Tuesday, November 20, 2007

All about the accent?   [David Freddoso]

A reader (a southerner) writes on the failure of Republican southerners to do well in New Hampshire:

I remember in particular Senator Phil Gramm, who's Texican drawl in 1996 was genuine, but must certainly have sounded off-key, even like a "put-on" in New Hampshire. First Affinity with Gramm, among New Englanders, was not possible. 

It takes conscious effort for some New Englanders to overcome the First Impression that Southern Accent doesn't equal perhaps deliberate ignorance...Yes, it's prejudice, but try and get a New Englander, a genuine Yankee, to admit a shortcoming like this.  It's almost always rationalized as something else, and thinly... 
 
With Dr. Gramm, this Texas way of talking was genuine. That's the way my family talks. When I moved from Texas to North Carolina in 1988, far East North Carolina, the difference between such widely spaced regional flavors of Southern accents (the way Mid-Atlantic people say "Washin'ton Poost," and how in Texas we said "Post" and occassionally had to "chaynge a laat bub") made the almost Elizabethan Southern of colonial South Carolina sounde like a "put on" to me...And that prejudice admittedly swings both ways. The sharp, true New England accent falls harshly in the South whether pronounced or charming. So does the True Chicagoan, "It's a fayct," and it comes out of Mrs. Clinton in her more candid moments in debate.
 
All this makes me suspicious of Gov. Huckabee, who, as another "Man from Hope," has tried to make his accent plain and "accentless."
 
Like Bill Clinton, Senator Fred Thomson's accent is not as pronounced as Carter's nor Phil Gramm's, but it's still off key up yonder. Not confident sage, but patronizing. That's just the way it is.
 
With a field like this, Senator Thompson has to win outright and strong in Conservative and early Red States that don't share New England's unconscious prejudice against Southern people.

Setting aside the political aspect, I only wish I had a cool accent like any of the ones you describe. At the prompting of a friend, I recently took an online accent test and got this result:

You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."

Ugh, now that is humiliating. And yes, I do say "pop," but I have never said "fayct" in my entire life.

11/20 06:32 AMShare