“Wall Street”—meaning, we think, a subset of analysts with too much free time—
NHIs and UFOs–
Linked below is an extremely interesting and informative clip of very intelligent, thoughtful, and articulate “experiencer” and extremely well plugged in, longtime CIA officer Jim Semivan, discussing his experiences with NHI and the whole phenomenon with James Iandoli and Peter Levenda, and pointing out that once you have a very profound encounter with NHIs, you have had an experience which is unlike any other, and that, in trying to comprehend what has happened, you find that you have “no category/place to put this experience,” an observation which many other experiencers have echoed.
Semivan also says that, as far as he knows, we really have no information on the NHIs sufficient to allow us to comprehend them.
Semivan also points out that, for instance, for all of their flying around, and a myriad of sightings, and encounters, NHIs have not actually “announced themselves,” nor–presuming that they have the power to do so–have NHIs interfered with, prevented, or stopped any of our wars, epidemics, or natural disasters.*
So, what is their position vis-a-vis the human race?
English actors trying to do “American” accents will sometimes add “r” to vowels where we don’t. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re hearing what they expect to hear or just hypercorrecting, the same way many Americans do with “habanero” (which is not “haba-nyero”).
Some English actors are quite good at sounding “American”, for example I’ve never heard Hugh Laurie stick in extra “r”s, and I had no idea Bob Hoskins was English until I looked it up.
I put “American” in quotes because all bets are off if any actor, even an American, tries to do a Southern accent. Southern accents are local and it’s weird to hear a Frankenstein’s Monster made up of geographically disparate accents stitched together. British people must feel the same way about American actors trying “British” accents.
It’s also weird, though I suppose not so much to Southerners, to watch local news in the South and nobody on has a Southern accent; if they are local they took classes to lose it before going into broadcasting. It’s one of the many conventions of TV we don’t think is odd until we think about it, like showing teenage children as shorter than their parents.
But there are places in the South where you can walk around all day without hearing a Southerner, Charlotte for instance.
Thinking about the Dems and their continued focus on “messaging”, I think it’s all they have, because they can’t give up any of the 20/80 sides of issues without fracturing their coalition. Even the ones who are the most critical, like Gollum (who was once known as “James Carville” before he was irredeemably corrupted by electoral politics) are quick to emphasize that they don’t mean to actually give anything up, just to strategically keep quiet about more extreme positions for long enough to fool the voters.
Mike Plaiss, I think there is a whole lot of unjustified hysteria about the economy and Trump policies. We are currently caught in the very slow residential real estate market with the house we’re leaving on Wednesday as yet unsold. There really are no good reasons for the slow market; 7% mortgage rates are high but not extremely so. People read the news and some of the financial sites and they panic.
Southern accents are local
==
You’re a splitter. Lumpers maintain that the speech of the South outside of greater Charleston and south Louisiana features just two accents.
It’s also weird, though I suppose not so much to Southerners, to watch local news in the South and nobody on has a Southern accent;
==
Having no Southern accent is quite unremarkable among Virginians under 70. And I don’t mean people from NoVa. Neo has on her boards a regular commenter from Mobile, Alabama who admits none of his three children have a proper Southern accent.
==
Here’s Rod Dreher, whose first 27 years were spent living around Baton Rouge and who returned there at age 45 (for an unhappy ten year sojourn).
== https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1JuWVeJS-E
But of course “our betters” lump anyone with a Southern accent as having a sub 90 IQ.
Chuck u is almost worthy of ignoring except what slouching beast might succeed him
Probably not relevant today, but back in the late 70s when I was a grad student at UGA, by the time I finished I could tell accents from north GA vs south GA, Alabama, SC and Tenn. All very distinct. It seems a lot of that has been vanilla-ed out.
I once toured a mansion in Savannah and our guide was this woman who had to be pushing 90 (this would have been in the 90’s). Born and raised there she was very proud of what she called her “Savannah accent” which she insisted was distinct. She was quite a character with a razor-sharp wit, so she could have been pulling our leg.
I’m from the Northeast and have lived in the South since 1994. Five years in Richmond. Now twenty-six in south Louisiana.
I quickly learned there is no such thing as a Southern accent. There are Southern accents. Southern states usually have multiple accents.
It drives me crazy when a television show or movie is set in New Orleans and people have that weird Southern drawl which is more characteristic of Alabama, Georgia, South Caroline. No. That is not how people talk in Nawlins!
My wife is from northeast Tennessee. Where they have a distinct mountain accent that I had trouble understanding. “Did you worsh your har?”
I used to follow the young man in the video. He had a post in which he just had to chime in on the Israel-Gaza conflict. “No, jerkface, I follow your channel because I’m interested in linguistics. Spare me your pro-Palestinian nonsense.” Unfollowed him.
