What She Wrote : Fun With Accents (II)

21 Oct, 2000

Fun With Accents (II)

The Colonies

In the US, I've mostly lived in the east, and am most familiar with the accents there. I was born in Kansas City, but moved from Kansas just after I turned 4. I lived in New Jersey until I was fifteen, then I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm now in Florida. So, I'm mostly picking on the accents I know.

I don't know Canada's accents well enough to do a whole article, so I added a limerick on the one I know best.

Australian accents are amazingly uniform over the country. They really have just three basic accents, the broad "outback" accent (which is overblown nicely in the Crocodile Dundee movies), a standard accent, and the very snooty upper-class English accent. My favourite of all the accents of English speakers is the standard Australian accent, and one of the funniest misunderstandings I know of was in the broad accent. Aus (Oz) may be last on my list, but its accent is music to my ears.

Bostonians mistreat the "R" That speech can be truly bizarre They drop it and then they add it again Pronouncing Bar-bra as Bah-brar	My mother was born and bred just outside of Boston. She also says "Alabamar" and the classic "Pahk the cah in the Havaahd yahd". Other New England accents are not as heavy as Boston's. (Oh.. and again and then do rhyme in US English!)
In New Jersey don't say Joisey City. You may think that you're terribly witty, But in most of the state It's an accent they hate. What they'll do to you won't be real pretty.	A true pet peeve. Some people from the Newark/ Jersey City areas do talk that way, as do some from NYC. Most of the state says "Jersey", with the R over-pronounced. The "Joisey" bit was old before I was born!
The southerners' word is y'all They most often speak at a crawl. I can write twenty tales And imbibe thirty ales While they say just one word in that draaaaaaawl.	To someone brought up in NY area, Southern speech seems terribly slow and drawn out. I used to find it frustrating to talk to southerners, but I've got slower myself over the years.
Charlotte's accent could be a real strain. I really don't mean to complain. I said many a time Pin, pan, pen do not rhyme, But they rhymed them and drove me insane.	Most of the Charlotteans couldn't hear the difference between pin and pen, even in my accent. A few could hear a difference with pan. In high school, no one ever borrowed a pen or pin, always an ink-pen or a safety pin.
In Florida's quite a cross section of accents -- we have a selection: Cubans, Haitians, Chinese, And diverse retirees. It's a great place to start a collection	Florida has such a mixture now that it's difficult to find a "Florida accent" anymore. True Florida natives are more and more rare. But it is a wonderful place to hear accents from all over the world.
In Texas they have quite a twang, And also their own brand of slang. Though their talk may be sweet, That darn weather's no treat; I'd just as soon live in Penang	Penang, for those who are wondering, is in Malaysia. Hot and damp. But fabulous food!
In Vancouver they sound way too high. Don't ask me, I can't tell you why. The attitude's mellow, Like an old hippie fellow Whose mind is still lost in the sky.	I like the Vancouver accent, but it has always sounded just a bit stoned to me. I suspect they may have picked up too much from Northern California. I'm not overly familiar with most Canadian accents, that one is the only one I know well, eh?
On a tour was an Australian guy; When asked when he'd come there and why, He replied -- "Well, I'll say That I came here today." What they heard was: "I coim here ta die"	This one comes from a tale a friend told me. The bloke on the tour did say "I came here today" in a very broad Aus accent. Luckily there were some other Aussies with a milder accent to translate for the shocked people who had heard, "I came here to die".