Accent on America

Last week I talked about The Queen’s English, and received a bunch of interesting responses. One reader, Liz from Maryland, had this to say: “Actually, English spoken by the Royals/upper crust is beautiful to hear, don't you think? So remote, so refined, so....inbred.” Yes, Liz, I agree!

This week, I wanted to talk about accents in the U.S. Personally, I love the twangs, drawls, flat sounds, long sounds, double-vowels sounds and other regional variations that can mark our origins more precisely than any last name. There are a zillion American accents, one for every region and sometimes regions within regions. On the other hand, a lot of people speak a sort of general American English, with maybe a hint of an accent from their hometown. Maybe general American English could be called TV American -- it’s pretty much the same. Still – it’s the differences, the accents, that bring out the color in people and places and so here’s to them!

I spent two weeks every summer of my first 22 years making the annual pilgrimage from suburban Chicago to Enid, Oklahoma to visit my grandmother and a wide assortment of relatives and family friends. And I still warm to the sound of a good, southwestern, “Howdy!” “Hi Y’all!” and “How are yewwww?!” -- though living in NY makes hearing those sounds extremely rare. (Of course, I still get to hear the Queens English --- that is, Queens, New Yawwk!)

Anyway, during those annual trips south, I loved hearing the slow Oklahoma drawl – though I would have felt strange speaking that way myself. As a young teen hanging out at the Enid Tastee (the "Ta-i-Y-stee") Freeze drive-in (drahv-iyen) with my popular older cousins and their friends, my northern accent made me different, and helped explain (at least to me) the difference in our worlds: my world was Lake Michigan and bike-riding to town and friends' houses; my accent was short vowels and quickly-spoken syllables. In Enid, life was American Graffiti with a cowboy accent, cars of cheerleaders and their hunky boyfriends cruisin' on the Van Buren strip. I used to wonder, if I ever lived in Enid, how soon I'd be dropping y'alls and yer alls, and saying reaaaal slowww, “Y’all come over to MAH how-se!” Would I -- could I -- really do that?

Certainly, an accent marks you as from a certain place. So if you change your accent, you also paste over your past – and maybe that’s the point: Didn’t Cary Grant and Sean Connery come from working class families? You’d never know it by their movies.

Many people’s accents change naturally, as their lives and places they call home change. But a radical change of accent – is that the verbal equivalent of plastic surgery? Does an accent make a person, and does a new accent re-make them? I think so. What would Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig be like if they spoke like James Bond or a CNN TV correspondent?

Now let’s take a look at another accent, one that comes from …

MERLIN – that’s Maryland to the rest of us
“Merlin” is the local pronunciation of that smallish state on the mid-Atlantic coast. Now, this state, which Lord Baltimore called “Terra Mariae” in 1630, may once have been called “Mary Land;” we non-natives call it MARE-i-lnd; but the natives apparently call it “Merlin.”

The Merlin dialect is particularly strong in the triangle around the Chesapeake Bay, which, according to http://wilk4.com/humor/humorm221.htm “is bounded roughly by a line commencing at Towson's Toyota, then westward to Frederick Mall, thence following the western border of the cable TV franchise and the string of McDonalds along Route 50 to the Bay.”

Enthusiastic and informative Language Lady reader Liz, from Maryland’s Chesapeake Triangle, shares these tidbits on the local tongue:

BALMER
Maryland’s capital city, spelled Baltimore, is pronounced “Balmer.” As in the Balmer O’s, or Baltimore Orioles. There are two Balmers: Balmer City and Balmer County (also pronounced, “Canny.”) Balmer City is the locale for HAIRSPRAY – the movie/Broadway hit’s writer/director is John Waters, a native Balmerian, hon. The locals speak Balmerese. And you can’t speak Balmerese without this word:

HON
Hon is short for "Honey" and is added at the end of a sentence. A 7-11 cashier says, "Yer fly's open, hon.” or “Here's yer change, hon". (This is followed by deep, gutteral smoker's cough or laugh.) "Let's cheer fer de O's hon.”

DOWNY SHORE
“Downy shore” means "down to the shore.” The shore, or beach, is almost always Ocean (or, “Ay-shun”) City. So, “Let’s go to the beach” is, "Let's go downy shore, hon.”

NAPPLIS
Annapolis, home to the U.S. Naval Academy, is pronounced "Napplis," as in, "Gonna go see my doc in Napplis, hon."

WARSHTON
That’s the place, also called, “Washnin,” where the President lives.

Liz from Maryland is also one of the few people I know who has actually been to Bourbonnais, Illinois, a small city named after a 19th century French fur trader. Here’s what Liz had to say about her trip to my home state:

We're not going to discuss Illinois accents (Oh, really, Liz??)...We spent some time with my son’s baseball team in Bourbonnais,Ill. What fools we were at the hotel front desk to ask, "Is there a grocery store in Bourbonnais (pronounced as French word, Bur-Bohn-NAY)?" "YOU MEAN BER-BONUS? YEAH, THERE'S A WAL-MAAAART TWO MILES SOUTH". " BE CAYREFUL DRIVING INTO CHICAAAAAAHHHHHGO.”

"BER-BONUS." I think that sounds like a sexually transmitted disease.

Thanks, Liz! I’ll remember that next time I’m in Bourbonnais.

Actually, people from Illinois absolutely cringe when someone pronounces the “s” on the end of our state name. Never mind that we mangle the French pronunciation on the way to the “s” (Elll-en-OY, instead of “Illin-WAH”); but c’est la vie – or is it cest-lavvy?

(For a list of familiar French place names in the U.S., check out http://freespace.virgin.net/john.cletheroe/usa_can/places/french.htm
and see why the French shrug their Gallic shoulders when it comes to Americans speaking French.)

AM I BOVVERED? (or, More Accents on England)
Meanwhile, Diana, an expat from England who lives in New York, sent me a link to the British comedian Catherine Tate.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=409893&in_page_id=1770>
Catherine has a repertoire of characters she has invented and one of them is surly, 16-year-old Lauren, whose catch phrase, “Am I bovvered?” has caught on big time among the Brits. “Bovva” is cockney, or Estuary English (see The Queen’s English 10/8/06) for “bother,” and Catherine’s phrase is, according to the link, the new “Whatever!” or more broadly, the embodiment of “couldn't-care-less adolescence.” So the big news is that “bovver” is being considered for the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

Now, I know the OED is trying to keep up with current language trends and all. “Bovver” just might have some staying power in UK-speak, and might be appropriate for such an entry, especially due to the growth of “Estree English” in the past two decades (see my blog: 10/8/06). But that reminded me of the OED’s inclusion of “muggle” into the 2003 OED edition, and I’ve always felt the editors got a little too caught up in the whole Harry Potter Hysteria to include that word. I mean, I love the stories and all, but I have never heard a single soul of any age use “muggle” outside of Harry Potter.

J.K. Rowling’s “muggle,” means someone without magical powers; the OED editors, however, claim that the word has taken on an extended use to mean, “any person lacking a particular skill, or is seen as somehow inferior,” to merit the entry. (See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsid_2882000/2882895.stm)

Can anyone vouch for that? I’d love to know if I’m wrong.

Likewise, my prediction for “bovver,” in the U.S. Surely, “bovver” will not make it into the OED American-English edition, as Cockney Cool has not made it here at all – and it may not get any farther than the backstage of some struggling English punk band playing a 2 a.m. gig in Queens, New Yawwk. But that’s just my opinion, hon.