Kevin Marshall's America
Not because I can see Russia from my house, or because I make maps of the United States with crosshair graphics over the locations of folks with whom I have political or personal disagreements with. Nor am I going to quit writing this blog just because it gets too hard or too many people start disagreeing with and/or yelling at me, nor do I rock a bump-it in my hair.
Aren't I just timely and clever?
No, the big thing the former Governor of Alaska and I have in common? An occasional mysterious accent that longtime friends and family cannot account for.
Mine is a downstate or “New Yawk” accent, where I do things like make “O”s into “AW”s. Not being a linguist and lazy, I don’t know the exact terminology. But I’dll pronounce coffee as “caw fee”, etcetera. As I got older, it only became more pronounced. More and more people started to take note of it and take polite jabs at the way I talk. During my visits to Manhattan, I’ve had more than one cab driver assume I was from the City and express surprise when I reveal I was from Upstate (which mostly comes about due to me admitting I wasn’t familiar with a certain area).
So just as Sarah Palin has a thick Northern Minnesota accent despite living her whole life in Alaska, I have a (much smaller in comparison) inkling of a New Yawk accent despite living my whole life in Troy. So what’s up with that?
One possible explanation is television. As a kid I watched a lot of television, in particular cop dramas. Every inner-city cop show had the tough-talking New Yorker regardless of whether or not the show was even in New York, so perhaps I adopted their speech patterns in a lame attempt to appear cool and tough.
Another possibility is my environment. Although at the time there weren’t an overwhelming number of New York City transplants in my neighborhood, there were some and I did spend some considerable time with them.
Or maybe I’m mentally ill? Foreign Accent Syndrome is a very real mental illness, usually the result of severe brain injuries, where the afflicted adopt what sounds like a foreign accent due to damage done to the part of the brain that controls linguistic functions. As far as I know, though, I’ve never had severe head trauma…although I did fall head-first onto concrete one time when I was 12, and I still have the scar to prove it. So it’s definitely a possibility.
Regardless, both Sarah Palin and I developed our respective deviations from our regional speech patterns around puberty, and none of our family or friends can explain why. So if you’ve never met me before and you notice I say things like “coffee” funny, just let it slide. It’s most likely just because I’m a crazy guy who watched too much TV, got a head injury, and shoots wolves out of helicopters.
REACT: Do you have any unique sayings or manner of saying things that you can’t explain? Do you know what the Hell’s wrong with me?
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23 Responses to I am Sarah Palin
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I picked up a slight New York accent when I lived in the ALB, which I attributed to working with a lot of Long Island/Queens transplants. My regular accent is Southwestern-tinged Midwestern, so I’ve gotten a few questions about my origins over the years. I think some people are simply more likely to pick up the speech patterns of those around them than others.
Your new nickname: Madonna.
My motha has a slight Brooklyn accent but yet she’s lived here all her life. I don’t know where she gets dat accent, my motha, but even my friends from the BK recognize it.
I never thought I had an accent, even when I moved up here from Woodstock. Sure I said things slightly different, but my tones and inflections were not that drastically different from the people I befriended. Then I realized – they were people like you, and others, who had ties to southern ny.
It wasn’t until I was working in a call center that someone asked where I was from. When I replied, the customer expressed puzzlement. Why? Because I say somethings like a person from Manhattan, and I say some things like a person from the mid-west and then sometimes I get a bit of an English accent. Of course, the people who visited Woodstock were a mishmash of people from Manhattan, the mid-west and Europe.
I *don’t* have a Long Island accent, despite spending 20 years of my life there, and I don’t speak using Ebonics despite being black all of my life. I’ve had people tell me when I speak, I sound like a newscaster. I’d be interested to speak with a professional linguist to see where they’d place me in the country.
I feel like I have the same thing going on with me. I, for some unknown reason, have what sounds like a New Yawk accent.
No idea where it came from either. I’ve had several grade 3 concussions in my life, which could cause that Foreign Accent Syndrome that you mentioned. Or not.
I say things like “dawg” instead of “dog” and “mawl” instead of “mall”.
I’ve lived in Albany & Schenectady my entire life. There’s no reason for it.
Go north far enough and it becomes the South again. My brother took a friend of his to a pancake restaurant in Glens Falls, and he remarked about how the southern accents are thicker up there than where he’s from. Texas.
I used to wait tables and tend bar – and I’m very Irish looking. Customers would ask me if I were from Ireland or Brooklyn. Very confused i would ask which place is going to give me the biggest tip. I can be from any where for 1 1/2 hours ;)
I never really gave my “accent” too much thought since to me, I sound normal. But when I took a trip out to California for a conference a number of years ago I met mostly non-New Yorkers who informed me that not only did I have a New York accent, but also talked incredibly fast. This also raises the question what is a “New York” accent, since I can think of at least 6 different distinguishable accents in the state. I’ve recently become aware that the “New York Accent” I seem to wield is a Brooklyn one, but only on certain words. That’s mostly my father’s fault since his uncle was from Brooklyn and he has a muted accent himself. I’m actually surprised that I haven’t picked up a Long Island accent or a Staten Island accent since 2 of my good friends have those.
This area has produced an accent that is generally classified as “Newscaster Neutral” which means it is devoid of most of the tells that identify someone as being from a geographical area. This fortunate occurrence is being undermined by the influx of people from outside areas, whose speech peculiarities are starting to invade the local dialect. Most notably, the downstate tendency, reinforced by several news personalities from the “giland” now on the air here, who refuse to pronounce the “T” in the center of words, making Manhattan into “Man-ha-in”, Wilton into “Wil-en” and mountain into “mao-en”, that is already starting to corrupt how we speak as children pick it up.
