New City, Illinois
The New City Accent
New City sits inside the Chicago dialect area, which covers Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo, United States. The nearest other area is Midland, about 95km away.
Take the quiz and see how close your accent is →
What people in New City sound like
- Raised “trap” vowel — “cat” towards “kee-at”.
- Fronted “lot” vowel — “block” towards “black”.
- “Cot” and “caught” stay distinct.
- Chicago-specific vocabulary: “gym shoes”, “pop”, “the expressway”.
These are the markers of the Chicago accent as a whole. No survey claims every speaker in New City has all of them — the full Chicago profile sets out where the region varies.
New City against Midland
New City is close enough to the Midland area that the two get confused. These are the questions where the survey expects a different answer on each side.
| Question | New City | Midland |
|---|---|---|
| Do “cot” and “caught” rhyme in your natural accent? | “cot” and “caught” stay distinct | “cot” and “caught” rhyme |
Dialect areas near New City
Is your accent from New City?
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 Chicago / Inland North English profile and every other profile in the survey, and shows you where people who answer the way you do actually live.