Two memorable things she told us:
“I’ve never met a true Savannahan yet that had anything good to say about “that book”. That book being Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
“If you want to stay on a Savannahan’s good side, don’t bring up the Civil War. It’s just not a polite topic of conversation.”
She was a hoot.
Today, which is pretty much over in Israel, was Shavuot. Commonly known among English speaking Christians as “Pentecost”. So roughly 1995 years plus or minus since Acts chapter 2. Except the Western Church – where it recognizes it at all- generally uses a different date.
It’s fairly common for Germans to add a soft “r” sound to words that end in vowels and to drop the “r” sound in words that end in “r.” There’s a similar thing in the classic “Boston” accent.
Niketas,
Up through the early ’80s I noticed most Americans spoke with distinct, local accents. This seemed to drop away with many of the young through today, where strong accents seem rare among anyone under 60, or so. My best guess is the advent and widespread adoption of cable television.
I disagree with your theory on news casters. Big markets often sought on air talent from the Midwest, but local talent often had local accents. So the nightly news anchor in Louisville might have been from Ohio or Illinois (Tom Brokaw was from South Dakota, Johnny Carson was from Iowa), but the local on the scene talent, weather gal, sports guy… often had noticeable, local accents. As I wrote, I noticed this began to fade away starting in the ’80s.
Agreed about the variety of Southern accents. There are several in North Carolina as one moves from west to east, and in central and east Carolina there are distinctive black and white accents in the same region.
I agree with others here who state there are many, Southern accents.
Before I moved to the South I heard one Southern accent. They all sounded the same to me, except for Bayou Cajun.
Now I can distinguish quite a few and am fairly accurate when guessing. The biggest change I notice is the percentage of locals that have strong accents. In my experience it was close to 100% in the past, but has dropped off over time so that most young people no longer have thick accents, yet some still do.
Same for fashion and culture. Chicago would be several years behind New York, Minneapolis a year or two behind Chicago…
Things are much more culturally homogenous now.
Nik, ever watch the Wire? Seems that about half were Brits, with no discernable Brit accents.
I had a College Prod, Dr. John Jenkins, who I think was from VA. He pronounced “about” as “abut”
@Rufus:I disagree with your theory on news casters.
Can only tell you what I observed. I did not watch every single local news team after all….
“Thinking about the Dems and their continued focus on “messaging”, I think it’s all they have, because they can’t give up any of the 20/80 sides of issues without fracturing their coalition. Even the ones who are the most critical, like Gollum (who was once known as “James Carville” before he was irredeemably corrupted by electoral politics) are quick to emphasize that they don’t mean to actually give anything up, just to strategically keep quiet about more extreme positions for long enough to fool the voters.”
Just about every Dem strategy article I read insists that the voters sincerely want what they’re selling, and are angry only because they’re not delivering it hard and fast enough. Few of them believe centrist voters hate racism, antisemitism, trans surgery on minors, men in women’s sports, open borders, censorship, inflationary spending, abortion through one hour after birth, etc.
I am native California.
Our plan to turn the entire country blue is secondary only to our effort in eliminating southern accents.
Be aware.and prepared.
Hugh Laurie and Dominic West both have 100% convincing American accents. Also from “The Wire,” Idris Elba was spot on. Tracey Ullman is eerily good at regional U.S. accents, even Dallas, which most non-Texans would completely whiff.
Southern and Texas accents (not remotely the same) are butchered in American TV and movies.
I can still hear my North Carolina aunt saying “worsh,” but she would have said “worsh yore hai-yid,” not “har.”
Look at this current video evidence showing the horrific conditions in South Africa at
Reckless and irresponsible reporting by major U.S. news outlets are contributing to the antisemitic climate that has resulted in the murder of two young people at an Israeli Embassy event in Washington last month and the attempted murder and terror attack on a group of pro-Israel demonstrators in Colorado on Sunday.
Without verification of any source other than Hamas and its collaborators, the New York Times, CNN, and Associated Press reported that a number of people seeking to receive humanitarian food boxes from the Gaza Humanitarian Fund were shot or killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. These reports were FALSE. Drone video and first-hand accounts clearly showed that there were no injuries, no fatalities, no shooting, no chaos. It is Hamas that continues to terrorize and intimidate those who seek food aid. The only source for these misleading, exaggerated, and utterly fabricated stories came from Hamas sources, which are designed to fan the flames of antisemitic hate that is arguably contributing to violence against Jews in the United States. Media sources who willingly parrot these libelous allegations should recant their fake news stories, apologize, and pledge to practice actual reporting of fact instead of engaging in dangerous propaganda that assists the terror group Hamas as they continue to hold innocent hostages for over 600 days after butchering over 1,200 people on October 7th.
