Why Do People in New Orleans Talk That Way?

Slate ^ | 9/8/2005 | Jesse Sheidlower

[Mike Bates]

If you've been listening to coverage of Katrina's devastation on the radio, you've no doubt heard the distinctive New Orleans accents of victims, officials, and rescue workers alike. Some of them speak with a familiar, Southern drawl; others sound almost like they're from Brooklyn. Why do people in New Orleans talk that way?

[Salamander]

It's not that we talk too fast...you listen too slow....:)

[and my hubby would commiserate with you heartily]

[ShadowDancer]

I shoot heroine and smack the hell out of my kids.

[elbucko]

Thanks for your post regarding the origins of accents in the South. I have a more than passing interest in accents and their origins and appreciate your reference to a resource.

[x]

You've got the answer by now. It's the Irish, German, and Italian accents of 19th century immigrants. I don't know how much other Black and White, English and French Southern dialects may have affected it.

But Carville doesn't have the N'awlins accent. It looks like his is more of a back country Cajun accent, without the distinctive "Brooklynese" elements of the city accent.

BTW, it's been called "yat" -- as in "Where y'at?," supposedly a common local greeting. More here. Sample here.

[Ellesu]

THE TWELVE YATS OF CHRISTMAS
(Benny "Grunch" Antin) Anzel Anzel, BMI

1. On'da foist day'a Christmas mah
Mawmaw gave'to me a Crawfish'dey
Caught in Arabi

2. In'da Christmas Picayune I seen it
Dere'n Section E, Tujaque's Recipe

3. On'da thoid day' a Christmas we
Stopped at McKenzie for Three French Breads

4. On the fourth day I said OK let's get a
Christmas tree Before'ya Drive Me Nuts

5. On the fifth day of Christmas we
stopped at A&G for Frrried Onion Rrrings

6. On'da sixth day'a Christmas we
stopped at K&B's for a Six Pack'a Dixie

7. Cemetery traffic got backed up to
Metairie at the Seventeenth Street Canal

8. On'da eighth day of Christmas me and
Rosalie Ate By'ya Mama's

9. On the ninth day of Christmas we drove
down Delery in'da Lower Ninth Ward

10. I used'ta be at Kaiser now I'm woikin
down'da street at'da Tenneco Chalmette Refinery

11. On the eleventh day at Vetran's
Highway try'ta cross the street with Eleven Schwegmann Bags

12. On the twelfth day of Christmas my
true love gave to me a Dozen Manuel's Tamales

[BurbankKarl]

Sheesh...it is the south...thats the cajun variation.

[53veerpass]

It's not about color, it's about cajun. I asked for directions there once. After the guy was through explaining the way to go, my wife asked me "Did you understand that?" and i started laughing..."not a word!"

[brytlea]

THanks for posting the article. I've always been fascinated by accents, and having lived all over the country have heard alot of them (and unfortunately or fortunately tend to pick them up rather easily). For the most part, everyone is pretty easy to understand (even those fast talking yankees!) however, even after living for 9 years in E. TX I still found a number of people from LA (altho not NO) SO difficult to understand. It is as if they don't move their lips much, and the run words together and don't enunciat ending consonants or something.
susie

[Les_Miserables]

The folks in Brooklyn speak like they are from New Orleans? Why is that? 8>)

[duckman]

Being from the Bronx, the rednecks down here in NC ask me the same question.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

They talk like they're from Brooklyn in part because the same ethnic groups that settled in Brooklyn and such places settled in New Orleans. Lots of Irish and Italians in part.

French died out in NO before WWII, but there's still a trace, just a trace of French in some of the pronunciation as well.

But it varies according to class, where you grew up at, which schools you went to, and ethnic background how you'll sound.

Although some New Orleanians may have come from Cajun backgrounds, New Orleanians are NOT, as a whole, Cajun. The Cajun French is a rural dialect of French, and isn't the dialect that was mostly spoken in NO...although both were somewhat creolized by their speakers.

