Monday, May 17, 2010

thoughts on speech

I just had a conversation with my friend (who is in CT at Yale) about different speech quirks of various parts of the country. I told her she's been influenced a bit by the north in some of her vowels, particularly the a's. As I am getting closer to heading to Minnesota for a year (and a final year after a year of internship somewhere), I am making promises to myself about what funny northern speech habits I vow never to adopt. I am much more aware of my own speech and how I pronounce things when it is different from those around me. I plan to continue to use the word y'all because I think it is such a great word, short and to the point. I also plan to never say my a's and o's like they do, all drawn out on the o's especially, and the a's. I am not quite sure even how to describe the a, except that they say it like you say the first letter of the alphabet, a long a, and then hold it out a bit longer, especially in words like bag and tag. I didn't even understand at first what someone had actually said when I heard those words said that way, especially bag. Then I had to try not to laugh, because it just sounds so funny to me. I can't really say the o the way they do anyway. I tried, I'm not sure how they do it. As for the a, well, I just put my foot down. I can't think of any other words or letters right now. We'll see how I do on this after I've been there for a while. Ha.