Linguists call it the Midland drawl, some locals have it, others who grew up in KC don't have it at all. Is more of a country drawl, not a Texas or southern twangy accent. STL has the nasal accent but if you go a bit south it's southern, if you go north it also has the Midland drawl. One of my sisters in STL has strong nasaly accent but her lifetime W County husband (high school coach) and sons have something between midland drawl and slight southern mix.warwickland wrote:kc has a hilarious (and really hard to pin down) old school (urban?) accent. this is actually a different accent than one i hear sometimes when i call my overland park office, and someone answers the phone with a super-lightish texas-y (plains?) accent. i guess it's all of the people that have moved into metro kc from the surrounding plains.
There are different variations of this. Ohio/Indiana midland drawl sounds a bit different to me than KC midland drawl but both are "country", not really southern or Texan...
edit: Don't hear it much anymore but some older KC city people have the Walter Cronkite accent. Maybe old money peeps.