Being the product of a North-South marriage and also having lived decades in both New England and Texas, I have been exposed to a wide variety of accents. It struck me that some Texas relatives, born in the first decade of the century of parents from Tennessee, had an accent that bore a resemblance to some New England accents.
I worked in Latin America with a German national whose main exposure to Germany had been during university in Germany. His father was a mining engineer based in Peru. He learned English from Texans while working on drilling rigs in Colombia. He didn’t speak English with a Texas accent, but with an accent that reminded me of Alabama. He sounded to me like someone whose native language was English.
Carlos Eire, who left Cuba as a child, told of his experiences in Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy. His English accent came from watching the Andy Griffith show.
Which suggests to me that if a native Spanish speaker wants to speak English with the accent of a native English speaker, the advice would be to learn to speak from someone from the Southern US.
Rick67
It drives me crazy when a television show or movie is set in New Orleans and people have that weird Southern drawl which is more characteristic of Alabama, Georgia, South Caroline. No. That is not how people talk in Nawlins!,
After my junior year in high school, I attended a 6 week Spanish course in Mexico. One of my housemates was from the New Orleans area. He sounded to me as if he were from Brooklyn.
Who knew that a Boston accent sounds the same as Chinese.
It drives me a bit crazy to hear actors doing New Orleans like a Southern accent. Or whatever the hell Kevin Costner thought he was doing in JFK.
Two quick addenda:
Gringo wrote: “He sounded to me as if he were from Brooklyn.”
1) When I taught at Tulane as an adjunct I once asked someone in the department if she was from Boston. Nope. New Orleans. That was when I first realized a native New Orleans accent is close to how people speak in Boston or (say) Brooklyn. The hard American R at the end of words starts to disappear. Pawk yoah caw.
2) In 1999 a group from our seminary took a cross-cultural immersion trip to south India. One day we attended a pastor’s conference at which we overheard a passionate debate regarding how to translate the Bible into Malayalam. At one point the director of the Indian Baptist Convention said,
*We* do not speak with an accent! *You* speak with an accent! We speak the King’s English!
That one statement transformed my perspective on accents and by extension on languages and dialects.
*Everyone* speaks with an accent. Everyone speaks a dialect.
My stepfather was a New York Jew and he did the intrusive-r after a vowel at the end of a word, e.g. I “sawr” her at the store.
I noticed that in Lenny Bruce recordings too.
Well, they speak the King’s English but at a pace so rapid that it becomes quite different. In north-central-west India, we (American expats) referred to it as “Hinglish.” I met an American woman there who said everyone thought she was Indian. In fact, she was Mexican-American and spoke English with the rapid pace of Spanish.
@Rick67: That was when I first realized a native New Orleans accent is close to how people speak in Boston or (say) Brooklyn.
I picked up on that when I moved from Boston to New Orleans.
One explanation I’ve encountered is that New Orleans is a port city and its accent was influenced by shipworkers from the Northeast.
I needed a car part and called my local (Midwestern) Autozone before I went there. The clerk who answered my call had a Deep South “hillbilly” accent that was so thick and stereotypical that I thought “Is he kidding?”
When I got to the store he turned out to be a Chinese man from China. I forget (if he told me) why he talked like that.
My last name starts with “Har”, but my Great Great Grandfather spelled it as “Hair”. South Carolina. He had 4 sons ( two died fighting for the South), my Great Grand Father dropped the “i”. I have “Har” on my head.
Wendy, there was another actor on the Wire that was a Det (I believe) that was also English. Maybe even two. OOPS, looked him up, US born but lived most of his life in UK. I have seen him in UK shows. Clarke Peters
I know three women, rather well, who live in Boulder.
One is openly Jewish, another is a covert Jew (she has one Jewish grandfather and never talks about his Jewishness), and the third is a Jewish convert of mixed Lebanese and Northern European descent who converted to please her second husband.
When I heard about the attack yesterday, I was sure all three women were safe. That’s because not one of them would ever be caught anywhere near any event that could possibly be construed as pro-Israel, not even a walk in support of the hostages in Gaza.
Here’s how the Jewish convert described the attack in a social media post (sorry for the length, but I think this has to be read to be believed):
I’m trying to think about the attack here in Boulder today, one in which a man of Arab heritage threw Molotov cocktails at people during their weekly demonstration in support of those still held hostage by Hamas. They were carrying messages that called for release of hostages. They were also carrying both American and Israeli flags. They sang Hatikva, Israel’s national anthem.
