Comments on: Friday leftovers.

By: Bob G.

Bob G. — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 20:07:34 +0000

Simply AMAZING….!!!

Says I have a 100% PHILADELPHIA accent…and I come from Philly…who’da thunk, eh?

Now…if ONLY these “Hoosiers” could learn to make a GOOD Philly cheesesteak…!

By: Danny

Danny — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 14:35:52 +0000

No problem, Dorothy, the holidays are going to be busy for us family-wise too. We’ll be out for several weeks, but most of the time we are going to be in North Carolina.

Yeah, I am pretty sure it is the one on Pelham road. Speaking of accents, it always makes me smile when the young Thai girl at the restaurant greets us with the thickest, most southern version of “Heeaayyy! How y’all doin’?” I guess southern accents are like kudzu, They grow on you whether you like it or not.

By: Dorothy

Dorothy — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 20:23:36 +0000

Danny I wish we could arrange an accidentally on purpose bump into each other, but my kids are coming to town on Wednesday and Thursday this week, and we are having early Christmas on Friday. I”m taking the day off, as is my husband, and we’re exchanging gifts and making a big ham dinner. Let me know next time you’re here, though!

Is that Thai restaurant on Pelham Road by any chance? I think there are two of them up in that vicinity. I’ve eaten at both.

By: wade

wade — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 15:16:54 +0000

I took the accent test – I’m 2% of a good girlfriend.

Maybe the site couldn’t understand which quiz I was taking…

By: Danny

Danny — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 14:29:42 +0000

Nancy, thanks. I’ll check her out over the holidays which I can hardly wait for to come. Lately, my free time has been scarce because it is crunch time. I’m designing a gearbox that is going to weigh 18,000 lbs and transmit 44,000 horsepower. Sure hope it works because that would be an embarrassingly big paperweight! I’ll know in March 2008.

By: nancy

nancy — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 13:54:30 +0000

Danny (and all the rest of you), if you haven’t discovered the novels of Laura Lippman you’re really missing something. All are set in Baltimore (one goes to Texas, but begins and ends in Charm City), and there are extensive discussions of Bawlmer pronunciations.

Apparently “hon” is a big word there. I was thrilled to hear Marcia Donnelly/Tootsie Duvall call someone “hon” on an episode of “The Wire” this season.

By: Danny

Danny — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 13:43:12 +0000

You know another odd thing I just remembered about Baltimore is that they have these roadside stands where you can get open pit beef sandwiches. How strange is that? Growing up there, I never questioned it, but I’ve never seen it elsewhere and I’ve wondered how they came to be. I mean, were there enough people that said to themselves, “Man, sometimes I’m drivin’ down the road and can barely think straight for want of an open pit beef sandwich. We must have one of these little stands every so often as we drive, lest we perish.”

Whatever.

I guess it is kinda like the boiled peanuts they have in South Carolina. Dorothy knows about them.

Hey Dorothy, we’ll be out there next Friday. My sister-in-law turns 40 on Saturday. She wants to go eat in Greenville at the Bankok Thai Cuisine restaurant. But who knows, someone may have prepared a surprise for her.

By: Danny

Danny — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 13:31:52 +0000

Alex, being a native Baltimoron, I do agree we have a weird, subtle accent. I think I mostly speak without it nowadays, but I sometimes lapse back into it for an odd word or two. My mother still “warshes” clothes and drinks “warder.” But then I do get the southern accent back if I spend a long spell with my other kin. Raised in Bawlmer by a bunch of hillbillies. Geesh. It’s a wonder I can talk at all.

From Wikipedia: Baltimore’s accent exemplifies a dialectal continuum between Tidewater American English and Delaware Valley American English, loosely possessing the vowel shifts of the former and general pronunciation of the latter. For instance, “Baltimore” is pronounced “Bawlamer” or even “Balmer,” and “Maryland” becomes “Murland” or “Murlan.” Other common pronunciations include “ool,” “amblance,” “wooder,” “warsh,” “sharr, or shaow” “dug,” “tew” (oil, ambulance, water, wash, shower, dog, and two, respectively).

By: Caleb Cook

Caleb Cook — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 13:08:44 +0000

I took the quiz, hit Submit Answers … and found that I was “10% perfect as a girlfriend.”

Maybe it’s my accent or something.

By: alex

alex — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 05:59:46 +0000

I was astounded to learn I was Philadelphian. I went back a second time and decided to pronounce marry the same as Mary/merry and came up Midland.

There need to be more criteria than these to perform a truly accurate test. The Philadelphian description also lumped in places like Baltimore, which to my ear is distinctly different than Philadelphia/New Jersey, which is distinctly different from Midland. I had a friend from Baltimore and Baltimorese has its own distinctive inflections and pronunciations. I knew him in Chicago, where there’s a strong undertone of shanty Irish, and so he really stood out. We had a book one time with a linguistic map and what they speak in Baltimore is known as the “Norfolk twang.” Wonder if that’s pronounced “Norfuck” as it is in Virginia.