Monday, February 22, 2010

Southern Accents and Southern Roots


I've been indulging myself in a lot of self-examination lately and one of the themes that continually recurs is the fact of my Southern birth and upbringing. There is truly a lot of baggage that comes with being a native Southerner, some of it that is something to be proud of, and some of it that many of us prefer to avoid acknowledging.

Take country music for instance. A great many people assume that being a native Southerner, a person must as a result have a penchant for country music. Well, a great many people in the South do, but a great many also do not. The same can be said for cities like Chicago, where I currently reside. I personally feel about country music much the same way Jerry Seinfeld feels about homosexuality, "Not that there's anything wrong with that..." I just do not indulge in it myself. I'm more inclined to a jazz bar than a country and western bar. I do, however, treasure that moment in The Blues Brothers when the bar owner attests to the fact that this bar welcomes both kinds of music, "Country...and Western."

That being said, there are a great many people who automatically assume that, being Southern, you must be a racist, and either tell you the most annoying racist bullshit jokes you ever heard, or lambast you for being a racist asshole. In an earlier post, I believe that I already noted that at my high school graduation I was the guy who danced with the black girls, and drew stares. I was also the guy who got into a fight and got the shit kicked out of him for having black friends in the dorm Freshman year at college. I was the guy who hitchhiked from Jonesboro, Arkansas to Blytheville, Arkansas with a black friend who needed to get there for a band rehearsal. I was the guy who dated a black woman in Little Rock, Arkansas (Drawing stares) and a Mexican-American woman in Austin, Texas (Drawing stares) and numerous women of all races, colors, accents, shapes, and sizes until I met the love of my life. (That would be Babs and she's from Iowa for goodness sakes.)

Then there are the people who don't believe that you're really Southern because you don't sound Southern enough. Needless to say, most of these people have no clue what a real Southern accent sounds like, much less that there are very different Southern accents in different parts of the South. The Virginia/North Carolina area sounds nothing like the Western Tennessee/Arkansas area. Texas and Oklahoma can sound alike, but they sound nothing like people from Mississippi or Alabama. Ever been to Atlanta, Georgia? I like to think of that as sort of like a Scarlett O'Hara accent. Most of Northern Louisiana is like Southern Arkansas, but when you enter Cajun country get ready to experience another entity altogether I guarontee. I can emulate most of these verbally. They are more difficult to put down in writing.

A lot of people from other parts of the country tend to lump these various areas together and when pressed to do a Southern accent, it comes out roughly like something out of the Beverly Hillbillies. That is to say that it sounds ignorant and uneducated. Somehow I became acutely aware of this phenomenon at an early age and the Southern accent never took serious root with me the way it does with some individuals. I didn't want to sound dumb. I emulated people I saw on TV, heard on the radio, watched in the movies. I was drawn to acting. I learned that I had a facility for doing all kinds of accents. Not only could I distinguish a Virginia accent from a Georgia accent, but I could do cockney, Scottish, Irish, French, Italian, on and on and on. The accent I spoke with in everyday life tended to change with my locale. I absorbed the local linguistic flavor. Still do. Oh God, you should have heard me when I spent five years in Minneapolis, "Ya sure, ya betcha..."

At any rate, what we're talking about here is stereotyping. I abhor it. We all do it to an extent, but I honestly try to avoid it as much as possible. I don't like having it done to me. Others don't like having it done to them either.

I dropped the y'all thing a long time ago you guys. (No not youse guys. That too sounds ignorant and uneducated.) However, when pressed to do so, when with relatives in the South, when speaking with friends from childhood, it all comes flooding back. At least that's my perception of it. They usually remark on how foreign I sound. I suspect they wonder who I really am since I don't sound like them anymore. And as I have attested in these pages, I am an amalgamation of all the places and accents I have been privy to over the years. The question is "What does an amalgamation sound like?" It's American boys and girls. It's American.


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