Southern Speaking

I say, “Hi, how are you,” and in those four words people know that I am from the south. My accent isn’t as bad as it used to be when I first came to Portland. Back then I couldn’t even say “Hi” without people saying, “Where you from?”

The crazy thing is, they’d use a fake Southern accent to say it, like, “You all ain’t from around these parts, are you?”

I didn’t like having a voice everyone recognized. I’d call girlfriends that had toddlers – babies 2 and 3 years old who answered the phone, “He-wo,” and I’d say, “Is your mommy home?” They’d drop the phone on the counter and yell, “MOMMMMMEEEEE, IT’S SUZANNE ON THE PHONE!” 4 words is all it took.

One time I tried to disguise my voice by making it real low, like a gruff old man. “Is your mom home?” The phone slammed down and I heard, “MOMMMMMEEEEEE, THERE’S A MAN ON THE PHONE AND HE SOUNDS LIKE SUZANNE.”

I started trying to figure out what makes southern speech different.

One thing is that Ii’s rambling. Southerners talk as if they’re passing time on the front porch swing sipping sassafras tea with no agenda for the next six months. For instance, normal people might say, “I went to the store at noon.” Southerners would say, “I went down to the super market long about noon or a little bit after or maybe it was a little bit before, it’s hard to recall because it’s been awhile, but anyway the point I’m trying to make right here is that I went down to the grocery store long about noon today.”

Southern talk is lazy. We take shortcuts. Everybody probably knows about dropping the g’s on words ending in “ing.” Southerners are laughin. walkin, talkin, fightin, bitin, chewin and spttin. But we also run words together. Like the rapper who named himself after a half dollar. 50 cent. That’s pronounced fiddy cent. If someone asks you in the south for change for a dollar, you’d say, “Sorry, I’ve only got fiddy cent.” We also say, “Let’s go in nair.” “What chew doin?” and “I’m fixin’ to go outside.”

Southern talk might be lazy, but we add in a bunch of syllables to make up for it. In fact, there is not one 1-syllable word in the southern accent that I know of. I found this out one time when my son had a friend over when they were both about seven or eight. I gave them a couple of choices for drinks with lunch. The friend looked puzzled and whispered something to my son. My son said, “She wants to know if you want milk or water.” The kid said to me, “What was that other choice?’ I said, “What other choice?” He said, “The meal –ulk one.” That was the first time I realized that I had made milk into two syllables. We do that with everything. We say, “Pa-ass the br-ead.”

The fourth thing we do is pronounce our vowels all wrong. Our A’s sound like ay. So the word “made” comes out sounding like mayed. I’s sound like ah. “Ah’m gonna go outside.” Or we’ll add an “r” to it, so that if I’m sleepy I might say, “I’m tarred.” And our e’s sound like a’s. Me sounds like may. My kids used to love to say “me” like that. “Give that toy to may.” “No, you give it to may.” They started out saying it like that to make fun of me, but now they keep saying it out of habit, and I think it’s so cute.

I have given my southern accent a lot of thought and decided that, although it’s not as distinct, I still get asked everywhere I go if I came from the south. I’ve decided that it’s something that makes me stand out. I know I’ve used it to my advantage to get out of traffic tickets and so forth. I have decided that I like it. If you are interested in talking southern, I’ll try to come up with some more lessons. Until then, just say, “Y’all.” People will eat out of your hand.

Ways to Get Rid of Your Surplus Money

This morning I went to hang one of my photographs at Starbucks and heard a snippet of an interview on NPR. It was about a lady who started sending requests in the 1980’s to people asking for donations to help bring down America’s debt. She and a bunch of other people sent hand-addressed letters to thousands of people.

What a crazy idea! Asking people who already pay taxes to contribute more money to the gov’ment (that’s how I learned to say it in the south, just like I learned to call the police “the law.” Just thought you’d want to know).

The even crazier thing is that people responded by sending money. These people got thousands of people to send thousands of dollars to help reduce the national debt. After they’d counted it all, they took a month-long trip to Hawaii and spent most of their days being pampered with massages and foot rubs by cabana boys. Ahhhh, doesn’t that sound good?

Of course I’m kidding. That’s how the story would have ended today, because we Americans (pronounce the “mer” in this word like the “mer” in “mermaids” if you want to sound Southern – or should I say like an East Tennessee hick?).

Hand up in the back? You want to know the difference? Let me explain. A “hick” is someone who ain’t got no edgy-cation and thinks possum is the other what meat (insert “white” for “what” if you don’t understand. I think you got that edgy-cation was education. No? Well, it was). So you got your “southern” accent, and then you got your “southern hick” accent.

The difference between the two is in the way the words are pronounced. So a southerner might say the word “education” like this: “ed-u-ki-tion,” so the “southern” part of the word is changing the “ka” sound to a “ki” sound. I changed the “c” to a “k” for 2 reasons. (1), I didn’t want to confuse you by making you think the “ci” was pronounced like “sigh,” and (2) I’m going for a Guinness Book of World Records on how many of these (“) things I can put into the body of one blog.

Where was I? Oh yeah, hick. The difference between a “general” southern accent and a “hick” accent is where the emphasis is on the word and the way it’s pronounced with a wad of Skoal in your mouth.

Let’s hold the questions until the end, because I’m trying to tell you about the lady on the radio. She claimed there are still people sending in donations. Last year they sent 1.3 billion dollars! (or something like that. I’d suggest you do your own fact checking because I can’t vouch for these numbers, this lady, or whether I dreamed all this. It was 5:30 in the morning and I had not yet had my coffee, for crying out loud. Be sure to let me know if I’ve misstated because I truly give a damn).

I can see that we’re running out of time. The point of bringing this up was to inform you that there are people out there with surplus money. It is up to each and every one of you to figure out how you can get your hands on it. When you come up with a way, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Hey, I just had a great idea! If you find that you have surplus money laying around just getting in everyone’s way, don’t keep tripping over it. Send it to me, preferably in a plain brown wrapper. 20’s are nice. It’s for a good cause. You’ll be glad you did.