A woman at work told me that I have a Michigan accent ("You sound just like my relatives from Michigan!"). She seemed very surprised at my crestfallen reaction to that statement ("No, that's a good thing!" she assured me). After 12 years of making fun of the way Michiganders talk ("Would you like a paper or plastic beg?"), I guess it finally has rubbed off on me! That's what I get for marrying a Michigan boy and then living in Michigan for 12 years!
I wonder how long I will live here in Nashville before I have a tint of a Southern accent to other people I meet outside of Nashville? I don't think it will ever turn into a full-blown accent because it would sound too fakey to me. If I even say "Y'all" now, all sorts of alarm bells go off in my head -- "You're not a Southerner! You can't say that word!" On the other hand, it is a little odd to keep seeing people's surprised faces when they ask us where we are from and we answer, "We live here in Nashville." It makes me want to develop a little twang just to blend in. Makes me think that I need to take the accent lessons Garrison Keillor talked about on his show the other weekend. To listen to the accents sketch yourself, click here, and then listen to Segment 2 (if you're not a big GK fan, this segment is right at the beginning of the recording, so you don't have to listen to anything else to get to it).
When I first moved here, it sounded like everyone had a Southern accent to me, but now I only notice the most obvious of accents. My submersion has begun!
2 comments:
Hillarious sketch! I want to talk like the Swedish guy at the end.
And, people, 337is does not even like Prairie Home Companion . . . so you know it's really good if he found it "hilarious."
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