New Orleans is an amalgram of French, Spanish, Africans, often with a first stop in Haiti or other french islands, Americans of a variety of backgrounds, and successive waves of immigrants who settled there: German, Italian, Irish, and laately Vietnamese. Central America is represented there a bit, too.

Upperclass New Orleanians who went to the right schools have an accent a little reminiscent of Natchez, but not as broad.

Working class whites are as likely to say to their kid coming in, "Where ya at, Heart? Stay off the bankette and wash the dishes in the zink. Hang these clothes up in da chiffarobe. When you're done, you can go getta cold drink. Here's a dolla and a silver dime, that ougtta do it. I'm gonna go make groceries, cause we're outta may-o-naise and I wanna make po-boys for dinna tonight. First, though, I'm going by your Ahhnt's house. We'll have swimps tomorra when I get some more erl to fry with."

Bankette is a side walk. Zink is a sink, and a chiffarobe is a wardrobe. A silver dime is a dime coin.

Make groceries is a left over from French, which means to go shopping. You go by someone's house when you go to their house.

It's linguistically an interesting mix.

[sinclair]

I once worked with a guy from Trinidad on a riverboat. He was the cook. I had been on the boat for about 3 weeks and hadn't been able to make heads or tails of anything he said the whole time. Then one morning at breakfast he said something and I shouted out "Damn I understood that!" Everybody at the table lol.

I worked on that boat for two and a half years and got to see every new guy on there go through the same experience. Three weeks of "Huh, what'd he say, huh, huh.", to a glimmer of recognition to actually conversing with him. It was a trip for sure.

[Salamander]

LOL!

One of the pleasurable perversities of the hillbilly mind is giving "interesting directions" to tourists.

"Well, first you go 'bout a quarter mile past the old oak tree that burned up from lightning strike last fall and make a right at the stone fence that a farmer hauled away to build a barn and then make a left when you see that big Angus bull that won 1st prize at the county fair. If you see a Hereford bull or a henhouse, you've gone too far and you gotta turn around."

Unless you've been here your whole life and know the area's history, none of it ever makes any sense.

[daybreakcoming]

Very well explained on the accents. You have helped make this thread an educational event. Whoever would have thought we would all be learning so much about New Orleans on all of these threads....their languages/accents, history, Ward 9, bridges, levee boards, local politicians ....to name a few. :o)
Thanks

[Inyokern]

The strangest accent I ever heard was in Eastern North Carolina. They sound almost Cockney

[processing please hold]

(With a slow southern drawl, and a smidgen of cajun thrown in for effect)

We don't talk funny...yankees and the rest of the world does. :-)

[poinq]

I'm from New Orleans there are three large groups with distinct accents.

Cajun: thats the one that sounds harsh and dirty. Generally from the small towns outside the city or lower working class neighborhoods.

Southern, very pretty southern accent from the city mostly white upper middle class. This is the country club and Krewe set. New comers never get it right. Nicer sounding than other southern accents, Scarlet O'Hara type.

Black intercity New Orleans: doesn't sound anything like northern urban accents. Its a very old version of slave and southern. Intercity New Orleans black tend to be very old families. Most of them have had families in New Orleans for 150 years.

[Recon Dad]

You might want to refer to the folks as "Coonasses". Believe me it is not considered a slur in southern Louisiana.

[pgkdan]

The Cajun accent does sound a lot like Brooklyn.

There's nothing Cajun about that accent. My Cajun grandfather had a much different accent and my Cajun great grandmother's accent was decidedly French, which was her first language. Cajuns are a distinct group and not everyone in Southern Louisiana with a French sounding last name is Cajun. Cajuns are descendents of the 538 French Families exiled from their homes in Acadia by the British. Acadia is now known as Nova Scotia and 'Cajun' is a bastardization of the term Acadian.

[Recon Dad]

A number of Italians I am familiar with in New Orleans have been and still are mobbed up. I used to do business with the Marcello family to name one.