(no subject)

[doyle]

Fic question: I'm terrible with accents (American accents. Gimme Irish or English folks and I'm golden, but, ah, I can just barely tell an American accent from a Canadian one. And then only if the person says 'about') Anyway. Does Tara (or one of the family members we saw in Family) have any kind of identifiable accent that places her/them from a certain state?

Comments

[caille.livejournal.com]

I think she's from California - maybe Modoc, Placer, or Plumas County (California Quick Facts (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/maps/california_map.html) lists counties with info like median income and ethnicity and stuff). You have to remember that lots of Californians are from somewhere else. A family like Tara's, which is clearly insular, very guarded, is not going to pick up new customs or habits easily.

I remember in Michigan, we sometimes used a term, "Ypsitucky", which was a combination of Ypsilanti, Michigan (where Michigan State University is) and Kentucky, which is where a whole heck of a lot of local residents came from originally. There was a huge influx of workers from the mid-south and south during the Second World War coming to work in wartime factories. Of course, lots of them stayed.

The same thing happened out here where I live, in Marin County, California. During the war, the shipyards were booming, and there was a massive migration of workers from the deep South.

I suspect that Tara's family originally came from Oklahoma, maybe Missouri, maybe North Dakota, but that Tara was born here. That's what I imagine, anyway.

Oh, there's this cool site, American Dialect Links (http://www.evolpub.com/Americandialects/AmDialLnx.html), that's lots of fun to wander through. A lot of the links are broken, but there's some interesting stuff about regional dialects. For example, here's a selection from the site "You Must Be From North Dakota..."

• If you can't make it through a phone conversation without mentioning the weather . . .


• If you think a bison is a buffalo . . .


• If you think skis are "Norwegian timber" . . .


• If you understand that "Yah y'betch yah" means either "I agree" or "You're full of it" and you know the difference . . .


• If you never confuse "Yah," "Yep," and "Yah y'betch yah" . . .


• If you think everyone from a different state has an accent . . .


• If your answer to "How are you?", "How's the weather?", "How was your crop?", or "How's the ranchin' goin'?" is the same--"Not so bad."


• If you know there are two definitions for the word "bucks"--a male deer, and what your German uncle calls insects . . .


• If you can identify a Minnesota accent . . .


• If you bake with soda and drink pop . . .


• If you "manure the barn" . . .


• If you hear "Yah, sure" not "Yes, sir" . . .


• If you say, "Outside, zero is below" . . .


• If you go to Arkansas for a visit and everyone tells you you have an accent . . .


• If you go to the post office to mail a paggitch . . .

Hee.