Godless Mom in the Bible Belt

Thursday, August 18, 2005

It's No Big Dill

I love listening to the various accents and regional dialects I encounter here in Houston. This is a big city and as a result I'm constantly running into people from all over the world. It cracks me up to think about how many people I encounter on any given day, each one of them technically speaking English yet each one of them speaking it in a dramatically different way. I guess it is really a testament to the amazing adaptability of the human mind that we can (usually) accustom our ears to any given accent and very quickly learn to understand one another.

Coming from Utah, I have a bit of a dialect myself. It isn't really thick, in fact I can count on one hand how many times my accent has identified me as not being from 'round these parts. For the most part I have a tendency to mispronounce words that end in the "eel" sound. When I'm hungry I sit down and eat a mill, when things are of little consequence they are no big dill, when I'm wondering if my hubby is in good health I ask, "How do you fill?" It's silly I know, but that is how Utahns speak and thus that is how I speak. I've made no effort to rid myself of my dialect, I'm not embarrassed by it, in fact I get a bit of a kick out of it.

A couple of months ago Scott and I noticed that Liz was starting to speak in a really strange way. She sounded like her nose was stuffy and she was really taking her time pronouncing certain words. I figured it was just her playing around with baby talk and I pretty much ignored it. Well, she wasn't playing around with baby talk, she was in the process of perfecting a Southern Drawl. She can now easily mimic your basic Georgia-Peach-Southern-Belle at the drop of a hat.

Two weeks ago it started again, only this time her consonants were becoming more clipped and her vowel sounds were rounding out and becoming smoother. Two days ago I figured out what she was doing, she is going for her own version of a British accent. I think it started with Harry Potter, add in a liberal helping of Monty Python with a side order of Pride and Prejudice. It is going to be the most screwed up accent imaginable...I love it!

Our neighbors next door are from Ghana...I imagine it's only a matter of time.
posted by GodlessMom, 6:09 AM

11 Comments:

Blogger Fred said:

The Missus is originally from south Miami; she has a few words that drive me nuts.

Draw is drawll.
Confiscate is confinscate.
South is sout

I love her all the same.
Posted at 7:10 AM  

Blogger Urban Chick said:

how cute! can you attach an audio file for us to hear her?!

here in london, most kids want to be black because black is cool and they talk a funny form of jamaican patois
Posted at 7:44 AM  

Blogger BarbaraFromCalifornia said:

I love accents! And when you think about it, it is the one thing that cannot truly be changed (if you came to another country when you are older)..Plastic surgery will not fix it!!

Great post.
Posted at 10:33 AM  

Blogger Lila said:

I love accents too. As a Pennsylvanian transplanted to Massachusetts, people usually can't tell where I came from. They just know I didn't start out around here.

I think Pennsylvanians tend to talk in a sing-songy way.
Posted at 10:41 AM  

Blogger Meegan said:

Very cute! I second UC's idea about the audio file!
Posted at 11:13 AM  

Blogger dAAve said:

Having lived in Houston all my life, I have THAT accent.

Then I moved to London in 1989. I was there most of the time til 1993. During those 4+ years, I lost my Texas accent and naturally picked up a British accent. It was often pointed out to me when I came back to Houston.

Now, I'm back to the good ol' Texas accent.
Posted at 3:01 PM  

Blogger Lucy Stern said:

I have lived in Houston all my life and you can definately tell I'm from around here. My daughter went on her mission in Utah and they were always asking her where she was from. She would tell them Texas and the first thing they would ask is "Do you have a cowboy hat?". She loved it up there and after her mission she moved up there for a year and worked for the Wyndham hotel just two blocks from Temple square. After a year she came back to Houston and has been her ever since.
Posted at 4:12 PM  

Blogger nigel paddell said:

I think I picked up a Canadian accent from having my cultural compass pointed in that direction.
On the border we have access to Canadian TV and radio and it just sort of seeped in.
I don't say "washroom" though or pronounce the letter "Z" ("zee") as "zed" like they do.
Posted at 4:13 PM  

Blogger United We Lay said:

My minor in college was lingustics. I was an english major. I always loved reading and listening to dialects. I think it gives a certain spice to our country and celebrates our uniqueness. I think the aristocratic southern drawl that you hear in Charleston, SC or Savannah, GA is my favorite.
Posted at 6:04 PM  

Blogger TLP said:

People sometimes guess that I lived in the south until my late teens. But mostly not. I tried to dump the accent as soon as I could. Still, when I'm tired, I say things like, "I'm fixin' to go to the store."

I've lived in PA for 33 years,(we lived in CA in the inbetween years) and I've picked up a lot of the PA Dutch expressions, such as saying, "Are the potatoes all?" That means are the potatoes finished --are they all gone?
Posted at 8:56 PM  

Blogger S said:

that is so funny! How cute! Gryphon has this crazy British accent he does when he is playing dinosaurs. I finally asked him about it and he said "that's how they talk on all my science video's, you know the one's from BBC?" too funny!
Posted at 3:29 AM  

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