Here's my favorite story about the North-South "language" differences. My DH was a salesperson with territory down south. We lived in the Northeast. He would talk to one of his new clients, named Beel, frequently on the phone, but had never met him, so he finally arranged a sales call down there, and took the guy to lunch.
While waiting for their lunch, in the interest of small talk, DH asked him, "'Beel' is an interesting name. What's it short for?"
The guy looked at DH as if he had crawled out from under a rock and then drawled, "Weelliam."
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I hear this eeeeeee sound here in speech of some African Americans. It is a soft, slightly Southern sound they have.
This is a funny story, catherine, because I still note to myself, after living here for nearly 30 years, that ee for iu sound. It is often said that St. Louis is a little but Southern in culture, it is Eastern in archotecture, it is Midwestern in weather.
In Pittsburgh it was youse and youse guys was plural. Here in MD I was told yinz and yinzes mean the same.
"Bagels" are hunting dogs to a Richmond,VA relative. I had no idea what he was talking about when he told the story...Beagles....
youse guys, made me smile I think have had said that silly line many times in my life looks so weird in print.
People from the south have nothing on Australians. I was having a phone conversation with an Austrailian coworker who now works in our NY office as a claims manager. He was recapping a conference call he'd had with our client, their insurance broker and an outside vendor helping with the loss. He kept mentioning some guy named Aaron Shood. For the first several minutes of my call with him I was rifling my notes from the last conversation on this topic to figure out who this Aaron guy represented. Finally it hit me. It wasn't Aaron Shood. It was "our insured".
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