Several weeks ago while I was out buying my fall pansies, the gal tallying my bill looked at me and asked, “Michigan or Wisconsin?” At first I thought she was asking if I was rooting for a particular college football team. Then it hit me, she was inquiring about my accent. “Neither,” I replied, “it’s Western New York.” “Really,” she asked, “I didn’t know it went that far east. I thought it stopped at Chicago.” Having assured her that the accent indeed went at least as far east as Syracuse and paying for my pansies, I began to contemplate the wonders of language and linguistics. I hadn’t quite reached my car when it struck me; the accent hadn’t travelled east, it actually went west with the pioneers. At least that’s my theory.
Because I spent my ea’drly years in the Niagara Frontier of western New York State, I wasn’t aware that we had an accent. Everyone around me sounded the same. Occasionally on TV I’d hear a foreign accent, usually German, English or French (there were lots of programs set in the second world war) or a Southern drawl as the Centennial of American Civil War coincided with my childhood. Then of course, there was JFK’s New England accent. But as far as I was concerned, unless you lived in the south or New England, all Americans spoke English and sounded pretty much the same as I did.
Then, in the middle of sixth grade, my family pioneered down south to New Jersey, moving not far from Philadelphia. Again, it was television that made me aware that other people sounded different from the way we did. One local commercial in particular that my tickled my brothers and sisters and I for a business called, “Jerry Green’s Mirror World”. Jerry promised he could “beeeuuuuteeefi any room in your home” with wall to wall mirrors. We found the way Jerry said beautify so amusing that we would try to imitate him at the dinner table, the perfect stage for that kind of family entertainment.
Of course, the flip side of this experience was when I became aware that my peers were aware that I had not only had an accent but used funny words for things. The most noticeable was that I used the word “pop” for “soda”. Believe me, age twelve is not the time in life to be singled out as different from the kids in your class. No one wanted to be singled out as “queer”, which in those days still referred to being a bit odd.
It was easy to begin substituting words into the correct vernacular, but losing my hard a’s was not so easy. I had great incentive too. My best friend Patty Diamond had an older brother, Joe, who perversely delighted every time I called her and he answered the phone. I would politely ask, “Is Pat there?” and he would respond by shouting through their house, “Payaaaat, telephone!” mocking my hard “a” pronunciation. No twelve-year-old girl on the brink of puberty wants to be taunted by her best friend’s cute older brother. A change had to be made to help me stay under the radar. So, I spent hours practicing saying Pat’s name with a softer “a”, repeating, “Is Pat there? Is Pat there? Is Pat there?” over and over until I was sure I had it right.
After my latest encounter with the sales girl at the garden center, I thought I’d do some minimal research into my accent. I discovered that it actually has a name; Inland Northern American English. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Northern_American_English). The map* to the left illustrates the area of the US where people who sound like me come from. I come from a land up over, where lake effect snow is a winter reality, where we drink pop, get water from the faucet and pronounce, “Mary, merry and marry” all the same. The hard “a’s” are our way of maintaining our heritage, our link to our starting points.
Over the years, my “a’s” have softened. Having now lived most of my life in Virginia with short stints in Rhode Island and Hawaii, I’m sure other words and sounds have snuck into my accent. That is until of course, I find myself in a room full of relatives and other INAE speakers. Then my “a’s” harden and sharpen and I delight in hearing the familiar vowels of my childhood. As always, it’s a good thing to remember where I came from.
*map copied from Wikipedia.org