Southern,but outside Dixie?

[Go Vols]

Last edited Thu Sep 19, 2013, 03:41 PM - Edit history (1)

Can/do you turn on the "southern/hillbilly" drawl when you need it?

It worked well for me from Mo to Cal.I could not understand most people in Mass,nor could they understand me.

But if you assume the stereotypical ignorant,low intel,dumb ass image you get much better treatment by accepting the submissive role for a few minutes of shit and roll on.

Edit:I posted this because I got a ticket yesterday because it doesn't work well while in the South.

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[msongs]

1. I can turn my texas accent on and off when interested lol nt

[newfie11]

2. Me too

Even after all these years of being out of state

[1000words]

3. Tennesee sucks ...

at football.

Go Ducks!

[Boom Sound 416]

11. +1

Go gators

[NutmegYankee]

4. I've lost most of mine.

Too many wild and exciting accents in New England have drowned it out. It's pretty bad now. I haven't lost Ya'll, so I can say "Ya'll heading to yah cah?" with a straight face.

[Sgent]

5. I'm omni accented...

Grew up in the south with my maternal grandparents families' being deeply southern and English, and my father had NY Jewish accent.

I manage to blend in after a week or two wherever I'm at -- but then I tend to pick up the accent until I leave, so that when traveling from the north to the south I sound like I have a Chicago accent. New Yorkers think I'm southern for two-three weeks, and I can even pull off a British accent after a month or two.

The reality is that the accents are quickly fading away. People I knew in my youth were completely incomprehensible to my father for years after he moved here -- these people are all assimilated now (or their children are). That's from north to south and east to west -- but its is broader than that. Watch and episode of Doctor Who, then watch an old BBC show from the 60's -- the latter is much harder to understand to most american ears whereas the current show has an accent but is easily understood.

One thing I will defend though -- ya'll is a part of the southern accent which needs to be adopted everywhere. It plugs a significant hole in the English language.

[Tanuki]

6. I am bidialectal (standard and Appalachian)

I grew up in West Virginia and Tennessee but later lived for many years in Chicago and Boston, and now back in Tennessee. I shift unconsciously depending on the context and company. When I lived in Boston, I attended a conference in Baltimore and shared a cab from the airport with two colleagues. As I chatted with the driver, I noticed that my colleagues were chuckling about me, and I asked them about it afterward. They said they were laughing because I immediately started "talking Southern", which I did not realize I was doing. I never, ever "assume the stereotypical ignorant,low intel,dumb ass image," as you put it, but prefer to challenge people's assumptions.

[a la izquierda]

9. This may explain me.

I've always been able to shift accents around from places I've lived

[LuvNewcastle]

12. That's funny to me for a different reason.

Most southerners don't think of Baltimore as a southern city. People from Baltimore don't sound southern at all to me.

[Tanuki]

14. I totally agree! We lived in Baltimore for a couple of years

growing up, when my dad was in the Army, and I never thought of it as southern either in speech or custom. I don't really think of W.Va. as southern either, even though almost all of it is below the Mason-Dixon line. After all, we were a Union state in the Civil War! My Boston friends thought that people in Baltimore sounded "really southern" and they thought that the cab driver was funny when he mentioned the Orioles. They thought he sounded as if he was saying the "Oils".

[tularetom]

7. When I moved to CA at age 10 I sounded like Gomer Pyle

I don't think I could talk like that now even if I tried.

[a la izquierda]

8. I picked up an okie accent.

I worked extremely hard to lose my New Jersey accent and quickly developed a bit of a twang. I now live in WEst Virginia, so who knows what will happen

[ananda]

10. Well, I do tend to turn on the Texan sometimes.

It depends on the context and the people I'm talking to.

[Boom Sound 416]

13. The ole saying

You can take the boy of Dixie
But he'll still drive like a New Yorker