Mine comes from college in the Bronx, until I learned if I wanted to make a living one mile south in Manhattan, drop the drawn out vowels. The library isn’t the lie-barre-ee. White Castle ain’t Wot Castil. Fordham Road ain’t Fawdum Rowed. Shorten vowels and speak civilized English, or else no one’s gonna take you seriously (sear-ee-us-wee). But when I’m tired, I still slip. Oye wanna go tah sweep.
I’ve heard theories that the most neutral accent in the States comes from Nebraska, mainly due to its most famous citizen Johnny Carson. If you watch clips of Carson, he has no identifiable regionally based accent mainly because he couldn’t. He was invited into every bedroom in the country for years and years.
Now let’s contrast that with Ricky Ricardo. You could never take him seriously because of his failure to buff down his cuban accent. Lucy you got sum splay’n tadoo. Really Ricky? People from Connecticut cannot for the life of them pronounce a “T” and drop it all the time. But it’s hardly an obnoxious assault on the ear. Not like an adult talking like a third grader in a southern spelling bee.
Hee Haw, Andy Griffith, even Designing Women get on my nerves. The southern accent sounds slow and lazy. My big question is … how long are you allowed to even hold onto it without consequence? If you leave your hometown, shouldn’t your accent be left behind? Let’s take Kaitlin Collins, an Alabaman who’s an anchor on CNN. Accentless. You trust news coming from her, but how about this? Ya’ll the Sewpreem Cohort just band havey breed’n. I’m not gonna believe this, though in this day and age I should if it came from a no-accent voice. The probability is plausible.
Southern/Texas accents don’t promote an intelligent presentation. Sorry. They also come across as highly insincere. Bless your little heart frequently implies FU Damn Outsider. Pronounce vowels, don’t drop consonants and join the human race. Bad enough you’re assumed to be MAGA’d (whether you are or aren’t) once you flap your jaws. And don’t make matters worse by throwing us completely off by saying things like ya’ll eye ain’t into dose homo-seggs-you-ells.
On a recent trip to Texas where I saw not one house flying an American Flag yet all of them flying a Texas flag I was pissed … well just secede from the Union. The hell with you. Your state enforces heinous classroom rules and is busy adapting the curriculum. PS: you have the highest frequency of gun shootings. Your inability to separate church and state is completely unconstitutional. You’re painting the blemishes and flaws out of history so we look … like what? Perfect? We certainly are not. Haven’t we learned more from our historical flaws? Even if you want us to be perfect, what’s your standard?
The Holy Roman Empire?
I know this might be a tad harsh but I mean come on. If we’re striving to understand each other and work through our contrasting beliefs, let’s give the experiment a chance by trying our best to understand each other first.
It’s a vehicle, not a vee-hickle for success.