Why we southerners sound like we do

A writer friend, Don Long, sent me a link to the most interesting post about southern accents. I say accents because we don't all speak with the same voice. We are the only part of the United States that sound anything like our Mother tongue, the accent of the Old Country.

Once a friend of my sister's came to visit from Chicago. When he heard my niece's southern accent, which is hardly an accent at all, he automatically assumed she was dumb, ignorant or uneducated. But after speaking with her for a few minutes he was impressed that she was an English major and had earned a PhD. 

A classmate at the John C. Campbell Folk School said he had to make a confession and at the end of our weekend together, he apologized for his past thinking. His teacher in the Midwest had told him that southern people talked slowly because they all went barefoot, got worms in their feet and that affected the way they spoke.

My college roommate, an educated daughter of a colonial in the army, told me she was surprised when she came to Georgia to go to college. She expected us to all be wearing overalls and going barefoot.

This is not old ways of thinking, I am afraid. Today's Television shows about southern people portray us all as dumb, slovenly, and ignorant. I can't imagine why any person from the south would watch those kinds of shows and help build their ratings. They simply add to the stereotype that brands all of us to the rest of the world. 

Just as all homeless people are assumed to be drunks and addicts, those of us who open our eyes, educate ourselves by reading and listening to experts, know that families with small children are living in cars and shelters. Men who work every day at jobs that pay so little they cannot save enough to pay rent sleep in shelters, and single mothers with small children who can't afford child care therefore can't work -- all fall into the homeless sector. Most homeless families are single mothers with children and most of the children are under the age of six.

I am told by someone who works with a homeless shelter in Atlanta, that the majority of the residents work every day. Their job pays such low wages, they can't get ahead to pay the first and last month on a room or an apartment. At ten dollars an hour, one can barely live. 

I wondered from my subject of southern accents, but I think the larger point here is judging without knowing the facts. How many times do we look at someone and develop an opinion about them before we know anything about who they really are? 

Whether it is the way they talk, how they dress or where they live, I try to withhold my judgement until I know the person and their character. I have been judged because of my southern accent. A man who is now a friend, once said he didn't like me because of my accent. He assumed I was not too smart. That was what he had been taught. He grew up in Pennsylvania. To me he has a heavy brogue himself, but I enjoyed hearing him talk even though he sounded far different from me.

Click this link and listen to this short, but interesting explanation of southern accents.

Why are you afraid?

It seems so many people today are afraid - afraid of everything.

I remember living with fear. As a child I was constantly afraid although I was not conscious of it at the time. I hated to go to school because I was afraid I would make a mistake and embarrass myself in front of my class. I was afraid to speak to the kids I really liked because I thought they would turn away feeling I was not worthy to be in their space.

I was afraid of water and had dreams about drowning. For most of my life crossing a bridge gave me a hollow feeling in my middle. I un-hooked my seat belt because I feared I would be trapped in the car and unable to get out when the car was swallowed up by the river. 

As a teen, I was afraid I would succumb to a boy's advances and bring shame on my family. All my life until now, I was afraid of the dark. 

But the one thing I feared most of my life was the death of my mother. We had the good fortune to have no losses in our immediate family, but I saw grief in others. I saw my mother grieve and weep when her brothers and sisters died. I could not relate to that pain since I had not faced anything like it.

I thought that if my mother died, I absolutely could not go on. Those were the fears I had growing up. I did not have the fear of being bombed and hiding under my desk in school. That must have come after I left elementary school. 

I also had faith in my family. I believed that few things could happen to me that my family couldn't take care of. We had nine people and I never knew of any problem that could not be handily managed by some or all of us.

After marriage, I learned to fear other things. When my husband lost his job only a couple of years after we married, I was devastated. The fear of losing what little we had loomed large and threatening over me. And over the years we had ups and downs when I was afraid for our future, but I have never had the fear that my friends talk about today. This Doomsday attitude is new. 

I had faith that my family, including my four brothers, above, could handle things I could not. Playing the guitar is my husband, Barry, who always had my back.  

