35 thoughts on “Southern Accents”

  1. bill plays nice with joe and  whomps on the whippersnapper young’uns

    Ageism is the last acceptable prejudice in this country, but Joe Biden is the right man for this moment precisely because he IS old.

  2. cnn:

    Arizona Republicans begin reviewing 2020 ballots in effort to undermine results
    […]
    Earlier in the week, Maricopa County handed nearly 2.1 million ballots and nearly 400 tabulation machines over to the state Senate after Republican lawmakers subpoenaed the materials and a judge ruled county officials had to comply. In a last-ditch effort to block the controversial audit, the Arizona Democratic Party and the lone Democrat serving on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which oversees elections, sued to halt the count Thursday evening. A judge agreed to briefly pause the audit after a Friday hearing, but Democrats declined to provide the required $1 million bond and so the audit continued.
    […]
    The review is being overseen by a company whose chief executive supported Trump and shared election conspiracies in since deleted tweets, and it will be live broadcast by the right-wing One American News Network. The audit’s GOP organizers have been cagey about who will be doing the ballot counting and whether the teams will be bipartisan. They also have ignored requests from election integrity groups to allow nonpartisan election administration experts to observe the process. And journalists who want to report on the endeavor are only allowed to do so if they agree to participate in the process as election observers and will be barred from taking notes or video.

    “This is not like any audit I’ve ever seen,” said Mark Lindeman, the acting co-director of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization focused on technology and election administration. “If it intends to be perceived as fair-minded and credible, they’ve made some bad mistakes.”

    […]
    Outside election experts have expressed alarm over Cyber Ninjas’ lack of experience in the elections space, the seemingly haphazard security plans to secure the ballots and machines, the dearth of information about the audit procedures and the limited access for nonpartisan election observers.
    [continues]

  3. No airplanes—no submarines.
    No climbing on rocks or mountains, no spelunking. Any excitements missed can be replaced  by a bowl and a nice cup of coffee at dawn.
    Rules for the hell of it.

  5. https://reasonstobecheerful.world/glottophobia-accent-discrimination-france/

    “…condemning “the verbal violence and gratuitous humiliation.” Lawmaker Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade said the comments showed a “deep contempt for the country, its territories and its diversity.”

    It may be human nature to ridicule anything that smacks of otherness, but we have evolved. Laws will have take care of those who have not evolved or who know better but are willfully hateful.

    Last January, a lot of folks with Georgia accents saved our collective bacon from others with Southern accents. Some folks, many with Northern accents, stormed the Capitol the next day. An accent doesn’t determine the content of someone’s character.

    I love hearing diverse accents and languages. Daily, I hear Spanish, French, Hindi, and, Tagalog. Skype calls in English are held with folks from Quebec and Scotland. Most of my neighbors are from India. I have a slight Texas drawl, moreso at night when I’m tired. When I go back to KC, my relatives and I sound more dissimilar at the beginning of the week than week I leave. It actually seems kind of boring to hear just one accent, just as it would seem boring to have just one worldview or one idea.

  6. Shooting in Elizabeth City……did nine months there once upon a time.   Home of famous pool shooter Wimpy Lassiter.

  7. When I lived in a Navy dormitory with dozens of other pogues from all over, there were these two guys, one from Georgia the other from Jersey…..They hated each other. They’d call each other names. At night—Grit! Yankee Shit!–from their racks until they fell asleep.  As they were both,  you might say, pretty loathsome creatures they wound up being best friends and constant companions.

  8. I did the same as Colbert accent-wise and managed to eradicate all traces in my daughter.  No easy task in panhandle Florida or in SC.
    The neighbor kids in Fla. pronounced “all right” as “ol’ rat“.

  9. sturge, wonder which dialect is harder to lose, southern or boston southie? 

    i for one am still after many many decades trying to drop the oklahoma “r” from the word “wash” to say nothing of the ever present “y’all”  absorbed from years in FL, TX & GA.   mine now is a polyglot  western/southern with some higher ed affectation accent thrown in, but that old okie twang is the hardest to lose especially when tired or tipsy.

  10. y’all familiar with the old NBC handbook?  i was introduced to this in younger years by a former d.j. beau of mine that went on to greater heights… handbook sure worked out better for him than me.

    if not, this is an excerpt from the dialectblog about it:

    While browsing in a book shop recently, I found a dusty manual titled NBC Handbook of Pronunciation. From the 1940’s through the early 1960’s, NBC published this dictionary of sorts establishing a “standard pronunciation” for newscasters.

    It is clear from the book’s introduction what kind of accent the network preferred:

    …when a broadcaster speaks over a powerful station or nation-wide hookup, he will be most readily understood by the majority of his listeners if he uses the pronunciation called by phoneticians “General American.” That is the standard presented in this book.

    But is this the same type of General American English that educated Americans speak today? Or has the accent evolved?
    [continues]

  13. My dad says “warsh the deeshes,” but nobody else in the family does.  I had a friend in elementary school who said “purt” instead of put.  I liked the way it sounded, so I started saying it that way, too, until a teacher scolded me.  Maybe my dad picked it up from a school friend. 

    Accents and idiolects are interesting. The only important thing is hate speech, which sometimes comes in the form of laws.

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/24/politics/alabama-kay-ivey-signs-trans-sports-bill/index.html

    “By signing this legislation, Gov. Ivey is forcefully excluding transgender children. Let’s be clear here: Transgender children are children.”