Even as we await word of the victims, I have to ask why the organization, with chapters around the US, marches under a flag that, today, to most of the world, represents the massacre, if not genocide, of the Palestinian people. While their primary message is to bring the hostages home, the national anthem and the flag send a message in support Netanyahu’s government. . . . I would not carry an American flag during the bombing of Cambodia. I would not carry it during the bombing of Iraq. At the moment Palestinians are those under threat of annihilation.
Give some thought for the maimed, starving, and murdered, and for those who care about them. . . .
Reports say the assailant today shouted, “Free Palestine!”
Here’s the kicker:
I watched videos of today’s tragedy. He can also be heard shouting, “We are cousins!”
For the record, I too have watched and listened to video of the “tragedy.” I find no evidence that the attacker shouted, “We are cousins.” My acquaintance may have mistakenly transcribed his shouting “End Zionists!”
There is a new CNN poll out that checks general public opinion on the two parties. It is moderately postitive for the GOP and not terribly surprising overall, but one result is rather galling to me.
While the public as a whole sees the GOP as relatively effective, they also say, 41% to 30%, that it’s better described as the party of extremism, the only attribute tested that fewer than 30% said applied to neither party.
So 30% think the Dems are too extreme, but 41% think the GOP is too extreme. Really?? All the crazy sh_t that the Dems have done, and the GOP is the extreme party?
Of course, people’s definitions and understanding of “extreme” are going to vary radically. I am curious as to how the details of that understanding or perception break down.
Unbelievable, MollyG. Propaganda works.
@Kate: In fact, she was Mexican-American and spoke English with the rapid pace of Spanish.
Spanish speakers do speak measurably faster then English. Part of their advantage is that they speak syllable-timed which is to say each syllable is allotted about the same amount of time.
So they speak rat-a-tat-tat-a-rat-a-tat-tat.
English speakers are stress-timed – dah-dum-dah-dum-da-da-dum.
French speakers are syllable-timed. However, just for the fun of it I guess, they blur all the words together — ratatatatatratatattat.
It’s not my imagination that oral French really is harder to hear.
MollyG,
So would any of these women support a US war ?
@TommyJay: Of course, people’s definitions and understanding of “extreme” are going to vary radically. I am curious as to how the details of that understanding or perception break down.
We are past Peak Woke, but Trump as an extreme figure remains. Partly because he really is extreme by the pablum standards of most politicians, red or blue.
My current way of thinking about Trump — he’s not Orange Man Bad, he’s Orange Man Mutant.
Trump is an X-Man.
“I would not carry an American flag during the bombing of Cambodia.”
I might or might not consider that tactful or proper, though to make the circumstances parallel we’d have to posit a recent brutal murder of innocent noncombatants (including infants) by Cambodians that had precipitated a retaliatory bombing by a neighboring country. And even without those exacerbating conditions, what are we to judge from the remark? That it’s quite understandable for an Egyptian to murder Jews in the U.S. because he’s upset about a war halfway across the world? Because the lesson I take from that is that Mr. Soliman can under no circumstances be allowed free on the streets of my country, and what’s more, I have my doubts about people willing to argue that he ought.
Trump as an X-man. Quite clever and substantive.
I see Trump as using some extra force and unorthodox styles and strategies to undo 60 to 100 years of “slouching towards Gomorrah” or sliding through the “disenlightenment.” Others see him as merely extremely unorthodox and therefore dangerous, I suspect.
I am interested in David Mamet’s new book “Disenlightenment.” Neo’s question a couple days ago… What is “conservative?” I’d lean towards classical liberalism, with a side emphasis on the Constitution.
BOOM! S&P 500 records best May returns since 1990!
@ TommyJay > “What is “conservative?” I’d lean towards classical liberalism, with a side emphasis on the Constitution.”
I would reverse your two criteria.
Constitution first, with some phrases interpreted liberally (classical of course) if there is any ambiguity.
In fact, I would prefer to replace “conservative” with “constitutionalist” in political taxonomies.
huxley @Kate: In fact, she was Mexican-American and spoke English with the rapid pace of Spanish.
Spanish speakers do speak measurably faster then English.
One time I had a student with a Spanish surname who spoke very quickly in fluent English–no trace whatsoever of English as a Second Language. Much faster than students of Mexican origin. I thought of where Spanish was spoken very fast—Caribbean came to mind (Maracaibo/Maracucho– oy vey!). I asked him if his family was from the Caribbean. “Puerto Rico,” was the reply.
It’s not my imagination that oral French really is harder to hear.
My guess, from my experience with Spanish, is that you would find it easier to understand French spoken in front of you than French from video or a recording. There are some nonverbal cues from being face-to-face that make comprehension easier.
