Posted on 10/18/2013 6:08:04 PM PDT by cradle of freedom
Boston is the most horrible IMO but I was born in the Bronx and grew up in a Philly suburb. Wooder instead of water. When I went into a 7-11 store after many years I was talking to the owner and he said that originally he could tell what other towns nearby someone was from by their accent. LONG ago. Probably 50 years. Everyone talked to their neighbors though. Not anymore. My favorite accent is the Texan accent. Lived in MO for 13 yrs and say y’all once in a while.
I agree.
I have work as an engineer in Alabama and Texas and all the engineers from the South have dropped any accent.
You do hear a “used ta could” once in a while though.
It is common for people to take classes to lose their accent, especially if they are from the south and trying to advance with the feds or a large corporation. Flyover country accents are supposed to indicate a lack of intelligence, or something like that. You will probably be considered some kind of redneck tea party racist homophobe woman hater bitter clinger too.
I don't know.
But my son, raised in northeastern Maryland, after enlisting in the Marines and being stationed in Georgia,was often called a Yankee in those areas due to his accent.
When he got out and moved to NYS, the locals often called him out as a Southerner because of the very same accent.
“Maryland.”
Maryland is a Southern state. It’s just that we’ve been overwhelmed by Yankee (spit!) Carpetbaggers, too.
You think the cost of living in DC area is cheaper than Pittsburgh or Scranton?
$50k goes a lot farther there.
I’ve lived in the DC area for 37 years; I’m self employed.
When I started working back in 1977 (with a firm that consults with clients about federal matters), most of the people in the government that I dealt with came from the south; Washington was to people from Virginia, West Virginia and the Carolinas what Detroit was to people from Kentucky and Tennessee. There were a few people like me who came from the midwest. I worked for three attorneys; one of whom was a native Washingtonian; another came from Bellaire, Ohio (across the river from Wheeling, WV) and the third came from Idaho.
People are here from all over the country. The lawyers who dominate the plum jobs in the government come from the top law schools, which are principally in the Washington-DC-Phila-NYC-Boston corridor (throw in Michigan, Chicago, Stanford and Boalt Hall to that list).
They have a funny (if not downright ugly) accent all their own. Water is pronounced “wuter”; house is pronounced “hise”; when someone tells you that he or she is going to the Atlantic beaches, they’ll say that they are “goin’ donn de aoshin”; oysters are pronounced “urshters”; Baltimore is pronounced variously “balmer” and “bowl-tee-more”; and the state is pronounced “Murlin”. This accent spills over into parts of southeastern PA, Delaware and northern/Chesapeake Virginia. The preposition “on” is pronounced “own”.
Their ancestors moved to DC looking for Mr. Lincoln to feed them.
Try to find a white employee at a VA hospital.
Obama is just hiring marxist acedemics like himself and it doesn’t matter where they’re from.
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Obama was just an adjunct lecturer for black studies students, telling them how the US Constitution affected black people.
The heads of the law school at the U of Chicago refused his application to become a professor. The Chancellor made them find an office for him anyway, so they found a vacant room and put one desk and one chair in the room.
I don’t recall the source, but I read that here on FR several years ago. .....Obama is NOT an academic and has NEVER been a law professor!
Seems that there are some careers where people actively seek to eliminate the accent.
That’s an old, old practice in radio and TV broadcasting. Long ago the industry chose the Midwestern accent as the one to use. And they do.
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Many do have voice coaches to make them more acceptable, but I watch a lot of programs on Fox News and the high pitched, very nasal, Northern tones that spew from the mouths of many of the women there just drive me crazy.
Elizabeth Hasselbeck is probably the worst, Greta next and then Dana Pirino, as well as others. ...Most of the other women there have decent sounding voices... Harris Faulkner, Patty Ann Brown, Gretchen, Meghyn, Taranto, Kimberley, etc.
Thanks for your post 41. Interesting comments.
“Y’all” is a perfectly good shorthand word, as you have found.
Here in central Virginia I hear nothing that resembles what I think of as a Southern accent. Too many northern transplants, I suppose.
I’m looking forward to going down to Alabama soon to celebrate my birthday. There, you hear the real thing. Contrary to common perceptions, Alabama’s accent is soft and real easy on the ears; I could sit and listen to my nieces talk all day long. Mind you, the speech of some folks there is a bit unpleasant and fits the Southern backwoods stereotype.
I am surprised at your comments about some of the ladies on Fox News. I don’t watch TV, haven’t in years, so I was going on what I had seen in the past, and then all the networks featured a very bland, non-accented speech (i.e., Midwestern).
The state above you, Pennsylvania, is red through and through except for Philly. Ditto for Upstate NY, and ditto for NH.
PA has put some decent Republicans in the Senate, unlike MD.
Yankees are fine people and fine Americans.
Anyway, she got tossed on her butt right away when Mr. Righteous " ____ YOU HONKIES" came to office.
Or Department of Veterans Affairs...
Or in any HR Department.
We have a Tidewater ("Tahdwudder") accent.
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