  14. Pye-att Dee…….As I gart older and came back to home I said screw it and just talked southren again, not HEAVY southren,  and now it’s a bunch of other mixed in with Brooklyn, Jersey, Gullah, Western, Chicano, Canadian, etc……….

  15. To lose an accent…….first you have to WANT to lose it.      LOL

    Didnt hurt that in college I took 2 semesters of French, one of German, one latin and 2 yrs Spanish in high school along with 6 semesters in college…..language is fun

  16. I too love accents.  I was an English major…  but at one time..  I wanted to study foreign languages in college.  And as an English major…  I love the fluidity of language.  I love reading books from everywhere.  And as I immerse myself in a good book…  I can hear the lilts.  I can smell the land or the city…  I can see how they dress…  I can taste the food.
     
    Americans hating on each other over skin color, ethnicity, religion, or accent….  is such a waste.

  17. My MIL, speaking her best Clevelandian calls me a hillbilly because of my decidedly still southern accent, which pales in comparison to my sister’s. Prolly because of an English major in college, 2 years of French and a 37 year absence from the Deep South – but no intent to lose the drawl. 

  18. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/23/politics/arizona-senate-republicans-election-audit/index.html

    The mothaz are still trying to overturn the election? It’s too late. Wha??

    “The partisan audit, which could stretch for roughly two months, comes after county election officials conducted two audits and found no evidence of widespread voter fraud and other issues. The Arizona Secretary of State has already certified the election results, showing President Joe Biden narrowly won the state. But the latest review highlights how many Republicans continue to cling to former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020 — falsehoods that continue to roil the GOP.“

    “The review is being overseen by a company whose chief executive supported Trump and shared election conspiracies in since deleted tweets, and it will be live broadcast by the right-wing One American News Network. The audit’s GOP organizers have been cagey about who will be doing the ballot counting and whether the teams will be bipartisan. They also have ignored requests from election integrity groups to allow nonpartisan election administration experts to observe the process.”

    As KO said, 2020 was just a rehearsal.

  19. on those trans bans bills, does this mean in those states girls no longer can play on boys teams? 

    over the years there’ve been a number of females participating in male football teams, even on college and pro level as well as k-12. 

    in fact, what’s going to happen in FL if/when the new bill takes effect and cancels this fairly common situation seen through out most of the country:

    According to the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA), girls can play on a boys team in a sport if the school does not sponsor a girls team in that sport.  [see 4/22/21 towncrier story]

  20.  will look over rest of field later, but so far i’m riding essential quality in the derby if for no other reason that he’s a silver beauty.  doesn’t hurt either that he has a perfect record and ranked #1 as of today.

    Picture of Essential Quality

  21. as for other winners, this time a silver screen beauty, i’m picking a trifecta at the oscars:

    best picture, director and actress – nomadland, chloe zhao and frances mcdormand

  22. Patd, I can’t see how the sports gender bills can only be applied to women’s sports without violating equal protection. Limiting female participation in male sports if a school doesn’t offer a women’s team in that sport (e.g. football) without allowing male participation in female sports if a school doesn’t offer a men’s team in that sport IMHO won’t pass constitutional muster. 

  24. For the most part as a Californian, discounting the aberrant Surfer and Valley speak,  is almost perfectly that ‘General American” ideal, mainly due to all sorts of ethnicities rubbing shoulders in a huge state.

    The only real twist for me is in certain words such as father and bother where early exposure to Scottish relatives produces a slightly longer “a” sound.

     

  25. I don’t have aSouthern accent, I speak an Ozark dialect. Or used to but with all the attempts to teach me “proper” grammar it is probably closer to a pidgin.  As it is close to standard English I have little trouble communicating. I notice it most when talking to my immigrant neighbors. They learned their English from a book and I use phrases and words that they don’t understand and I have to give them a standard English translation. 
    One time I told Mrs Jack how I tended to write. I would write in Ozark hillbilly then translate it into English. She was talking to a co-worker who move to this country as a child from Vietnam. Telling him how I wrote and he laughed and said he did the same thing.
    Jack

  26. Some people pick up on the local speech patterns better than others. One of my sisters can be somewhere a week and start sounding like a local, but not me. While my Ozark dialect has modified some give me 30 seconds with a bunch of locals and I’m right back, it just feels comfortable in the mouth.
    Jack

  27. POTUS Joe’s did it. He said that the week of 4/19, the vaccine would be within five miles of 90% of Americans.   I joined club Dolly today.  

  28. Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is a federal law that states: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

    “…subject to discrimination under…”

  29. “Americans hating on each other over skin color, ethnicity, religion, or accent….  is such a waste.”
    Renee, spot on! I’ll never get it? Florida is such a mix and I see so much of that shit. Michigan was simpler. :0)

  30. Wish Corey would check in.
     
    SNL will be hosted by Elon Musk in two weeks. Ummm…OK.

  33. @petersagal

    3h

     

     

    Imagine how incredibly obnoxious you have to be to invent *two* entire industries that people have dreamed of for a century — cool electric cars, private space flight — and people still think you’re a tool.

  34. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/business/musk-labor-board.html

     Not a great boss, it seems, but it’s a nice ride…as long as someone is driving. It’s as close to being in a spaceship as I’ll ever get.

    https://news.yahoo.com/2nd-victim-tesla-crash-texas-111108239.html

    https://www.expressnews.com/business/article/SpaceX-Boca-Chica-takeover-16125119.php

    “But not all of SpaceX’s South Texas neighbors are thrilled with a rocket factory and launch pad in their backyard.“

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