Good Readin'

Happy Independence Day, folks! Smack someone with a british accent! Please be careful if you're driving anywhere, as it's berkeleying amateur night. It'd been a long time since I'd read the declaration. Here she is. It's a quick read:

http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/doi/text.html

Thanks Poopie. We all should send a copy to our idiots in Washington...and make sure they read it.

Here's a link to NPR's reading today. Click on "Listen now". Great listen.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92108861#92109485

I used to have a British accent...

:P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDA9NbPAK8o

Lesley wrote: I used to have a British accent... :P

Women with British accents make my toes curl.

Lesley whispering the Queens nasties would make your toes pop!

But she is a nice girl that will not reply to a remark like this ;)

Lesley wrote: I used to have a British accent... :P

But you got better! (spoken with a British accent - ala Monte Python)

All kidding aside accents are neat. Why is it that southern accents on women are awesome, while it makes the men sound stupid? Sorry guys, but I spent 5 years in NC and this is my "Yankee" perception.

Jack

Jack wrote: All kidding aside accents are neat. Why is it that southern accents on women are awesome, while it makes the men sound stupid? Sorry guys, but I spent 5 years in NC and this is my "Yankee" perception.

Social bias. It also depends on how deep and what type of southern accent you have. Quite a few women like Matthew McConaughey's accent. Also, Stephen Colbert grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. He purposefully lost his accent for that very reason. He's stated that Hollywood's short-cut to showing someone as stupid or ignorant is to potray them with a southern accent.

Why is it that southern accents on women are awesome, while it makes the men sound stupid?

It's cool. Through the ears of a southerner, you yankees generally either sound like:

A. Tony Soprano wannabees...even if you're not I-talian. B. You've got a mouth full of fried chicken. C. Woody Allen. D. Fran Drescher.

EDIT: I just noticed you're from Washington. I don't really consider Washing(tonians?) Yankees. And while I don't think I've ever met anyone from Washington, I've met a few Northern Californians who seemed really cool.

Another EDIT: IMO, there are 3 different dialects that get lumped into "Southern:"

1. Southern = South Georgia/South Carolina. Pronounced "Sulthuhn." Think: Foghorn Leghorn.
2. Appalachian = West Virginia/Kentucky. 'Bushel' is pronounced "Booshel." 'Mark' is pronounced "Mork."
3. Everybody Else = North Georgia/North Carolina/Tennessee/Alabama. Think pre-yankee NASCAR.

uhh, you left out a few states miss, lousyana, arkansas and texas spring to mind.

also how do southern GA and south carolina have the same dialect while northern GA and north carolina have another same dialect?

Definitely different southern accents, and only the woefully uninformed would even attempt to lump them together. I grew up in Louisiana, but I can't there's a particular Tennessee dialect that I can't understand a word of.

Strizzo wrote: uhh, you left out a few states miss, lousyana, arkansas and texas spring to mind. also how do southern GA and south carolina have the same dialect while northern GA and north carolina have another same dialect?

Meh. All those other states are just sort of "over there near the square states." And I don't know why there's the southern georgia/north georgia split, but this dude recognizes it as the difference between "southern" and "south-midland:"

poopshovel wrote:

Strizzo wrote: uhh, you left out a few states miss, lousyana, arkansas and texas spring to mind. also how do southern GA and south carolina have the same dialect while northern GA and north carolina have another same dialect?

Meh. All those other states are just sort of "over there near the square states." And I don't know why there's the southern georgia/north georgia split, but this dude recognizes it as the difference between "southern" and "south-midland:"

then why is south GA associated with south carolina and north GA associated with north carolina, doesn't make sense to me

Strizzo wrote:

poopshovel wrote:

Strizzo wrote: uhh, you left out a few states miss, lousyana, arkansas and texas spring to mind. also how do southern GA and south carolina have the same dialect while northern GA and north carolina have another same dialect?

Meh. All those other states are just sort of "over there near the square states." And I don't know why there's the southern georgia/north georgia split, but this dude recognizes it as the difference between "southern" and "south-midland:"

then why is south GA associated with south carolina and north GA associated with north carolina, doesn't make sense to me

Again: Couldn't tell ya. I'm not a linguist. Just making an oberservation ferchrissake. Savannah and Augusta are very close to the SC border, and definitely have the "plantation" drawl...though I'm guessing folks from Augusta don't consider themselves being from 'south georgia.' In my head, south georgia sort of refers to anything south of Atl. Maybe eastern North Carolinians have a South Carolina drawl. How the berkeley should I know?

Our shop is about 15 minutes from Copper Hill TN (eastern TN,) and 30 minutes from Murphy NC (western NC,) and people up here don't sound like people "down there."

You want a crazy language, try Gullah. It's spoken by some of the old timers on the barrier islands around here. It's a mix of English, Spanish, French and some stuff I just can't identify. It's spoken very fast and the verbs/nouns and other parts of sentence structure get flipped around a lot compared to English.

I can pull a half-way decent NON-cockneyed brit accent, thank you britcoms, on PBS.

I'm not sure how long it took for me to shed my southern accent when I moved up to New York.

You want to have real fun, try to differentate between Jamaican, Trinidad and Barbados. Very similar, but do NOT like to be misidentified. And then there is Jamaican Patois- totally indecipherable to non-islanders.

North GA vs South GA:

Some parts of the northern mountains in GA were never part of the "South", notably Union County (which sided with the Union during the Civil war). Could have something to do with it.

There IS a difference.