Ask The Girl Raised In The South

Comments: 17

Becca P. May 28, 2007, 11:37am EDT

You have the cutest accent.

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Karen E. May 28, 2007, 11:39am EDT

Aw, shucks! thanky mam.

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Karen E. May 28, 2007, 11:40am EDT

Becca, Ha Ha Ha, I know exactly what you are referring to in that remark.

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Becca P. May 28, 2007, 11:50am EDT

But you do, it's just so cute - I'm sure everyone thinks so!

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Becca P. May 28, 2007, 11:52am EDT

Do you ever find that people from other parts of the country immediately make assumptions about your intelligence as soon as they hear you speak?

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Susan M. May 28, 2007, 12:00pm EDT

That's really great, Karen, but I'm older than you and you've got some of your grammar wrong!

It's y'all, not ya'll.

Now we all know that respect for elders is a hallmark of southern gentility, so I 'spect y'all will tender an apology forthwith.

*OK, Just Kidding!* Be a modern brat!

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Karen E. May 28, 2007, 12:26pm EDT

Becca, yes, sometimes as soon as I open my mouth to speak, people think I am an uneducated hick. They only hear the "southern", and have no idea that I went to college and was on the dean's list every semester. I can't help how I sound.

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Karen E. May 28, 2007, 12:28pm EDT

Susan, mam, with all due respect, I apologize for the incorrect usage. I have always thought it was ya'll, but now that I think about it, you are so correct. It is a contraction of you all, after all, so it would make sense for it to be y'all. Thank you ever so much for that upbraiding.

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Peter Joseph Swanson May 28, 2007, 1:24pm EDT

It's funny how people confuse accent with intelligence.

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Karen E. May 28, 2007, 1:37pm EDT

Yes, it is. sometimes we think that people from, say, London, are very intelligent because their accent makes them sound like everything they say is important. But people from Georgia and Tennessee sometimes sound like they slithered out from under a rock yesterday. Being a Georgia girl myself, I have been a "victim" of this thinking. People sometimes look through me to the person with me and address comments that should be made to me to my companion, because they think I am too stupid to understand what they are saying.

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ann c. May 29, 2007, 11:20am EDT

Karen, I'm originally from Tennessee and I don't understand about the "sound like they slithered out form under a rock yesterday". I have found that people from Alabama speak slower than either Georgia or Tennessee. Anyway I am blonde and southern so people REALLY assume that I know nothing!

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Karen E. May 29, 2007, 12:08pm EDT

Ann, not all of us sound like that, but there are a lot of people from the south who really sound unintelligent when they speak because they have such a country accent. What I am trying to say is that just because you "sound" a certain way, it has no relationship to your level of intelligence, but there are people from other areas who just assume you are illiterate because you "sound" southern.

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Jean E. May 29, 2007, 3:19pm EDT

Karen - don't have any questions for you - just a quick "addtoit" when I moved from Louisiana to Arkansas - the arkies thought I must have gone to school in a schoolboat - as LA was nothing but swamps - funny funny funny ~j

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Karen E. May 29, 2007, 4:04pm EDT

Jean--One time I was on a plane, sitting next to a man from Germany. He was asking me to explain why we eat "biscuits" for breakfast with sausage. He could not understand why we would eat cookies with sausage! Isn't that funny. I told him he would not understand until he could go to a restaurant for breakfast and order a biscuit, as there was no comparable word to use to describe the southern biscuit to a foreigner.

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