Dialects & Accents (Was Re: Subject-Verb agreement with compound subjects)

[Tiffany B. Clark]

> Mike:
>
> It seems that accents in the US are slowly fading away. 
> Sure, regional accents still exist, but not to the degree 
> they used to. I often notice a large difference in accents 
> between generations even when both generational individuals 
> have remained within the same region. They may retain those 
> peculiarities like you point out PC, but the overall accent 
> keeps getting less pronounced. 
> 
> I remember visiting southern Alabama back in the 70s and being 
> almost unable to understand a young lady with a syrupy southern 
> accent. But talk to someone from there today, someone that has 
> still lived there all her life and it won't be near that degree.
> 
> What I notice more today is cadence instead of accents. I 
> remember my time in west Texas where people there thought 
> "y'all" had three syllables. ;-)

Tiffany:

The slang is what really I think is tough to pick up on, esp. if not 
used to the local dialects & ways of saying words.  I was in 
Philadelphia last year & some of the slang there was almost hearing a 
foreign language.  Wooder is water, Fluffia is Philadelphia, just to 
name a few of them there.  I know of a lot of foregin students in 
classes that say learning the different forms of slang here in the US 
was tough for them.