The long-awaited day of reckoning has finally arrived: Round One of America's Ugliest Accent comes to a triumphant close in. We are one step closer to democratically determining whom among us speaks with the most disgusting accent.

So far, our "winners" are just what you'd expect: Boston, Chicago, Scranton, Tallahassee, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Each individual city's charming ugliness can be worn on its residents' sleeves, or otngus, with pride. (Revisit past rounds here, here, and here.)

New York City

New York City, home to Gawker Media and six million other freaks, is possibly the most eagerly anticipated entrant into the bracket. Manhattan, Brooklyn, North Jersey, Luon Guy Land: What else needs to be said? Provided you say it in an accent kinder on the ears than this.

Seed: 3
Notable New York City accents: the Wikipedia page on New York City accents has an impressive list of native speakers, but here are some of the best: Vince Lombardi, Joe Pesci, Rhea Perlman, and Vin Diesel.
Example sentence: "Is this rilly how we tawk? Lemme get us a cuppa cawfee."

Charleston

My understanding of the Charleston accent comes with imagining a very old man under a knotted oak tree, delicately mumbling gibberish about days since past. The Charleston accent is as incomprehensible as it is deep and that makes any conversation about eating "pah" (pie) in your home "stey-it" come out simultaneously difficult to understand and pleasingly charming, like having a humidifier that adds white noise to your sleeps. Did someone just say something?

Seed: 14
Notable Charleston accents: Ernest Hollings
Example sentence: "I live east of the Cuppah, just ovah the rivah, and up the ro-ahd."

Louisville

Jennifer Lawrence, America's sweetheart, went straight from Louisville, Ky. to Hollywood, and has since dropped the handsome round mumbling of Loo-ah-vul. According to a study performed at the University of Kentucky, the Louisville accent borders somewhere between being non-Southern and non-Northern, but is defined by that hard-to-understand Southern style grumbling.

Seed: 11
Notable Louisville accents: Jennifer Lawrence (sort of), Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Edison
Example sentence: "There ees, accordin' to lehgend, a boilin pot of gold at one eend."

Providence

The presumption that all of New England's dirty mouthtalk is centered in Boston is horrifically wrong. If any accent has the perfect combination of New York ugliness with Pennsylvania dirt, it's the Rhode Island brogue, which uses "fuggedaboutit" and going to the "de klenzaz" when you really mean the laundromat.

Seed: 6
Notable Providence accents: Raymond L.S. Patriarca
Example sentence: "Jeet at the PawSox game?" "No, I just drank a little from the bubblah."

[Image by Jim Cooke]