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News you may be able to use in case you come across someone peddling misinformation about the House fiscal bill:
Wall Street Stages a Weird Tax Bill Freakout
– An uproar is underway over a provision that isn’t in the House fiscal plan.
https://archive.md/na1WR
Worth reading for the opening line alone:
NHIs and UFOs–
Linked below is an extremely interesting and informative clip of very intelligent, thoughtful, and articulate “experiencer” and extremely well plugged in, longtime CIA officer Jim Semivan, discussing his experiences with NHI and the whole phenomenon with James Iandoli and Peter Levenda, and pointing out that once you have a very profound encounter with NHIs, you have had an experience which is unlike any other, and that, in trying to comprehend what has happened, you find that you have “no category/place to put this experience,” an observation which many other experiencers have echoed.
Semivan also says that, as far as he knows, we really have no information on the NHIs sufficient to allow us to comprehend them.
Semivan also points out that, for instance, for all of their flying around, and a myriad of sightings, and encounters, NHIs have not actually “announced themselves,” nor–presuming that they have the power to do so–have NHIs interfered with, prevented, or stopped any of our wars, epidemics, or natural disasters.*
So, what is their position vis-a-vis the human race?
* See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtgGH_Fos00
Boulder is about 25 miles from us. I have not felt welcome in Boulder for years. And I am not Jewish. But our Gov. is.
RE: Semivan and NHIs/UFOs–
See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVr2Sdu2_P4
Looks like I got out of St.-Germain just in time.
English actors trying to do “American” accents will sometimes add “r” to vowels where we don’t. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re hearing what they expect to hear or just hypercorrecting, the same way many Americans do with “habanero” (which is not “haba-nyero”).
Some English actors are quite good at sounding “American”, for example I’ve never heard Hugh Laurie stick in extra “r”s, and I had no idea Bob Hoskins was English until I looked it up.
I put “American” in quotes because all bets are off if any actor, even an American, tries to do a Southern accent. Southern accents are local and it’s weird to hear a Frankenstein’s Monster made up of geographically disparate accents stitched together. British people must feel the same way about American actors trying “British” accents.
It’s also weird, though I suppose not so much to Southerners, to watch local news in the South and nobody on has a Southern accent; if they are local they took classes to lose it before going into broadcasting. It’s one of the many conventions of TV we don’t think is odd until we think about it, like showing teenage children as shorter than their parents.
But there are places in the South where you can walk around all day without hearing a Southerner, Charlotte for instance.
Thinking about the Dems and their continued focus on “messaging”, I think it’s all they have, because they can’t give up any of the 20/80 sides of issues without fracturing their coalition. Even the ones who are the most critical, like Gollum (who was once known as “James Carville” before he was irredeemably corrupted by electoral politics) are quick to emphasize that they don’t mean to actually give anything up, just to strategically keep quiet about more extreme positions for long enough to fool the voters.
Mike Plaiss, I think there is a whole lot of unjustified hysteria about the economy and Trump policies. We are currently caught in the very slow residential real estate market with the house we’re leaving on Wednesday as yet unsold. There really are no good reasons for the slow market; 7% mortgage rates are high but not extremely so. People read the news and some of the financial sites and they panic.
https://x.com/VickiMcKenna/status/1929537645538939390
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/comrades-monday-june-2-2025-c-and?
Southern accents are local
==
You’re a splitter. Lumpers maintain that the speech of the South outside of greater Charleston and south Louisiana features just two accents.
It’s also weird, though I suppose not so much to Southerners, to watch local news in the South and nobody on has a Southern accent;
==
Having no Southern accent is quite unremarkable among Virginians under 70. And I don’t mean people from NoVa. Neo has on her boards a regular commenter from Mobile, Alabama who admits none of his three children have a proper Southern accent.
==
Here’s Rod Dreher, whose first 27 years were spent living around Baton Rouge and who returned there at age 45 (for an unhappy ten year sojourn).
==
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1JuWVeJS-E
But of course “our betters” lump anyone with a Southern accent as having a sub 90 IQ.
Yep
https://x.com/EYakoby/status/1929542778402345317
Chuck u is almost worthy of ignoring except what slouching beast might succeed him
Probably not relevant today, but back in the late 70s when I was a grad student at UGA, by the time I finished I could tell accents from north GA vs south GA, Alabama, SC and Tenn. All very distinct. It seems a lot of that has been vanilla-ed out.
I once toured a mansion in Savannah and our guide was this woman who had to be pushing 90 (this would have been in the 90’s). Born and raised there she was very proud of what she called her “Savannah accent” which she insisted was distinct. She was quite a character with a razor-sharp wit, so she could have been pulling our leg.
