Hillary Clinton's accent evolution (1983–2015)

We're talking about accents. Everyone has one, even if you don't think you do. And some of us have more than one, like Hillary Clinton. It was really silly. I'm glad nobody was around. Her accents have fluctuated a lot. The road to being somebody in this society starts with education. Yes, that's Hillary in 1983. It's hard to tell whether she's pandering to her audience or just mimicking the people around her. That's not unusual, and lots of other politicians have done the same thing. But with Hillary, we have three decades of multi-regional public life to sift through. Let's go back to that 1983 clip. Starts with education, education. Even though she's from Illinois, she did marry a guy from Arkansas, so it's not unreasonable that that would affect her speech. That Inland Southern accent, though, it starts to fade just four years later. It is difficult to draw the lines between personal privacy, family privacy. But I think as a society, we've had more than enough examples. There's a twang, but it's on its way out. The weird thing is that that accent returns in 1992 when Bill Clinton is running for president. You know, they've just been minding their own business, and they got hit by a meteor. You know, I'm not sitting here as some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. Every time she called, distraught, saying her life was gonna be ruined, ruined, ruined. But through the 90s, Hillary discards her drawl. I think that is exactly where it goes. You think so? Right there in the middle on the top. Good. It's great, Martha. Side note, there are several Martha Stewart White House specials from the 90s, and all of them are amazing. Anyway, by the middle of the decade, the Illinois native starts to sound a touch Midwestern. Questions come up, and we'll just keep doing our best to answer them, and hopefully it'll end at some point. I think that's only natural. By the time she ran for Senate in 2000, Hillary Clinton, the Chicagoan by way of Arkansas and Washington, D.C., had to appeal to New Yorkers. When I started this campaign, I'm not sure I knew quite what to expect. Lifting up our children with better education. Education. I hope you'll give me that chance. Was that a hint of the Northeast? Long-term care. Do I detect a subtle long-term care? So there's no strong accent here. But maybe the absence of an accent is, in itself, an accent. Let's skip ahead to 2007. You know, I happen to think that it is just totally off-base. It's, you know, so far out, it's hard to even understand and take seriously. But what people are talking to me about is not that. I gotta tell you. The chop and the Gs at the ends of the gerunds, we're almost past the heartland into Sarah Palin territory. Seriously, though, it does sound like Hillary Clinton gets ever so slightly folksier when she's running a presidential campaign. That Charlotte had. Whether they're living in rural Iowa or inner-city New York or anywhere else. Obviously, she isn't the first person to modify an accent for an audience. What's going on, Jamaica? Anybody here from Guyana? Me and my mates took the tube home from the pub because we were bloody knackered. So Hillary's in good company. Ain't nothing wrong with that.