Accents

[Lady Montagu]

Yesterday, my art teacher expressed surprise that I was from Texas. She guessed somewhere on the East Coast, with a little bit of ValleyGirl in it.

I was born and raised in Texas, and the only other place I've lived was Utah with a year and a half in Michigan.

It was a surreal moment. Why would I have an accent from somewhere else?

[Jonathon]

It could be that her assessment of your accent was simply wrong. You don't sound to me like you're from the East Coast. Of course, I've only talked to you once, and it was over the phone, so I might be wrong, too.

[Anna]

It doesn't mean a lot... People are often surprised when I tell them I'm from the north of France because, as they say, "I don't have an accent". Well, I worked to lose it, and it comes back when I talk to people who have it most people here have bad prejugees against that accent, that's why I worked to lose it. My teachers always told it would be bad to keep it.  

[Jonathon]

I think it's sad that in an age where we're so accepting of diversity, we're still intolerant of different accents or dialects. I wonder when it'll stop being such a bad thing to have an accent.

I also think it's funny (in a good way) that you used the French word "prejugees" instead of the English word "prejudices."

[Ashley the Procrastinator]

Were your parents from Texas?  If the dialect wasn't spoken in the home, you tend not to pick it up as much.  

[Jonathon]

It also depends on whether you're from a big city, who your friends are and how they talk, how much you care about how you sound, and probably lots of other stuff.

[John the Saxecutioner]

Your Texan comes out in your words more than your accent, Katie.  Like how you say "y'all."  But I think the other thing is that a lot of people expect all Texans to have a really thick twang, like Reba McEntire, for example (even though she's actually from Oklahoma).  Or at least like George Bush.  Actually, though nearly all of the Texans I know personally speak with a pretty nondescript accent (to my ears, anyway).  The people I know with thick Western accents are all from Kansas and Oklahoma.

[Uchiha Itachi]

The prevalence of the mass media in transmitting and even defining our modern language shouldn't be discounted.  It is simply much rarer in this day and age for people raised in this country to have a "natural" accent, since virtually everyone has been exposed to the same programming from a very early age.

This tends to reduce the level of tolerance that most members of the mass culture will show to someone that has an accent, people that genuinely don't share that mass culture either because they grew up somewhere that national network TV wasn't a factor or because they come from another country are probably outnumbered by "posers"--people that deliberately cultivate an accent for some reason (usually to express distain for the popular culture).

But of course, the popular concept of regional accents persists far more than the reality of these accents.  Which is why often people (particularly those raised before the national programming began) will express surprise at the lack of an accent in someone from another part of the country.  On the other hand, people raised within the mass culture will naturally have the expectation that only the very old and obvious immigrants should have accents.

English and French accents are particularly seen as being the province of posers.  It used to be possible to allay that reaction by revealing that you really were from said country, but in today's post Warsaw Pact climate, it is better to avoid the question altogether.

[Annie the Masticator]

Almost everyone I know from Texas has an intense twangy drawl, but then again, almost everyone I know from Texas is from the Southeast.  A friend of mine from Arlington has no real accent, and a friend from El Paso has a slight California-type intonation, which I call Californian but is really a slight bit of Spanglish.  I think North and West Texas don't really talk with the drawl like the South and the East.

Once we were talking to a shopkeeper who was uncanny with accents.  He had my grandmother nailed within the first few seconds she spoke ("Green Bay Wisconsin, give me a break," he said) and even my Dad, who I thought has lost his Texas accent, was easily put in the category of "What part of Southeast Texas are you from?"

[Trisha]

I think people are prejudiced against accents because they don't know anything about linguistics, whereas most learn about biology enough to at least understand evolution and sex ed in high school.  So the idea that physical differences are superficial is easily grasped.  

But people don't have the tools to understand that the way someone talks does not reflect on their intelligence or character.  I still think high school is too early to introduce this information.  Even in my college course I don't think most people really "got" it.  The idea that Eskimos have more words for snow than us continues to circulate among educated people when we have about the same number.  Granted English has more words than necessary for just about everything.

[rivka]

Hmm. I would say Katie's Texan accent is mild but definite. And not at all East-Coast-ish. *shrug*

[Anna]

Prejudice means something else in French, so I always make the mistake
As a matter of facts, the thing I find the most annoying with prejudices against accents is that not all accents are treated the same. The South accent is seen as really positive, "singing, and that gives sun in the voice".   But the North accent is seen as bad because it has been a really poor region for quite a while, and even now it's poorer than other regions in France. So when you have that accent, people associate you to "poor and uneducated".    

[Jonathon]

That seems to be the case everywhere. Prejudices against accents usually have little to do with what they actually sound like and everything to do with the people who have the accent. In the U.S., the Southern accent is associated with white trash, religious fanatics, bigots, and other sorts of backwoods hicks.

I remember hearing a Provencal accent only a couple times (in movies in French class), but I did like it. It sounds to me like it's a little more Italian (which makes sense, since it's closer to Italy). I don't know what the northern accent sounds like.

[Annie the Masticator]

It's OK, though, Anna, because even if people think the Southern accent is positive, it still sounds funny.  

"Vieng ici, Cheri-e.  Vieng ici!"

[Lady Montagu]

My mother and her family are all from Texas, and she had an accent.

She was on the phone with a customer after living in Utah for five years, and the customer asked where she was from.

"Salt Lake City, Utah."
"No, honey. Whayre ahre you fruhm?"

Eh, it was my art teacher. She also told us a story about how the first billboard she painted had a crooked chest and she tried to set me up with the cute, charismatic, but gay ceramics teacher.