I’m from the Northeast and have lived in the South since 1994. Five years in Richmond. Now twenty-six in south Louisiana.
I quickly learned there is no such thing as a Southern accent. There are Southern accents. Southern states usually have multiple accents.
It drives me crazy when a television show or movie is set in New Orleans and people have that weird Southern drawl which is more characteristic of Alabama, Georgia, South Caroline. No. That is not how people talk in Nawlins!
My wife is from northeast Tennessee. Where they have a distinct mountain accent that I had trouble understanding. “Did you worsh your har?”
I used to follow the young man in the video. He had a post in which he just had to chime in on the Israel-Gaza conflict. “No, jerkface, I follow your channel because I’m interested in linguistics. Spare me your pro-Palestinian nonsense.” Unfollowed him.
Two memorable things she told us:
“I’ve never met a true Savannahan yet that had anything good to say about “that book”. That book being Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
“If you want to stay on a Savannahan’s good side, don’t bring up the Civil War. It’s just not a polite topic of conversation.”
She was a hoot.
Today, which is pretty much over in Israel, was Shavuot. Commonly known among English speaking Christians as “Pentecost”. So roughly 1995 years plus or minus since Acts chapter 2. Except the Western Church – where it recognizes it at all- generally uses a different date.
It’s fairly common for Germans to add a soft “r” sound to words that end in vowels and to drop the “r” sound in words that end in “r.” There’s a similar thing in the classic “Boston” accent.
Niketas,
Up through the early ’80s I noticed most Americans spoke with distinct, local accents. This seemed to drop away with many of the young through today, where strong accents seem rare among anyone under 60, or so. My best guess is the advent and widespread adoption of cable television.
I disagree with your theory on news casters. Big markets often sought on air talent from the Midwest, but local talent often had local accents. So the nightly news anchor in Louisville might have been from Ohio or Illinois (Tom Brokaw was from South Dakota, Johnny Carson was from Iowa), but the local on the scene talent, weather gal, sports guy… often had noticeable, local accents. As I wrote, I noticed this began to fade away starting in the ’80s.
Agreed about the variety of Southern accents. There are several in North Carolina as one moves from west to east, and in central and east Carolina there are distinctive black and white accents in the same region.
I agree with others here who state there are many, Southern accents.
Before I moved to the South I heard one Southern accent. They all sounded the same to me, except for Bayou Cajun.
Now I can distinguish quite a few and am fairly accurate when guessing. The biggest change I notice is the percentage of locals that have strong accents. In my experience it was close to 100% in the past, but has dropped off over time so that most young people no longer have thick accents, yet some still do.
Same for fashion and culture. Chicago would be several years behind New York, Minneapolis a year or two behind Chicago…
Things are much more culturally homogenous now.
Nik, ever watch the Wire? Seems that about half were Brits, with no discernable Brit accents.
I had a College Prod, Dr. John Jenkins, who I think was from VA. He pronounced “about” as “abut”
@Rufus:I disagree with your theory on news casters.
Can only tell you what I observed. I did not watch every single local news team after all….
https://vividmaps.com/north-american-regional-dialects-accents/
Just about every Dem strategy article I read insists that the voters sincerely want what they’re selling, and are angry only because they’re not delivering it hard and fast enough. Few of them believe centrist voters hate racism, antisemitism, trans surgery on minors, men in women’s sports, open borders, censorship, inflationary spending, abortion through one hour after birth, etc.
I am native California.
Our plan to turn the entire country blue is secondary only to our effort in eliminating southern accents.
Be aware.and prepared.
Hugh Laurie and Dominic West both have 100% convincing American accents. Also from “The Wire,” Idris Elba was spot on. Tracey Ullman is eerily good at regional U.S. accents, even Dallas, which most non-Texans would completely whiff.
Southern and Texas accents (not remotely the same) are butchered in American TV and movies.
I can still hear my North Carolina aunt saying “worsh,” but she would have said “worsh yore hai-yid,” not “har.”
Look at this current video evidence showing the horrific conditions in South Africa at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7u1xjuJrfs
Ambassador Huckabee’s statement on “media misinformation”: https://il.usembassy.gov/statement-on-media-misinformation-on-gaza/
Being the product of a North-South marriage and also having lived decades in both New England and Texas, I have been exposed to a wide variety of accents. It struck me that some Texas relatives, born in the first decade of the century of parents from Tennessee, had an accent that bore a resemblance to some New England accents.
In support of that observation, I present you with a 19th century Virginia accent. A Virginian’s Firsthand Account of the Civil War.
For comparison, here is a Downeast Maine accent: Bert and I. (Downeast Socialism.)
