Accent reduction classes, preferable private tutoring.
Ask Tony Danza, he stated he had the classes, although he still sounds like most of the people I know, yo, you-know-what-I-mean :)
Posted on 07/14/2005 6:10:21 AM PDT by robowombat
Bias against Southerners misses the mark By RICHARD COX Published July 11, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Does prejudice exist in Pasco County, an area with a very diverse population and seemingly very progressive?
I am certain that African-Americans, Hispanics and people from other countries, the poor and homeless, as well as members of certain religious faiths, experience treatment different from the mainstream populace. However, I am a member of a minority who has experienced attitudes and reactions from many individuals who assume that I am intellectually and socially challenged.
A very large percentage of the population of New Port Richey in particular is from the Northeast. I personally like the outspokenness, mince-no-words attitude, the ability to criticize as well as accept criticism without being offended, that seems to represent the culture in which Northerners grew up.
My family members seem to have the disadvantage of being born and living most of our lives in the South, in our case, Tennessee. I grew up in Knoxville, a city that many people seem to associate only with the fanatical behavior of our college football fans, and my wife is from a small city near Chattanooga.
There still seems to be a stereotype that some people associate with Tennesseans. When those individuals heard the distinct accent of my wife, my stepdaughter, and myself, it seemed to conjure up that redneck image one might associate with the humor of Jeff Foxworthy and other Southern comedians. That image is of a culture of ignorant hillbillies (certainly due to inbreeding!), barefoot, living in a shack with no indoor plumbing (but certainly an outhouse in back), having a dog living under the front porch, and owning an overgrown lawn populated with broken-down, dilapidated automobiles. And, yes, we all chew tobacco and sit on the front porch swing playing the banjo. Everyone also flies a Confederate flag and reminisces about the War Between the States.
I first noticed this attitude when my stepdaughter, an honor student, came home from middle school several days in tears because several other students harassed her daily, calling her an ignorant redneck and hillbilly among other derogatory terms. My wife and I have experienced the sudden change in facial expressions from many when they hear our accent. They seem to associate our accent with ignorance, and speak in simpler terms so that we can understand what they are saying. Telephone conversations often produce the same reaction.
I beg to differ. Tennessee is the home of several major universities, four major metropolitan areas with all the drug and gang problems associated with other large cities, and the most visited national park in the United States. Oak Ridge, in the Knoxville area, probably has as high a percentage of residents with doctorate degrees as any city in the United States. Tennessee has a musical heritage equal to none, and it is not exclusively country or bluegrass genres. Many nationally prominent politicians are from my home state, including three former presidents.
Tennessee has produced many famous musicians, actors, scientists and other intellectual and talented natives.
Well, to set the story straight, rural areas of most states have their own populace and dwellings that approach this stereotype.
My wife and I grew up in your average suburban neighborhoods, we both graduated from major universities and had successful professional careers, and, to risk seeming boastful, are probably as intelligent and knowledgeable, if not more so, than the average American. Believe it or not, East Tennessee, the section of the state we are from, fervently supported the Union during the Civil War.
I have noticed in the Pasco Times notices of meetings for various groups from areas of the Northeast and from other countries. Perhaps Southerners in our area should form a similar group. With apologies to an African-American group with a similar title, we could call our group the NAASF, the National Association for the Advancement of Southern Folks, Pasco County Branch. I hope there are enough local Southern residents available to attract to our organization.
--Richard Cox, a retired middle school science teacher and department head, lives in New Port Richey
It's not only in the South. In major market radio you are told, lose the heavy accent or lose the job. Regional sport-casters, when it comes to accents are a whole different ball game.
The radio & even TV sports related CEO's overlook the accents since it draws in the local listeners, thus they will hear the local commercials, and that's what sells in a sports 'local' & also 'rural' sports markets, and to a degree 'very local' talk show markets in mostly rural listening zones.
How does one lose and accent?
I decided after a year and a half in Northern Virginia that I would never live north of the Mason-Dixon line. Ever. I might live in Korea, or Nepal, or in some other frozen wasteland, but I'll kick my own self in the nuts sooner than set roots in some godforsaken damnYankee territory again. At least I don't have to listen to the Koreans or Nepalese bitching about how they miss their delis or hoagies or pizzas or some other damn thing they do better up north.
And every time I see someone here posting about how Southerners can't drive in snow, I laugh, because that's 100% horse manure.
See, if you live in the South and you're from anywhere but Florida, you'll see and drive in snow. And the worst kind of snow, slush and patch ice. And they don't salt the roads all over the place in the south, so you're gonna deal with it until the sun's melted it all.
And if you're from Florida--as I am--you've hydroplaned every summer all your life, and hydroplaning is just like driving in snow. If you think otherwise, try driving fast in the rain. Not only can native Floridians do that easily, at the same time, they can avoid old damnYankees who are driving slow in the fast lane with their hazard lights on and bitching to their wives about how "it nevah rained like dis in Noo Yawk!"
When I lived in Northern Virginia, the 'blizzard of the century' hit. I could tell who was from parts north by looking at the driving, not the license plate. More wheel-spinning and backside sliding than Barney Frank. I went by laughing, knowing that the chances of a damnYankee stopping for me were almost as small as the chances they'd go back north again after their "Southern" sojourn. More damnYankee bureaucrats in DC and Northern Virginia than there are rats in the sewers. But to say that might be a tad redundant.