For a real dialect experience, try going to the hills to the east of Brant Lake in northern Warren County, where the local dialect, developed over a couple of centuries of isolation and inbreeding, has developed into speech patterns that, although technically English, have more in common with the grunting click languages of the Kalahari Bushman and are almost as hard to understand.
iknowtruthismine, I too have been to Brant Lake.
Ever seen Deliverance?
This is something that someone told me was studied a while back, so here’s my story.
I come from Kansas, where there are apparently no accents. M. claims that I had an accent while living there, but I deny it whole-heartedly, because I think I sound the same now. Also, telemarketers (well before they were outsourced) were mostly from the middle states, due to the lack of accent. We also pick up accents pretty quickly.
It took me about 6 months to start talking like a South Texan when I moved in ’86, then about the same when I moved to West Texas in ’91. Both accents are EXTREMELY different. I still step into a drawl when I’m overly tired, or sick.
I remember my friends from Texas & Kansas threatening me if I started talking like a New Yawker. Well, when I lived the short year on Long Island, I was nearly disowned. I talked like I was from the North Shore, even though I only lived there a short time.
I have used every term known to man to refer to a soda, pop, soda-pop, soda-water, coke (not Coke), and whatnot, so that comes pretty easy for me. You guys & y’all are interchangeable depending on my mood. Never did a yous guys.
The sad thing is that I seem to only be able to do American accents. Anything beyond (English, French, German) is pretty weak. I come close with the Spanish, because of living close to Mexico for years, but it’s gone now. When I speak German, I can do it relatively decent (after a period of time) with a Hoch Deutsch dialect, but people who speak it regularly would look at me like I’m insane.
Will King – Due to heavy inbreeding, it would not surprise me in the least if there exists several people in that area, who although having different last names (from a limited pool), have identical fingerprints.
i WRITE NOTES ON THE PALM OF MY HAND!
My poor daughter has a bizarre combination of my Southern accent, my wife’s Minnesota accent, and the local Awulbunny accent, as she’s lived here since was two.
Having lived north of the Mason-Dixon Line for the better part of two decades now, I’ve generally managed to turn my Lowcountry Carolina accent into something more closely approximating Newscaster Neutral, although all it takes is a phone conversation with my mother or sister to undo all of that.
I’m attuned to accents, and to my own diction, up here in large part because when native New Yorkers or New Englanders actually do pick up my Southern accent, they immediately assume that I am stupid.
See: http://blog.timesunion.com/jericsmith/low-country-upstater/8/
Why should anyone give a damn what kind of accent you have? Anyone who does care doesn’t have much going for him upstairs.
When I was growing up in Albany, if I wanted to get something out of my desk drawer, I pronounced it “dror.” Then I went to college with people from Connecticut and New Jersey who pronounced it “draw.” Oh, peer pressure, you do funny things. I was outnumbered — I changed my pronunciation. When I came back to Albany, the desk “draw” didn’t sound right anymore. Back to “dror.” Angst ensues when I hang out with my college roommates now.
Also, my dad thinks I pronounce “garage” funny, but he gets an occasional Boston accent from his Massachusetts upbringing, which is like an entirely different language, so he’s got nothing to complain about.
I slip in and out of a Canadian accent, and I have no idea how that started. Considering I’m not even a little bit Canadian.
I picked up some slight things, like accenting the wrong syllable of words like “hotel” and “insurance” from my time in Texas,. A bigger thing, though, is my not being able to let go a little slang words, like “y’all”. I also spent several years living in Baltimore, so I learned to drop entire syllables of words altogether. That also happens when I’m drunk. Come to think of it, Baltimorean, in general, sounds like drunk talk.
I don’t think this is at all unique to you. My family is from Troy and all pronounce words similarly to the examples you gave – coffee, chocolate, daughter, etc. I also know many people from Troy and Lansingburgh that speak like that.
When my family first moved up to the Adirondacks from Coxsackie (Tupper Lake, not Brant Lake, though I still kind of resent the inbreeding comments…), my sister and I got made fun of a lot for our accents, and one of the things they noticed was the way we pronounced words like coffee. But coming back to this area from up there, the slight Canadian accent that I have from living up in the North Country for so long hardly ever gets pointed out. I guess the difference is a little more subtle. However, if I go to Boston, for example, they love to call me out on it (especially when I say ‘eh’). It’s not anywhere near as strong now, though, as it was after I lived with a dorm full of Canadians for four months – I came home saying ‘aboat’ instead of about, and everyone mentioned it until I lost the accent.
Kev, that’s a Troy accent. Seriously.
Some of my Green Island and Watervliet family does the same thing, including my big sister sometimes. I seem to have been raised far enough away from it for it to miss me. :P
(And Palin grew up in northern Idaho.)
Occasionally when I talk I get a slight Southern accent, and when tired or the like I get a much stronger Southern accent as well as some dialect closer to that region of the country. Also, when tired a few other accents come in certain words. When in this state, I find is quite difficult to talk normal and enunciate every syllable, but when not tired or feeling like it, it takes decided effort to talk with the accent. Also, when referring to a group of people, I always use “you all” as I find it easier and more natural.
I am from Upstate New York, nigh on due east of Albany, betwixt the Hudson and Vermont/Massachusetts border. Nobody around me or that I interact with for any appreciable amount of times talks as thus. Furthermore, I have not been out of the state for any time greater than a week that I can recall.
Possible reasons for talking with the accent include: watching several Civil War based movies repeatedly from middle school through early college, listening to country music (from the 70s onward by and large), and finally that it is easier (feel less effort needed in speaking).
Nofi – I absolutely can feel myself almost slipping into an accent when I listen to 60s and 70s country. Particularly George Jones or Conway Twitty.