I worked in Latin America with a German national whose main exposure to Germany had been during university in Germany. His father was a mining engineer based in Peru. He learned English from Texans while working on drilling rigs in Colombia. He didn’t speak English with a Texas accent, but with an accent that reminded me of Alabama. He sounded to me like someone whose native language was English.
Carlos Eire, who left Cuba as a child, told of his experiences in Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy. His English accent came from watching the Andy Griffith show.
Which suggests to me that if a native Spanish speaker wants to speak English with the accent of a native English speaker, the advice would be to learn to speak from someone from the Southern US.
Rick67
After my junior year in high school, I attended a 6 week Spanish course in Mexico. One of my housemates was from the New Orleans area. He sounded to me as if he were from Brooklyn.
Who knew that a Boston accent sounds the same as Chinese.
I just found out that the Intellectual Takeout blog has accessibility problems right now. Here is an alternative link to A Virginian’s Firsthand Account of the Civil War.
Man Born in 1846 Talks About the 1860s and Fighting in the Civil War.
@Rick67: That is not how people talk in Nawlins!
No, it certainly it isn’t.
It drives me a bit crazy to hear actors doing New Orleans like a Southern accent. Or whatever the hell Kevin Costner thought he was doing in JFK.
Two quick addenda:
Gringo wrote: “He sounded to me as if he were from Brooklyn.”
1) When I taught at Tulane as an adjunct I once asked someone in the department if she was from Boston. Nope. New Orleans. That was when I first realized a native New Orleans accent is close to how people speak in Boston or (say) Brooklyn. The hard American R at the end of words starts to disappear. Pawk yoah caw.
2) In 1999 a group from our seminary took a cross-cultural immersion trip to south India. One day we attended a pastor’s conference at which we overheard a passionate debate regarding how to translate the Bible into Malayalam. At one point the director of the Indian Baptist Convention said,
*We* do not speak with an accent! *You* speak with an accent! We speak the King’s English!
That one statement transformed my perspective on accents and by extension on languages and dialects.
*Everyone* speaks with an accent. Everyone speaks a dialect.
My stepfather was a New York Jew and he did the intrusive-r after a vowel at the end of a word, e.g. I “sawr” her at the store.
I noticed that in Lenny Bruce recordings too.
Well, they speak the King’s English but at a pace so rapid that it becomes quite different. In north-central-west India, we (American expats) referred to it as “Hinglish.” I met an American woman there who said everyone thought she was Indian. In fact, she was Mexican-American and spoke English with the rapid pace of Spanish.
@Rick67: That was when I first realized a native New Orleans accent is close to how people speak in Boston or (say) Brooklyn.
I picked up on that when I moved from Boston to New Orleans.
One explanation I’ve encountered is that New Orleans is a port city and its accent was influenced by shipworkers from the Northeast.
I needed a car part and called my local (Midwestern) Autozone before I went there. The clerk who answered my call had a Deep South “hillbilly” accent that was so thick and stereotypical that I thought “Is he kidding?”
When I got to the store he turned out to be a Chinese man from China. I forget (if he told me) why he talked like that.
My last name starts with “Har”, but my Great Great Grandfather spelled it as “Hair”. South Carolina. He had 4 sons ( two died fighting for the South), my Great Grand Father dropped the “i”. I have “Har” on my head.
Wendy, there was another actor on the Wire that was a Det (I believe) that was also English. Maybe even two. OOPS, looked him up, US born but lived most of his life in UK. I have seen him in UK shows. Clarke Peters
I know three women, rather well, who live in Boulder.
One is openly Jewish, another is a covert Jew (she has one Jewish grandfather and never talks about his Jewishness), and the third is a Jewish convert of mixed Lebanese and Northern European descent who converted to please her second husband.
When I heard about the attack yesterday, I was sure all three women were safe. That’s because not one of them would ever be caught anywhere near any event that could possibly be construed as pro-Israel, not even a walk in support of the hostages in Gaza.
Here’s how the Jewish convert described the attack in a social media post (sorry for the length, but I think this has to be read to be believed):
I’m trying to think about the attack here in Boulder today, one in which a man of Arab heritage threw Molotov cocktails at people during their weekly demonstration in support of those still held hostage by Hamas. They were carrying messages that called for release of hostages. They were also carrying both American and Israeli flags. They sang Hatikva, Israel’s national anthem.
Even as we await word of the victims, I have to ask why the organization, with chapters around the US, marches under a flag that, today, to most of the world, represents the massacre, if not genocide, of the Palestinian people. While their primary message is to bring the hostages home, the national anthem and the flag send a message in support Netanyahu’s government. . . . I would not carry an American flag during the bombing of Cambodia. I would not carry it during the bombing of Iraq. At the moment Palestinians are those under threat of annihilation.
