Springfield accents

There are is a huge variety of different Springfield accents: accents of the English language spoken by presumed native residents of the town of Springfield. Studying the local or regional accent(s) of the town's citizens is one hypothetical way to identify the location of Springfield and Springfield's state within the United States. Most Springfield children and many adults born and raised in Springfield speak with a regionally-nonspecific General American accent (for example, Homer Simpson); General American is best associated with the Northern and Western United States.

A considerable number of the middle-aged generation of Springfield citizens have the accent of the greater New York metropolitan area. Marge Simpson and Barney Gumble both exhibit rhotic, New York metropolitan accents (as spoken, for example, in Long Island or North Jersey), while Carl Carlson and Lenny Leonard, as well as Moe Szyslak (who is not a Springfield native, but who moved there as a young child), all exhibit the authentically non-rhotic (or "r"-dropping), working-class accent of New York City itself (as spoken, for example, in Brooklyn).

Others living most if not all their lives in Springfield show a recognizable accent local to the Southern United States. Ned Flanders shows elements of a Southern accent, though this is perhaps an unconscious cultural marker of his self-identification with Southern Baptism (however, his accent in his childhood flashbacks seems to be the same, though it is clearly different from his not-seemingly-Christian beatnik parents). The local Spuckler family strongly shows Southern accents, even with older and rural use of double modals (such as when Cletus says "You might could wear these to your job interview.").

Mayor Joe Quimby has a non-rhotic Eastern New England (Boston) accent, with exaggerated intonations seeming to imitate Ted or John F. Kennedy.

One possibility to explain Springfield's diversity of accents is that different socioeconomic groups in the town have different accents, or that the town is a linguistic melting pot, perhaps because it is located midway between a variety of dialectal regions. Ned Flanders's comment that Springfield borders Ohio, Nevada, Maine, and Kentucky, though geographically impossible, would lend credit to this theory.