Near Tampa.
I used to live there. It's a paved over replica of North Jersey, with almost as many Noo Yawk expatriates as Miami Beach.
Do you really want someone who sounds like a Gomer Pile or a hardcore redneck giving you the daily national, international news & business reports?
I would rather focus on the news on not very distracting accents of network anchormen.
Outstanding post! ROTFLMAO over this line:
"More wheel-spinning and backside sliding than Barney Frank."
You are baaaad!
Interesting about that comparison between the South and Confucianism.
Dedication to family and country.
A love of order, hard work, and fairness.
A preference for moral straightness--with the understanding that not everyone falls there all the time.
Sounds like a lot of the folks I hang out with in parts East.
Accent reduction classes, preferable private tutoring.
Ask Tony Danza, he stated he had the classes, although he still sounds like most of the people I know, yo, you-know-what-I-mean :)
Thank you. You have quite an extensive list of church references yourself. Glad to call you a brother in Christ as well.
I wouldn't mind it, provided your hypothetical anchorman had good grammar and pronounced things correctly, and neither one of those requirements has anything to do with a person's accent.
Y'know...maybe someone like FoxNews anchorman (Shepard Smith--a Mississippian and another counterexample to your earlier statement).
"If southerners are so nice and friendly, why are there so many southern posts on this thread bashing northerners for no other reason than we talk funny?"
It's not because you talk funny. It's experience with Northerners who come south intent on making the South into the North, mostly. If you can't like where you are for what it is, why would you move there? Far too often, damnYankees get where they wanna go then try to turn it into where they came from.
And as for the rest of your comments, who assesses the city crime and the educational institutions? The damnYankee bureaucrats. If the South's educational institutions' have a bad reputation, and reputation is part of those numbers--it is, btw--then the bias simply perpetuates itself. And as to city crime, such comparison is almost always about offenses known to the police. If Kitty Genovese didn't teach you that nobody reports a thing to NYC's cops, I'm wasting my time posting to you.
That's too bad, I guess. So when did NYers decide that they didn't want any more Mel Allens or Red Barbers? Or is this just a personal preference of yours?
Maybe you would not mind but the rest of the country would. Since when do rednecks have proper grammar or pronounce anything correctly? They can barely speak English.
You'd be surprised, pal. I know guys with Ph.Ds who sound like they just fell off a turnip truck.
Now, I fully concede that there are plenty Southerners who don't speak the Queen's English, but not all of them are rednecks (as you seem to believe). Some of them are Choctaw Indians, Vietnamese immigrants and African-Americans.
So, indulge me for a moment and tell me, if you were king of the world would these folks be prohibited from being anchormen just b/c you don't like Southern accents?
The Kitty Genovese case took place nearly fourty years ago at a time when most southern states still required black people to ride in the back of the bus and drink from seperate water fountains. Obviously, a lot can change in 40 years, including the crime rates in various cities and the way people respond to crime. Based upon the most recent FBI statistics, you have a much greater chance of becoming the victim of a violent crime in Dallas/Fort Worth, Mobile, New Orleans, Jacksonville, Houston, Memphis, Miami, Atlanta, Norfolk, Richmond, Birmingham, Jackson, Phoenix, Charlotte, and just about any other city in the "friendly" south, than you do in "mean" cities like New York and Boston.
That's ridiculous! We are very proud of how humble we are.
Right, I'm sure it's as different now in the South as it is in the North. After all, in the North they marched in federal troops to ensure that New Yorkers would call the police if dying women screamed. In the North, they passed laws to ensure that the police would be called if women were murdered in broad daylight. And I recall the National Association for the Advancement of Dying Women and federal judges making sure that every move by state governments that might remotely be fair to the living was shut down, to make sure that dying women had police protection. And gosh, I remember all the schoolbreak specials and societal pressure exerted on NYC to ensure that New Yorkers all know how shameful it is not to call the police for dying women, and how illegal it is not to call the police for dying women, and how evil New York is to not call the police for dying women.
Yes, things sure ought to be different in NYC by now, probably every bit as different as they are in the South.
"We are very proud of how humble we are."
ROFLMAO. Good one.
If I got a question that stupid, when I lived in NYC. I would reply, "He]] yes! Why would you want to have a smelly thing like that inside the house."
And while Southerners do indeed come off as extremely friendly, in my experience, the friendliness is often cosmetic. For example, I can recall in the not so distant past attending a mixed-race business meeting in Columbia, South Carolina. The local boys were real nice to the me and the black guy, almost to the point of making us feel uncomfortable. But after the black guy left to catch a flight back to New York, one of the good 'ol boys, who must of forgot that I was a Yankee, said right in front of me and five of his southern colleagues, "I really like Thomas. He's not a bad for a n....r." As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he knew he had made a mistake, but rather than keeping his mouth shut, he and his buddies started in with that smooth talking southern crap, basically telling me that "its no big deal," "everyone uses the N word down here, even they do," and in Byrd like fashion, "it ain't a racist thing or anything 'cause everyone knows there are white n.....s and colored n.....s"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.