What is the world coming to?

People I know talk about the horrible situation the world is in today. They are afraid of a terrorist attack. Some think that our country is in danger from the Muslims who live here. Most of them don't know anything about the Muslims who live here. After all, they are different from us, so they must be bad.

Others say they can't sleep at night wondering if our country is going to be destroyed. People seem to live in such fear that I wonder how they go on with their daily lives. Speakers in the churches often play into this fear by telling the members that the world is going to end soon, and all who are not saved or born again Christians will burn in Hell. I heard a TV evangelist scaring his viewing audience recently before I turned away to another channel.

This is my sister, Gay, in a six-way hood I gave her for Christmas. It is not a Burka. I hope she isn't yelled at, mistaken for a Muslim woman.

The use of fear to manipulate people has become a major method to extort money, to persuade people to join questionable groups, to incite citizens to carry guns for protection, and to keep our entire country in a state of unrest. The only fear I have is that this building fear in the United States will cause us to elect unworthy leaders who will lead good people to do bad things.

This reminds me of the fear instilled in my uncle when he was a child. He said that in bed at night he could hear the older people in the family talking on the porch. This was in the late 1800s after the Civil war. He heard terrible tales of people being murdered by former slaves. My uncle was a little boy, but he tried to stay awake all night so he could protect his mother if the black people came to kill her. 

How sad that fear was embedded into this child's mind, an unnecessary fear, that he carried with him for a long time. It also led to his prejudice against black people as an adult. Fear leads to prejudice and hate. Hate leads to war. 

This fear that has arisen in our country, especially in the rural areas of the south, feeds on itself, and there is no reasoning with anyone who is convinced that every person of the Muslim faith is evil and is a terrorist just waiting to kill. 

The Macho man running for office spouting random statements about what he will do when elected is all mouth with no wisdom in the ways of government. Anyone can proclaim what they will do, truth or lie, but anyone who knows about how governments run, can attest to the fact that the wheels of government move slowly and must run carefully or our country can be thrown into a situation in which we cannot win and we cannot retreat. Important agreements with other countries can take months and even years to negotiate. 

I am happy to say that when I go to bed tonight I will not have any fear keeping me awake. This country has seen tough times, WWII, the great depression, Vietnam and the wars in the Middle East, and still most of us have a roof over our heads, food on our table, children who go to college, work of some kind, medical care when we need it, and Social Security in our old age. We have the freedom to speak, act and live wherever we want. That freedom is what many come to this country to gain. Nothing else. They just want freedom.

Women in this country are allowed to have all the children they want -- even when they can't afford to care for them. Women also have the legal right not to have children. They can drive cars, wear as much or as little clothes as they want, and work in any field where they qualify. In some countries women do not have any rights, any freedom at all. People all over the world want to share our freedom. 

Perhaps I am not afraid because I don't look for those negatives others seem to dwell on. I research anything that I question and learn all I can. What I find out usually tells me that the fears of others are unfounded because they only know half-truths or rumors. 

Perhaps I feel about our government the way I felt about my family. I trust that there are enough intelligent people in charge that when or if an emergency happens, everyone will work together to take care of it. I just hope that is not the only thing that brings folks in Washington D.C together in the coming year.

Another reason I don't tremble in fear is that I have endured death of my loved ones and I survived. My mother, father, brothers and a sister, but especially my husband, who was also my long time friend, have all gone and I lived through it. I can handle much more than I ever thought I could. It wasn't easy. It was very hard and seemed the end of me, but I made it, and actually thrived over the past few years. So, I appreciate every day and all I have left in life. 

Maybe that is also a gift of age. My generation lives with less stress, I read. We have learned by now what is worth our worry and what is not. I am no longer afraid of bridges, afraid of what others think of me, afraid I'll fall short or not be worthy. Time is too important to waste it being afraid.

I'll send you to a very good post I read tonight about a courageous young woman.

I was once the writer, Kelly Davio


Do you think that age helps with fears experienced when we were younger?