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want some cawfee?

I've been thinking about my accent.

For years, I would swear to anyone who asked that I do not have a Long Island accent. Deny, Deny, Deny.

Statia mentioned accents today. Lileks mentioned accents - Madonna does not have a Long Island accent James. It's more like wannabe Bronx.

So here it is. I do have an accent.

I say mawl instead of mall. I say cawfee instead of coffee.

Yea, I go to the mawl with my dawter to have some cawfee and tawk. You should hear my when I'm on a cursing streak. I sound like something that crawled out of a South Shore sewer.

There are a number of people who can attest to this infliction I have. Meryl, Melly, Alan, Travis, just to name a few.

Go ahead guys, my threat to kill you if you told is cancelled.

It's a curse to sound like MaryJo Buttafuco. At least I don't act like her. Yet.

Don't come near my husband, bitch.

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Comments

Remember this: Boris Karloff was once asked if his lisp had caused problems getting work. The reply - "Lithp? Wot lithp?"

There's one thing that I still say in a ny accent, and that's "draw", as in drawer. I get laughed at all the time.

Hey, I've put up with my wife telling me she has to warsh the dishes for 25 years. Jeez; I didn't think there was an R in wash. (Of course she also goes to the whale to get a nice bucket of spring water) It used to drive me nuts, but now I just laugh. :^)

Long Island??

I thought it was Lon Guyland.

That's "Lawn Guyland".

I love talking to Michele, but every time I do, I get homesick.

Sigh. Noo Yawk. Jehsey. Home.

I think I have to make a trip back, and get into the City this time.

Growing up in Louisiana put it's mark on me. Living the last 23 years in Florida has washed a lot of it out, but every once in a while, out of the blue, someone will ask what part of Louisiana I'm from. When I'm drunker tired it come out real strong I gairontee. yep.

I grew up in New England, but all my relatives lived in the tri-state. Most often, we visited my family on Long Island and I hung out with my cousins and her friends.

THEY made fun of the way I talked! It wasn't till I was older till I realized that it should have been the other way around.

I shouldn't post this comment, I know I will regret it---

That accent is sexy!

Remember when Mike Myers was on Saturday Night Live? He did that "Cawfee Tawk" sketch every week for a couple of years, I think . . . and oh, mama, did that make me seek out every other example of that accent, on film and television, as spoken by a woman, and fantasize!

My mother came to America when she was 9 years old, and had a British accent. I noticed a few years ago that she tended to say cawfee, while the rest of her accent seemed to be California normal. I asked her about the cawfee, and she said that
when she was 10 years old, she had started putting a New York spin on her accent so as to keep her peers from making fun of her British ways.

The NY accent disguise: Don't leave home without it.

I think Michele needs to call me and I'll be the official arbiter of accent or not - why, you ask? Because I grew up in Montgomery, Alabama and don't sound like a damned redneck. I am qualified to a) mock Michele's accent if it exists and b) look for some sort of Alabama joke in there. Of course, i'm banking on (a) to carry the night.

So, what do you say, spanky? Give me a ring? :)

So many others have braved the rapids - go nuts. Just let me sleep in until 10am tomorrow as I'm up getting buzzed tonight. :)

Yes, Michele does have a Lawn Guyland accent. However, she'll be pleased to hear that it's really rather soft, and nowhere near as honkish and loud as some folks I've heard.

New Yawk is the only place I've been, though, where a mechanic named Oil puts earl in your car. (Cah?)

I don't care what part of this country you are from, you can't top the greatest accent I ever heard. It was a young, attractive German woman I worked with once who had a German accent overlain by 10 years of working in Tennessee. We used to start conversations just to listen to her talk.

Oh, and she knew it, too. "Ah vorked in Tennessee, kin ya tayll?"

American accents are fun
I promise you I ain't got none.
I'll tell you directly
That I speak correctly!
But you speak real funny, old son

I've moved around a lot so my accent isn't very pronounced — until after the second drink, when it becomes positively Nawrth Jurzey.

It always amazed me how my brother and I grew up in a small town in the mountains, surrounded by townsfolk and relatives with mountain accents, yet we never picked one up.

We say 'creek,' not 'crick,' 'water,' not 'wurter,' etc. I have a tendency to unconsciously mimic accents, which got me into trouble in high school when I sat next to the Australian exchange student in French class.

Aussie accent + French accent = What the heck are you saying?

The only times I've been told that I have an accent were when I lived in L.A. (it was more for speaking fast rather than accent, per se) and the times when I come back from Canada, eh.

BTW, it's more 'aboat' with a silent t than 'aboot,' you hosers! Take off!

Dere ain't nuttin wrong wit a lon gislan accent. At least we don't tawk like we're from bastin or somtin. Now that's an annoyin accent. I met dis one guy, big fat eye-talian, wit da gole chains and da jumpsuit an all, looked like he come straight outta brooklyn. An when i met um, he sez to me, "How aaaaaaaaayyyya!" an i damn near shat myself. Now dat's an accent worf hidin, if yer askin.

I once had a girlfriend from Selma, Alabama, who had taken voice lessons to get a non-descript, well-enunciated accent. Except when she talked to anyone from the south. Then she slipped.

Well, she was once on the phone with her father back home, and her accent kind of half-slipped, and thus was accused by me of sounding like redneck white trash at the exact time her father accused her of sounding "like a Jewish person from New York."

It was pretty funny.

It's my firm belief that people from central New Jersey have no accent whatsoever and pronounce every word exactly as it would appear in the pronunciation guides in the dictionary.

Seriously.

Waugh-ter. Cof-fee. Cray-on (not 'crane,' or 'cray-un.')

Draw-er. Milk (not 'melk'.) Roof (not 'ruff').

Also, nobody in central NJ goes "Joisey, yeah, Joisey, haw haw." Hehe.

Anyone ever wonder why it is that the further south you go in any state, the more southern accents you hear? Even if you're in the south of one of the northernmost state, people will have southern accents. Does the accent force the migration, or is it the other way around?

This is only slightly off topic:

Michele, have you ever heard of the Scottish mafia?

They'll make you an offer you can't understand.

D

Hey den der what's dis about accents, eh?

Yep, midwesterner here. VERY slight accent. That Fargo movie? Imagine maybe 10% of that level and that's normal people, I'm less than that. When I was little I picked up accents really fast too. Visited relatives in Virginia or California and came home sounding like I'd lived there my whole life. Accents are weird.

The comment about the guy named Oil putting earl in the car reminded me that my favorite NY/Long Island word is "terlet".

I laugh every time I hear it and will say it over and over to my self cuz after all these years I STILL think it's hysterical. Terlet, terlet, terlet. Hehehehe.

I need help.

You sound like a lonely bunch. If you do not already know what a chooch is, please go look in the mirror.