Why do some Nola folks talk like Brooklyners?

[Taverner]

Specifically that accent with the flat a's where they sound like Emeril LeGrasse (who is Nola folk)

Where does that come from?

[MrsBrady]

1. thank you -- i've wondered that too

we used to have a steakhouse advertise on the radio here. for years i thought the woman/owner was from NY until she mentioned one day she was from LA

[Schema Thing]

2. I was sat in a diner my first visit to NOLA...

next to a couple of gentlemen who I just assumed where from the Boston area because of their speech pattern. Finally I asked one of them if they were visiting from the North East. Turns out they were both born and raised right in NO.

One of these guys happened to have an uncle who was a professor at Tulane who specialized in dialects; he said his uncle would sometimes stop people on the street in NOLA and bet them 5 bucks that he could tell them (within a 3 block radius or so) exactly what part of town they had grown up in, and he'd usually win the bet. Apparently N.O. has a rich variety of dialects that goes well beyond just the cajun influence.

[KitchenWitch]

3. I had heard that Emeril Lagasse was from Mass

And actually had been accepted at MIT

[Taverner]

4. Well his accent sounds pretty close to that which I heard on the streets

Granted, there were more dialects than I could shake a bengiet at...

[KitchenWitch]

5. I was incorrect about the MIT part

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emeril_Lagasse

He is from Mass.

[MrCoffee]

6. I don't know, but my mom sounds exactly like she's from da Bronx

even though she was born and raised in NOLA

[hedgehog]

7. I think all those accents are evolved from Irish immigrant populations.

[Taverner]

8. Were there a lot of Irish in New Orleans?

I thought it was French, Spanish, Gringo and African descent?

But then again, lots of Irish left during the potato famine. There are Irish communities in Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala and Puerto Rico - so why not NoLa?

[hedgehog]

9. The Irish Channel isn't a television station!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Channel,_New_Orleans

I can't find an article about him, but I think Clete Purcell, Dave Robicheaux's sidekick, is of Irish stock. Check out the NOLA novels of James Lee Burke.

[jobycom]

11. New Orleans was a major port city. They had everything. nt

[jobycom]

10. My mother, and her parents, sound like Boston, or thereabouts.German background.

My mother and both her parents were born and raised in New Orleans, and they fit the classic Boston type accent. My grandfather had a heavy German background, and may have been second generation. Third at worst. My grandmother had French and English.

Most of my mother's family has that accent. I always assumed it was the German and French backgrounds somehow. My father sounds more Cajun. I never met his parents, so I don't know how they sound, but my father's grandfather traveled a lot. The family had New England roots somewhere, and my great, great grandfather was a riverboat captain, apparently with more than one family up and down the Mississippi. So if anyone had a less NOLA accent, it should have been him, but Dad sounds pretty Cajun. Not the Justin Wilson type, but it's there.

It's funny. I grew up in South Mississippi, and no could ever place my accent. :)

[SacredCow]

12. That's the classic N'awlins accent...

it' not exactly Brooklyn, but there are similarities.

the movie "The Big Easy" with Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin, where Quaid and the other New Orleanians are speaking like they're from Breaux Bridge, is patently WRONG.

And No- Emeril is most assuredly NOT NOLA folk. He's a transplant.

[Reverend_Smitty]

13. I had a prof in college who was from New Orleans...

but had a very thick "New York" accent...at least it sounded like it to my ears. I always thought it was kind of odd, but then again I don't know too many people from down there