[Dick Vomer]

they're sober now...??

[CAWats]

(GASP!!!) RACIST!!! LOL

[airborne]

This question, if asked about blacks, would be considered racist.

And since 80 % of New Orleans is black, one might conclude that it is, in fact, racist.

Or, at the very least, ignorant.

[GarySpFc]

I just heard one man on the Fox News say, "We want $20,000 f#@king now." I will let you guess the race.

[Banjoguy]

What kind of a question is that? Why do folks in the Carolina's speak the way they do> Why does anyone speak with a particular accent?

http://www.cofc.edu/~jacobsl/AmericanTongues.htm

[lonevoice]

This is news?

[cardinal4]

A lot of Italians from New York migrated down there around the turn of the last century. Ironically settling in an area called the Irish Channel..

[Texasforever]

The Cajun accent does sound a lot like Brooklyn.

[Prince Caspian]

Because they can.

[Welsh Rabbit]

others sound almost like they're from Brooklyn.

They're from old neighborhoods that have the same ethnic (mainly Irish) makeup of many of the old neighborhoods of NYC and New Jersey and arrived in NO roughly at the same time. There's an explanation about this in the intro of the great novel A Confederacy of Dunces. I'd post it here, but I lent my copy out.

[llevrok]

Maybe the writer hears differently?

Like a north eastern urban white liberal with faux superiority showing.

[johnny7]

Everyone sounds like 'The Waterboy'... and as if they're in the 'Bourbon Bowl'.

[Wallace T.]

Most American port cities are something of linguistic "islands" because of the large volume of immigrants, both foreign and domestic, who settle there. In the case of New Orleans, there were large numbers of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Italy, three of the five main ethnic groups in pre-World War II New York City. (Jews from Eastern Europe and Protestant descendants of British and Dutch settlers were the other two.) With much the same people as settled in New York residing in New Orleans, it is understandable that there would be common elements in the local dialect.

[ShadowDancer]

Why do people in New Orleans talk that way?

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.

[fullchroma]

Think, James Carville. It is the strangest accent in America. I like it!

[Melpomene]

Thanks for the interesting article. I'm going to forward it to my father-in-law who has an old-school "Neu'awlians" accent. If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might enjoy the book "Frenchmen Desire Goodchildren" by John Chase.

[manwiththehands]

It's an identity thing, isn't it? I like the NO/Cajun accent ... I think it sounds cool ... except when it's coming from James %*#&ing Car-vile!!

[Servant of the 9]

There was a big Irish immigrant population.

Anne Rice has written about this.

So9

[Paleo Conservative]

There was quite a bit of Italian immigration into New Orleans in the 19th century.

[sgtyork]

There are actually 6 accents in the NO area.