One of the more obvious illustrations of my being "Non Southerner by Birth" is my accent. I don't have one. I don't say "Y'all" and no one at any time has remarked on my ability to chew a diphthong. In fact, I don't even have any sort of speech dialect which would allow someone to identify my origins at all. Somewhere in College or other place of higher learning, I learned that Colorado (my area of origin) is one of the few areas of the USA that has no discernible dialect of its own. Now this is totally different than in the South, where it sometimes seems that they have a different dialect for every little holler*.
Story Time! This is one of those real stories you can't make up, and really why would you? My good friend Bobby caught me online not too long ago and related it to me, about how he nearly got his teeth knocked in by a northerner.
Bobby owns a nice little marina on the river. In the course of his day, among other things, he also runs the little marina grocery/convenience store. Bobby works behind the counter himself and for sure, Bobby has one of them Southern Accents with a life of its own. The accent is the star of this story.
So, there's Bobby, working behind the counter and in walks a northerner (complete with family of lovely wife and a modicum of Devil's spawn younguns') After a few moments selecting some purchases, they all come to the counter. Looking about, the northerner asks the innocent question: "Where can I get some ice?" to which Bobby replies in his southern drawl as he rings the man up....
"You can git your ass rat out that door..."
For some reason, the man was upset.
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*Holler: A Southern idiom; a shortened version of 'hollow' meaning a low lying area or valley in which, many times, many generations of Southern families will live, congregate and grow.
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