Thursday, March 12, 2009

I want to pick up an accent

So, I long ago lost most of any kind of Minnesota accent I had... which wasn't much considering my parents are from upstate New York and Cincinnati, Ohio, so what was modelled at home was a mix of semi-southern phrases and nasally vowels, and I had to pick up my penchant for saying "Oh Gosh!" from school friends, who were confused and appalled by me chastising them for "cussing." 

Anyway, at the age of 8, moving to a new state where everyone was related to one another and hardly knew of another way to speak, unless you counted Spanish, I worked hard to become more Minnesotan, but it was short-lived.  I went to a local college, but one with lots of out-of-state and out-of-country students, like my boyfriend-cum-husband*, who honestly didn't know what "pop" was and laughed uproariously whenever I said it.  So, now I say "soda" instead, and "yeah" instead of "yah" and cut off the "uf dah" before it reaches the "dah."  

All of this is to say that I now speak something like a newscaster with poorer diction, and I'm thinking I need to ethnic it up again.  Thanks to the Coen Brothers, the Minnesota accent (or a gross exaggeration of it, anyway), is almost as well known as the hick accent as a southern one, so I don't think I'll go back to that just now.  Considering my reading material lately, I'm thinking of picking up some Irish, and I don't mean liquor.  

For subtlety's sake, my model is going to be Mayor Carcetti in The Wire:



... who is supposed to be Italian, I think, but the actor is too Irish to completely cover up his accent, and occasionally says words stuff like "I tink" and "the letter haitch."  I was also inspired again by watching Hot Fuzz to say: "God rest 'im" and "God rest 'er" whenever talking about dead folk.  

In conclusion, coming soon, a pretentious and annoying fake accent!



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* Stop laughing!  That's not dirty, it's LATIN.


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