Dem white suthernurs shore are smart!

[loinburger]

Has this turned into a fake southern dialect argument? Awesome.

Let me try: "G'day mate, I'm from the Southern US and I'm bloody racist."

[SlowwHand]

The thread title sounds more like someone still perfecting their mastery of Ebonics, as does Al's valiant effort.

[Hauldren Collider]

No kidding.

[Al B. Sure!]

The thread title sounds more like someone still perfecting their mastery of Ebonics, as does Al's valiant effort.

I'll have you know my "Dem dare whyte suthnas sho is smaht" is probably far closer to it than MrFun's, even if it sounds like I'm missing the 'massa' on the end.

[Al B. Sure!]

Oh and Ebonics? Ebonics is a joke for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is that "African American vernacular English" is as meaningful as "White vernacular English" being represented by I don't know... the equivalent of Dave Chappelle doing his 'white' voice. Black people from Philly do not sound like Black New Yorkers and they sound different from Black West Coast folk and they sound worlds different from Black southerners.

There is no such thing as 'Ebonics' as depicted in the media or popular culture as some monolithic language.

[SlowwHand]

Whatever you say, sparky.

[Al B. Sure!]

Whatever you say, sparky.

I'm just saying. Ebonics is just some ivory tower intellectualism to make it okay for some people to sound like retards

[SlowwHand]

I see! Semantics.

[Al B. Sure!]

But people from the South whether Black or white, if they sound like Southerners, sound like retards anyway

[Hauldren Collider]

Alby, I would seriously doubt that you've even ever met someone from the south with an impression like that. Both in your dialectal spelling and your "sound like retards" opinion.

[SlowwHand]

What do you think, Al, MrFun?

The Four Most Annoying U.S. Accents

America is a big country, and our size, along with our diversity, means a wide variation in our regional accents. That’s a beautiful thing in theory, but the accents themselves aren’t always so lovely, either because they feature irritating, repetitive sounds or are difficult to understand. Most of us have at least one accent that sets our nerves on edge. Though taste is subjective, these four seem to be the biggest offenders.

1. Upper Midwestern, “Yah?”
The Coen brothers’ movie, Fargo, got a lot of mileage out of just how grating an Upper Midwestern accent could be. The film is an endless refrain of, “Yah?” and, “Oh, yah!” which makes you laugh because you know you only have to listen to it for two hours and not a second longer. The most distinct characteristics of Upper Midwestern speech are rounded vowel sounds—people speak as if they were holding a small ball in their mouths—and repetitive phrases like the aforementioned “yah” and “you betcha.” Also, everything is phrased as a question, which can undermine the speaker’s intelligence and authority, yah?

2. Northern New Jersey, a.k.a. “Joisey”
Northern New Jerseyans have a way of speaking that’s closer to the way people from New York City speak, since the northeast quarter of the state is within the New York metropolitan area. “Coffee,” “dog,” and “talk,” are pronounced, “cawfee,” “dawg,” and “tawk.” “Th” also becomes “d,” as in, “dey” (they) and “dese” (these). And nouns and pronouns become plural with a “z,” as in, “yooz guyz.” Think John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and repeat after me: “Hey, yooz guyz! Dere’s de dawg!”

The subtle difference between the North Jersey and the New York City accent is the “r.” Jerseyans pronounce their “r”s, New Yorkers—especially Brooklynites—don’t. A New Yorker would say, “ovah deh,” whereas a North Jerseyan would say, “over dere.”

As with the Upper Midwestern accent, this one is frustrating because it makes the other person sound uneducated, though, obviously, that’s not always necessarily true.

3. Welcome tah Bahston
I love the Car Talk guys on National Public Radio, but I have one friend who just can’t listen to them because of their “obnoxious” accents. Tom and Ray Magliozzi are from Cambridge, “Mah,” and have the blue collar Boston accent that features a broad “a” and an inability to say the letter “r.” Though New England is a melting pot of Scot-Irish, German, Italian, and other immigrants, they all seem to have settled on the same accent¾those who didn’t go to prep school, that is. Instead of, “Did you park the car in the garage?” they say, “Did you pahk the cah in the gahrahge?”

Whereas Californians and Midwesterners skip lightly over their “a”s, for Bostonians, the “a” is a long, loud drawn out affair, and not a happy one.

4. The Deep South: Y’all C’mon Back Now, Y’Hear?
Lack of enunciation is also what makes a Southern drawl annoying to many people. I, for one, find Paula Deen’s accent almost as indigestible as her donut burger.

The South contains wide variations in its accents, but there are some generalizations. It’s a lethargic kind of speech, the kind that doesn’t require much energy on a sultry summer day. Southern folk don’t close their mouths on “r”s, so “stork” sounds like “stalk.” And while they’ll use a light “wh” instead of the heavier, New York “w,” their vowels seem to just roll off the tongue without any effort. That makes it difficult to understand someone speaking, since “pen” sounds just like “pin,” “feel” like “fill,” and “fail” like “fell”.

Just Stop Tawking!
Accents can irritate us for different reasons. They may be difficult to understand, they may feature harsh or repetitive sounds, or they may make us feel something about the person speaking. These are just a few of the possibly annoying accents; any mode of speech different from our own may make us want to scream, “Just talk normally, people!” after hearing it for too long. But learning a bit about the different accents and their origins can help us grow an appreciation for diversity.

[Al B. Sure!]

Alby, I would seriously doubt that you've even ever met someone from the south with an impression like that. Both in your dialectal spelling and your "sound like retards" opinion.

Northern Virginia is not the South. It's been Yankee-ized.

[Al B. Sure!]

What do you think, Al, MrFun?

Sounds like the truth. Boston... Midwest... Joisey... South... all terrible accents.

[MrFun]

What do you think, Al, MrFun?

Yah! Yah!

[Hauldren Collider]

Northern Virginia is not the South. It's been Yankee-ized.

Yeah, you've never been here either.

While it's true that Northern Virginia has a lot of northern transplants now, I still know plenty of people whose families have lived here for more than a generation who have southern accents.