Road? | frontage road 34% · access road 17% · service road 12% |
| Caramel: Two Syllables or Three? | with 2 syllables ("car-ml") 54% · with 3 syllables ("carra-mel") 21% |
| Mischievous or Mischievious? | mischievious (4 syllables) 35% · mischievous (3 syllables) 32% |
| Rubber Band, Hair Tie or Elastic? | rubber band 30% · hair tie 28% · (hair) elastic 6% |
Data from the Harvard Dialect Survey (Bert Vaux and Scott Golder, 2002–2003), used under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licence. A self-selected sample from two decades ago: how people spoke then, not a census.
Is your accent from Medford?
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 California English profile and every other profile in the survey, and shows you where people who answer the way you do actually live.