I’m a Tarheel, I’m pretty used to most of them, including my own piney woods rhotic drawl. If you’ve lived here long enough, which most people living here haven’t, you could tell within a county where I’m from if you heard me say this paragraph aloud.
Fun story: back when I was working as a flight instructor, a couple guys flew their plane down from Long Island to have us work on their plane, we were the dealership they bought it from so they brought it to us for a service. I had nothing to do with the maintenance department so I wasn’t on that project, I was there tending to my own flight students and these two yankees were also there.
Round about noon, I walked into our classroom to use the computer in there to check the weather, and from behind me I hear a very aggressive “Hey, you wanna sandwich?!” And I reflexively ducked. Because if a southerner had said that with that inflection, that sandwich was already on its way through the air toward the back of your head, and its thrower is probably coming over the table.
I turned around to find this guy holding out an Arby’s roast beef sandwich with a smile on his face. Turns out a Long Island accent…just sounds like that.
I’m from Connecticut and used to work in a call center taking insurance claims nationwide. I once got a call from a guy in rural North Carolina, who had a super thick accent. He was explaining that the damage to his car came from the tar blowing up and I was trying to figure out wtf he meant by this (sometimes customers are nuts or lie- it was okay to take down a story that definitely didn’t happen, it just needs to be clear and true to what the caller claimed). I kept asking what caused the asphalt to explode and he was totally uninterested, saying it was old, sometimes that happens, isn’t that our job to figure out?
Anyway, I was having a tough time understanding this guy, but my coworker went to college in Tennessee, so I roped her in and transferred him.
His tire exploded, not the tar. He just pronounced tire the way that I pronounce tar. For me, it’s two syllables and indistinguishable from the word for one who ties.
Surprisingly Irish.
I’m a Tarheel, I’m pretty used to most of them, including my own piney woods rhotic drawl. If you’ve lived here long enough, which most people living here haven’t, you could tell within a county where I’m from if you heard me say this paragraph aloud.
Fun story: back when I was working as a flight instructor, a couple guys flew their plane down from Long Island to have us work on their plane, we were the dealership they bought it from so they brought it to us for a service. I had nothing to do with the maintenance department so I wasn’t on that project, I was there tending to my own flight students and these two yankees were also there.
Round about noon, I walked into our classroom to use the computer in there to check the weather, and from behind me I hear a very aggressive “Hey, you wanna sandwich?!” And I reflexively ducked. Because if a southerner had said that with that inflection, that sandwich was already on its way through the air toward the back of your head, and its thrower is probably coming over the table.
I turned around to find this guy holding out an Arby’s roast beef sandwich with a smile on his face. Turns out a Long Island accent…just sounds like that.
I’m from Connecticut and used to work in a call center taking insurance claims nationwide. I once got a call from a guy in rural North Carolina, who had a super thick accent. He was explaining that the damage to his car came from the tar blowing up and I was trying to figure out wtf he meant by this (sometimes customers are nuts or lie- it was okay to take down a story that definitely didn’t happen, it just needs to be clear and true to what the caller claimed). I kept asking what caused the asphalt to explode and he was totally uninterested, saying it was old, sometimes that happens, isn’t that our job to figure out?
Anyway, I was having a tough time understanding this guy, but my coworker went to college in Tennessee, so I roped her in and transferred him.
His tire exploded, not the tar. He just pronounced tire the way that I pronounce tar. For me, it’s two syllables and indistinguishable from the word for one who ties.