Give some thought for the maimed, starving, and murdered, and for those who care about them. . . .
Reports say the assailant today shouted, “Free Palestine!”
Here’s the kicker:
I watched videos of today’s tragedy. He can also be heard shouting, “We are cousins!”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/01/us/boulder-colorado-attack
For the record, I too have watched and listened to video of the “tragedy.” I find no evidence that the attacker shouted, “We are cousins.” My acquaintance may have mistakenly transcribed his shouting “End Zionists!”
There is a new CNN poll out that checks general public opinion on the two parties. It is moderately postitive for the GOP and not terribly surprising overall, but one result is rather galling to me.
https://www.nj.com/politics/2025/06/pretty-bleak-new-poll-sets-off-alarm-bells-for-democrats-taking-on-trump.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cnn-poll-a-record-share-of-americans-want-the-government-to-get-more-done-few-trust-either-party-to-do-it/ar-AA1FSkUD?ocid=BingNewsSerp
While the public as a whole sees the GOP as relatively effective, they also say, 41% to 30%, that it’s better described as the party of extremism, the only attribute tested that fewer than 30% said applied to neither party.
So 30% think the Dems are too extreme, but 41% think the GOP is too extreme. Really?? All the crazy sh_t that the Dems have done, and the GOP is the extreme party?
Of course, people’s definitions and understanding of “extreme” are going to vary radically. I am curious as to how the details of that understanding or perception break down.
Unbelievable, MollyG. Propaganda works.
@Kate: In fact, she was Mexican-American and spoke English with the rapid pace of Spanish.
Spanish speakers do speak measurably faster then English. Part of their advantage is that they speak syllable-timed which is to say each syllable is allotted about the same amount of time.
So they speak rat-a-tat-tat-a-rat-a-tat-tat.
English speakers are stress-timed – dah-dum-dah-dum-da-da-dum.
French speakers are syllable-timed. However, just for the fun of it I guess, they blur all the words together — ratatatatatratatattat.
It’s not my imagination that oral French really is harder to hear.
MollyG,
So would any of these women support a US war ?
@TommyJay: Of course, people’s definitions and understanding of “extreme” are going to vary radically. I am curious as to how the details of that understanding or perception break down.
We are past Peak Woke, but Trump as an extreme figure remains. Partly because he really is extreme by the pablum standards of most politicians, red or blue.
My current way of thinking about Trump — he’s not Orange Man Bad, he’s Orange Man Mutant.
Trump is an X-Man.
I might or might not consider that tactful or proper, though to make the circumstances parallel we’d have to posit a recent brutal murder of innocent noncombatants (including infants) by Cambodians that had precipitated a retaliatory bombing by a neighboring country. And even without those exacerbating conditions, what are we to judge from the remark? That it’s quite understandable for an Egyptian to murder Jews in the U.S. because he’s upset about a war halfway across the world? Because the lesson I take from that is that Mr. Soliman can under no circumstances be allowed free on the streets of my country, and what’s more, I have my doubts about people willing to argue that he ought.
Trump as an X-man. Quite clever and substantive.
I see Trump as using some extra force and unorthodox styles and strategies to undo 60 to 100 years of “slouching towards Gomorrah” or sliding through the “disenlightenment.” Others see him as merely extremely unorthodox and therefore dangerous, I suspect.
I am interested in David Mamet’s new book “Disenlightenment.” Neo’s question a couple days ago… What is “conservative?” I’d lean towards classical liberalism, with a side emphasis on the Constitution.
BOOM! S&P 500 records best May returns since 1990!
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2025/06/boom-s-500-records-best-may-returns.html
@ TommyJay > “What is “conservative?” I’d lean towards classical liberalism, with a side emphasis on the Constitution.”
I would reverse your two criteria.
Constitution first, with some phrases interpreted liberally (classical of course) if there is any ambiguity.
In fact, I would prefer to replace “conservative” with “constitutionalist” in political taxonomies.
huxley
@Kate: In fact, she was Mexican-American and spoke English with the rapid pace of Spanish.
Spanish speakers do speak measurably faster then English.
One time I had a student with a Spanish surname who spoke very quickly in fluent English–no trace whatsoever of English as a Second Language. Much faster than students of Mexican origin. I thought of where Spanish was spoken very fast—Caribbean came to mind (Maracaibo/Maracucho– oy vey!). I asked him if his family was from the Caribbean. “Puerto Rico,” was the reply.
It’s not my imagination that oral French really is harder to hear.
My guess, from my experience with Spanish, is that you would find it easier to understand French spoken in front of you than French from video or a recording. There are some nonverbal cues from being face-to-face that make comprehension easier.