Why The Cellar?

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by MaggieL
Brian, don't feel bad about "y'all"...southern accents are *highly* contagious. One month in Memphis was long enough to make me completely unintelligible up here. Actually a couple hours worth of Shakespeare will have me speaking in Elizabethan cadences, too...

I spent 3 semesters in the pseudo-South (southeastern Missouri) going to school. They have some of the thickest drawls I've heard to date, other than folks from Louisiana. When I moved back to St. Louis, it took a while to get rid of the slight twang. One of my friends said that I sounded like a cross between a Southerner and a surfer. *shrugs*

Every once in a while, someone from here in Philadelphia says that I have an accent. Not a twang, but that it's just "different." The funny thing is now, when I listen to my mother talk, she sounds like SHE has an accent. I don't think the way I talk has changed at all since moving to the East Coast...at least I don't THINK so. St. Louisans generally do not have an accent, with the exception of some folks on the South Side (see my previous post here) and those out in the rural sections of the area (about 40 miles out of the city). The only other city I've been to that seems devoid of accents in general is Washington.