What A Utah Accent Sounds Like And Why It Confuses People

People who visit Utah often wonder at the words they hear locals saying since Utah has such a... unique accent.  

Visitors of Zion National Park probably get a little confused since Utahns pronounce it more like zi-yin than using the ‘o’ that's in the actual word. Even close neighbors like the Arizonans have find Utah speech a bit odd. 

Another example of a weird Utah pronunciation is Hurricane, the city. If you think it sounds like a natural disaster, you would be wrong. Hurricane is usually pronounced like hurr-i-can leaving the 'cane’ part to be “simplified”. 

A Deseret News article from 2022 went over some of the reasons why Utahns pronounce things the way they do. For the most part, it goes back to the early settlers a.k.a. the pioneers.  

People settled in Utah with roots from Britain and Ireland attributing the current-day pronunciation of Utah words to that. Author David Eddington, also a BYU Linguist, studied Utahns speech patterns and came to this conclusion. Also, since Utah has many people with Danish ancestry, speech patterns were influenced by that.  

Another thing that makes a Utah accent stand out is the utter lack of use in a t when it's in the middle of a word. For example, words like mountain and Layton kind of get scrunched together. Just like the other examples, both words somehow come out with an ‘in’ sound instead of using the other vowels.  

These aren’t necessarily unique attributes since Arizonans and surrounding states also tend to jumble vowels in words like mountain. However, Utah does have its own speech quirks which are discernable if you pay attention.  

Now you know that you probably sound a bit odd to anyone visiting from the East Coast.