Sampencisco Accents

While I was back in the Bay last weekend, I came across a depressing article from Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte about how natives are fleeing the City.

You can’t go very far in Marin, or Sonoma, or on the Peninsula or over in Walnut Creek without hearing this kind of thing; you see the guy you knew in high school, hear the San Francisco accent. “You still live in the city?”

Now, I’ve spent plenty of time in the City, but I’ve never heard of a San Francisco accent. After a little digging, I found one of the definitive documents on the San Francisco accent, also by “Native Son” Nolte, entitled “Talking Like A Native.” Nolte waxes, but I can’t really blame him. There is plenty of meat in the article too, like the importance of high schools in a city as small as SF, or how it’s pronounced “Sannacruise.”

Finally, he mentions broadcaster Russ Coughlin, on KGO, a man he claims had one of the last genuine San Francisco accents on television. No surprise, Coughlin is on YouTube in this gem of a clip on the history of television in the Bay Area. Though it’s slight and masked by the inflections professional broadcaster, you can still hear a not-quite-east-coast-what-is-that inflection. The genuine article. Straight out of Sampencisco.