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To: blam

Amazingly enough, it got mine right as “The South.” I’m central Virginia born and raised and have a *very* slight Southern accent. I can dial it up and down but it comes out more when I’m tired.

What’s odd is that my part of Virginia (the Lynchburg/Roanoke area, basically the Blue Ridge Mountains and foothills) has a very odd and distinctive accent where “ou” sounds don’t get pronounced as “ow,” but almost as “oo.” My mom, and to a lesser extent my dad, both born and raised in or near Lynchburg, pronounced “house” in a way that I almost can’t spell...not “hoose” but maybe “heyerse?” I can pick out somebody from that part of Virginia a mile away still, but weirdly, I didn’t get the accent. I prounounce “ou” as “ow” like most of the rest of the country.

Of course there is no “Southern accent”...there’s dozens of different ones. I’ve lived in Virginia and both Carolinas and it’s very easy to tell regional differences apart with a bit of practice. Hell, in South Carolina, go fifty miles inland from Charleston and the accents completely change from the classic Foghorn Leghorn/Fritz Hollings Lowcountry drawl to something that sounds more like Alabama or Mississippi.

}:-)4


164 posted on 11/25/2011 6:40:49 PM PST by Moose4 ("Oderint dum metuant" -- "Let them hate, as long as they fear." (Lucius Accius, c. 130 BC))
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To: Moose4

The strongest Southern accent I have ever heard was form a girl who had just started teaching. She was from Cherter S.C. but all I could hear was Shaaztuh. It took maybe a dozen times before I finally had to have her write it down.

She was so pretty she could have said it any way she wanted. My best friend asked me what she looked like. Hhe was standiing on the second level porch of the dorm. When I walked by I looked back at him. He had a thumbs up, them immediately raised both thumbs up. Yet she was a two thumbs up. After the date I discoverd we had pretty much different ways of seeing the world and only dated once more.

No matter the differences we had I could have listened to her talk all day and night.


188 posted on 11/25/2011 7:25:31 PM PST by yarddog
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