I have lived a few places in my more than 63 years of life on planet earth and have often been asked where I got my accent. Now to my ears, I have none, but to others I do. I always answer that I am a bit of a mutt. Growing up in various parts of Ohio, early married years in Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois, a couple longer stints in North Carolina and finally more than a few years in Iowa with an Australian adventure added in. Oh, and don’t forget my time in Alabama. Now you understand how my speech might be a little mixed up.
A lot of folks in the south get a bad rap for using language that is less than perfect. Well, it’s just not true but of course stereotypes are difficult to break. That’s why this booklet caught my eye recently and I had to borrow it to see what it was all about.
Of course this booklet is widely entertaining and conveniently split into 3 parts. First up – correct definitiions.
This is followed up by a massive listing of authentic words of southern highlands and coastal dialect English.
The final section includes superstitions associated with the south.
It is not a book that I would take seriously or keep for a long time but it was fun to pick it up and read it and laugh a bit.
The one time that comes to mind when I had a horrible time making myself understood was when we lived in Australia. I had to renew my passport while we lived there and I could just not get the right answers for the automated message. The prompt would ask me a question and when I answered with what I felt was the correct answer, the system would inform me that it was not a valid response. I remember being so frustrated because I knew what I was saying was correct, but apparently not in Australia.
Language is such a vital part of our day to day interactions and when we aren’t understood, it becomes very frustrating. It was fun to read this lighthearted book and get a chuckle out of it. No disrespect meant for any Yankees reading this post—I have been called that and more.
Have a great day!
8 Comments
Leave a commentI never noticed you having an accent. Well, I guess we all have an accent…we are just used to the way people in our area talk. I can see that it could be hard to understand the Australian accent. Interesting!
Oh my goodness. When my parents first moved to Alabama from Michigan in 1980 my sister and I went to K-Mart to buy some cleaning supplies. We couldn’t find what we wanted so we asked an employee where the bleach was….she listened to us ask twice. And then said, Lord, I can’t understand a WORD you’re saying!” We laughed so hard when we got back to the car.
I love language and linguistics and learning how things developed and where certain expression come from. But I’ve been frustrated more than once because of my accent and not being able to pronounce something right.
Some people think I have a Southern drawl. Personally I don’t hear it and my husband doesn’t either. Okay with that because I have been a Southern girl since the day I was born and proud of it. I love to talk to different people that have some type of accent. I have a friend at church that from England and I absolutely love her accent.
That would be quite the amusing read! After living in so many areas of the country, I thought I had lost any kind of accent as well. But I’ll never forget once when a true Southern belle remarked to me that “You sure do talk funny.”
You definitely have an accent to these Yankee ears. But then people think Minnesotans have an accent and I just don’t hear it. Something about the way we say our “o’s.”
If I’d ever minded being mistaken for either a Yank or a Brit, I wouldn’t have spent all that time learning to speak NBC and BBC dialects in high school.
At the cafe where I used to blog, lots of people thought Mr. R was from New York because he didn’t speak BBC…he’s actually from Nottingham, England.
(He’s retired now, and it’ll take the new owners some time to be able to afford a writer.)
I can relate to living in lots of places and having an accent that is a combination of them all! Lately, people tell me, I’m sounding more Canadian! Not sure why!