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From: Claire Keenan Agthe <>
Subject: Re: [APG] Regionalisms
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:09:11 -0500
References: <d10.1e9025c6.34f48dd7@aol.com><5AE5F901-6507-4233-8C33-358ED11CAE2C@comcast.net><000301c87890$fdf31850$f9d948f0$@com>
In-Reply-To: <000301c87890$fdf31850$f9d948f0$@com>


On Feb 26, 2008, at 11:02 AM, Elissa Scalise Powell, CG wrote:

> ... I had heard that we mostly learn to
> speak from our mothers. That explains why I said warsh until my
> high school
> years and teasing from my classmates got rid of that habit for me.
> My mother
> was from Ohio.


I grew up in the suburbs and was proud of not having a Philadelphia
accent. My father, raised in South Philadelphia, had a strong
accent. As kids, we used to love to try to get him to say anything
that had "4" in it (four, to us, but "fawr" to him), and then we'd
laugh hysterically. I remember one year having a place down the
shore ("down the shore" is another Philadelphia-ism) that had an
address with "44" in it, on "4th" St. ("fawty-faw" "fawth") -- as we
were driving through the town, we must have asked a million times,
"what was that address again?" Cheap entertainment, that's for
sure. Imagine my shock when I moved to New York and was talking to
someone whose intelligence I admired and was hoping to impress, when
he stopped me in the middle of a sentence and asked "are you from
Philadelphia or Baltimore?" Eventually, I had to concede that I have
something of a Philadelphia accent, after all. But only to the ears
of a non-Philadelphian!

I don't think we "warsh," but we do use "wooder" to do it in. And
when I was a kid, we did have a "crick" nearby -- though as I got
older, I didn't hear anyone say anything other than "creek." There
for a while (mostly while in NY), I learned to edit out of my
conversation certain "o" words -- I no longer was "going home," I was
"going to my parents' house" once I became aware of just how nasal
those "o"s sounded. Then I moved to Boston and thought, my accent at
its worst isn't as bad as this! One of women I worked with was from
Waltham, and I felt like she was speaking a foreign language, I had
to ask her to repeat herself so often. Eventually, I adjusted. And
I got used to my own "accent" and gave up the self-editing. Ain't
maturity and self-acceptance grand? ;-)

Claire

Claire Keenan Agthe
http://www.bloodlines.biz





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