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 ...
Evidentally they do it to give people who obviously have nothing better to do with their lives some fodder for mindless topics to expound on.
Yes, I agree with you. Touchy, touchy! I lived in N.O. and also noticed the accent sounded similar to the ones in the Northeast. I was told that a lot of fishermen from that area migrated to Louisiana, thus the intermingling of southern, Cajun, and New England.
Think, James Carville. It is the strangest accent in America. I like it!
ROFL
And all this time I thought he talked that way because he was raised next to a nuclear waste site.
Anne Rice has written about this.
So9
Sorry, Post #22 was meant for airborne.
There was quite a bit of Italian immigration into New Orleans in the 19th century.
Yea there one NO accent thats very Edith Bunker ...I'm not sure that necessarily a Cajun accent... they seem to have quite a few different one's down there
There are actually 6 accents in the NO area.
No. But that's why he looks the way he does. No explanation for the way he thinks, tho.
So9
And yet here you are stopping by to expound. LOL @ U
He also said, " Give us what we effing deseve."
Cut my donation right in half.
And since 80 % of New Orleans is black, one might conclude that it is, in fact, racist.
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Actually, when it comes to blacks, they speak many different accents ranging from the 19th century southern black-speak, still in heavy presence in most inner-city areas, to highly polished, proper English, both in dialect and content.
So saying what the article did, is not really racist because there is no SPECIFIC WAY THAT BLACKS TALK. They are as diverse as whites, and far more diverse than Hispanics.
I saw that too...FOX is now three-for-three in that department; obviously no delay in use with these little interviews.
The Brooklyn accent which you do hear in New Orleans talk was explained to me. It had been a question that lingered in my head for a decade after meeting a guy who I thought surely was a New Yorker but to my surprise he told me he was from N.O.
It has to do with the spread of a desease in New Orleans long ago. Perhaps early 1900s...the desease slips my mind but I'm sure a lot of you feepers know what I'm talking about. If not small pox it was something similar. Well, it killed off many people including much of the leadership in the Catholic Church so the Catholic Church imported much of its leadership, including nuns, catholic school teachers...etc. So, the accent caught on.
And that's how the Brooklyn accent came to New Orleans.
Strange, I saw nothing about this in this article.
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