Twang, et al
The people I talk to the most are my husband, my brother and my cousin. The latter two live in the South. For the record, I have not lived there in the last 20 years. At least. Probably more like 25. But when I keep recharging the accent by talking to my kin on my cell phone, it’s hard to lose the accent. I caught myself saying “dia-beet-as” today instead of “diabetes.” It rolled out my mouth, as natural as could be. Then one of the other volunteers at the hospital, Yoo Jin, asked me where I was from. I told her, “Oakland.”
She said, “No, I mean originally.” That kind of shit.
I got in the cross hairs of a corpse going through the hallway on a gurney too. It was weird in the aspect that no one stopped walking but me. I stopped from time to time because I was behind the gurney. Granted, I have not lived in the South since…well…see paragraph above…but you pay your respects to the dead. You don’t walk up beside them and you don’t walk when they are being wheeled by you on a gurney. You stop and bow your head. Damn it. I got a good look from behind and the corpse was in a maroon velvet bag. Kind of like a big dead Crown Royal or something. The guy loaded him on an elevator – the old kind with the squeaky expanding metal door. Then they were gone. I suppose to a mortuary. I wondered if they would have a supper for the family. If someone would bring over those small chess pies. If they would sit around and tell stories. If people would cry. Then I remembered, this was California and I tried to quit thinking with a Southern accent. They’d probably take the body off somewhere and cremate the mess.
Crazy 57 Bus 
October 17, 2008 at 11:27 am
You can take the boy from the country, but you ….
Being from Oakland, I think I don’t have an accent. I suppose someone from the east coast would think different.
October 17, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I was told my a co-worker that she loved my Spanish accent, I told her I didn’t speak Spanish so it was impossible for me to have Spanish accent. She insisted I had an accent, I left it at that — there’s an old American Indian saying that you shouldn’t argue with crazy people because from a distance you can’t tell which one is nuts.
October 18, 2008 at 2:45 am
Steve, I don’t think people in CA have an accent. Most of them.
AZ, that is so cwazy. I listen to myself talk sometimes and I hear the twang and think that does sound ignant. I sound like something off the farm. No wonder people ask where are you from. THink I’ll respond with something like Southern Algeria next time, or Mexico.