This guy looks like he'll be talking with a Southron drawl any day now.
Posted on 09/10/2005 12:46:45 PM PDT by Mike Bates
If you've been listening to coverage of Katrina's devastation on the radio, you've no doubt heard the distinctive New Orleans accents of victims, officials, and rescue workers alike. Some of them speak with a familiar, Southern drawl; others sound almost like they're from Brooklyn. Why do people in New Orleans talk that way?
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
No it doesn't. The New Orleans accent is NOT a Cajun accent. The two are completely different.
"I was stuck in a dentist chair last week and had to endure Oprah and her visit to the hurricane areas."
'Time to find a new dentist.'
LOL. I looked around for the tv remote when the hygienist was out of the room but I couldn't find it. The hygienist seemed to be semi-watching the program so I thought it would be rude to ask for a channel change.
Coincidentally, a lifetime ago in college a visiting prof from NC filled in for a lecture. After a while, I kept thinking how very English he sounded. It was so distracting that I paid no attention to what he was saying.
Then again, there was nothing new there.
Isn't the proper verb there "do"? Just wonderin'.
Long family histories in some of those black families. They were often literate and doing well when my momma's daddy's people couldn't write their names.
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It's Bush's fault.
Oh, like much of Chicago.
My family is from small town south Louisiana. Although not as common as it was twenty years ago, judges and local lawyers used to converse in french to the exclusion of the outside attorneys.
I'm always changing CNN to Fox. I consider it a duty:')
It's Bush's fault.
If I had thought about it another minute, I probably would have arrived at that conclusion. With some help from Geraldo, etc.
I think the Brooklynese accent has to do with roots in the Irish Channel neighborhood. At least that is what I have learned from James Lee Burke's novels.
Her-ral-do Ree-veta?
This guy looks like he'll be talking with a Southron drawl any day now.
So where does that unique accent by the ones (including my DH) that are from the Texas/LA border come from?
The truth is that there are MANY Southern accents. People who are not from this region tend to think that there is only the drawl, but that is not the case at all. I am from Mobile, and our accent is very different from the north Alabama accent, which tends to be a bit nasal.
My father was from New Orleans, and all of my cousins have the regional accent. My wife says that I pick it up when I am around them.
The same ethnic groups who settled in the Northeast in the 1800's also settled in the coastal cities of the South. (Conventional history tends to ignore the fact that there was 19th century European immigration to all parts of the US, although most people went through the Atlantic ports.)
The Brooklyn-on-the-Bayou accent comes from the fact that many Irish, Italians, and Germans came to New Orleans during the 1840's and 50's, adding to the French, Spanish, and Anglo populations already present.
Older Mobilians often have an accent similar to that of New Orleans, eg, foist, for first, choich, for church, etc.
New Orleans also has a vocabulary all its own. A "banquette" is a sidewalk, the "neutral ground" is the median. One "goes by" "ya mama n 'em's ', perhaps on the way to "make groceries." New Orleanian pronunciations of French words are also unique, eg, "Chottis" for Chartres St.
I am happy to report that all of my "dawlin" cousins got out of the area before the storm. All are alive and well, although they have lost so much.
One positive outcome of the New Orleans diaspora is that there's gonna be some mighty fine cookin' all over the USA!
Ditto some Australian accents. I once met a man from Australia, couldn't understand 90% of what he said--and I was told he was speaking English. Of course he probably couldn't understand me either.
Loved the riverboat story. In 1957 I was involved in shipping anhydrous ammonia by barge from south Arkansas to Florida. We had one barge that carried about 850 tons of ammonia, shoved by a little tiny tug with two 165 hp GMC diesels. There was a 4 man crew. I think they all came from New Orleans. I swear they lived on boiled eggs and turnip greens. Part of my job was to go down in the bunkroom, often about 4 am, to wake up the crew. The barge had "BOW" painted on one end and "STERN" on the other apparently identical end, and by gosh, they were going to shove it "BOW" first, which involved cutting it loose from the dock and turning it in the river while free floating, loaded with ammonia, and pipes sticking up all over the deck scraping the tree limbs. Why we never had a major environmental disaster I never knew.
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