Do you pronounce "pin" and "pen" the same?

I’m a latecomer to this, but I had some time today to peruse the “Do You Speak American?” material on the PBS website, and it’s totally fascinating! As many of you know, I’ve been obsessed with the accents I’ve encountered on the East Coast, and spend much time trying to learn how to differentiate speakers from Maine, Boston, Brooklyn, Jersey, etc., which all sounded the same to me before I moved over here. I also monitor whatever weird thing is happening with my own accent, a development I can’t describe and cannot control. I just know that I sound very different from when I was straight from Santa Barbara. (Last week some folks I’d been speaking with asked if I was from the somewhere like Virginia.)

Some recommended links for y’all:

Start with this quiz

Californian speak and how it’s still establishing itself

Accent of the Pacific Northwest. (I like this one because it starts with how I feel—that I assumed growing up I spoke correct, regular American English. But of course we all have an accent.) And that “cot-caught” example is terrific. I always read that example in linguistics and I’m like, “But those words are pronounced the same!” At least, they are where I’m from.

The way New Yorkers talk is not all about the accent. It’s also about style, like complaining to strangers and asking staccato questions. Very interesting, and true!

Examples of regional dialects. You should listen to the woman from Brooklyn. She sounds exactly like people around me every day.

Anyway, poke around because there’s tons of good stuff. Even a bit about slang introduced by “Buffy”!