Transcript of “Dialect Detecting”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. I’m Loretta Kasteen, and I’m calling from Shreveport, Louisiana.
Well, hi, Loretta. Welcome to the program.
Many years ago, I decided to go back to college to get my English degree.
And early on during this, my husband and I attended an English department function.
I was kind of a new student, so the professor really didn’t know me and didn’t know my husband at all, but we ended up talking to one of the English professors, and I later found out he has a PhD in linguistics.
So we were chatting, and the professor kind of stopped suddenly, and he says to my husband, he says, okay, so I’m going to guess that you’re in the military. Am I right?
And my husband was like, yeah. And so he continued. He said, my professor, he said, you know, not just that, but I’m going to guess that you are a military kid.
Was your father in the military?
My husband said, yeah, 20 years, Air Force, you know.
And we were both kind of shocked by that.
And my linguistics professor kind of just laughed and said, he likes to play a little game whenever he meets new people, and he likes to try to guess where they’re from according to like their accent or, you know, how they speak, the words they use.
And he said whenever he couldn’t pinpoint where someone grew up or where they were from, it was because nine times out of ten that they were either in the military or a military kid or sometimes both.
And he called my husband’s accent garbled.
Garbled.
It was kind of all mixed up.
And he said it’s kind of southern, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly where.
And so I was wondering if that was something that was kind of known about military people, if they’re kind of known for having accents that you can’t place.
And the second part of my question is, I was wondering if either of you two do that.
Do you play the game and try to figure out where someone’s from?
Oh, heaven’s sakes, yes.
You knew the answer we did.
Yes, of course we do.
Absolutely.
I don’t know with that kind of success, but if you’re judicious about it, you can look amazingly clever.
Yeah, that’s really impressive.
Yes, I’m listening to you speak, and you’re talking about nine times out of ten, T-I-N.
T-I-N.
It sounds like T-I-N.
Vowel glide.
Right.
Yep.
Yep.
So, yes, Grant and I are always listening for pronunciation, particularly vowels.
How do you pronounce the word C-O-T?
And does it sound different from the past tense of catch?
Because that depends on where you are from in the country.
Or if you insert an R in wash, W-A-S-H as wash, you’ll hear that in the midlands of the country.
So pronunciation is one thing.
Vocabulary is another thing that people who do this listen to.
You probably know what the word tump means.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
You tump something over?
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
It turns over, yeah.
Yeah, I learned that in Kentucky.
Went away to college in New York.
Nobody knew what I was talking about.
And we get calls about that all the time, you know, that you move to a different part of the country, and people look at you like you have two heads because you’re pronouncing things differently, or you’re using different vocabulary.
You know, if you’re talking about a shopping cart, you might call it a buggy.
And if you say that, I might guess that maybe you’re from Georgia or something like that.
And then we look at grammatical constructions as well, like needs washed, the cat needs let out.
Or might could.
Right.
Might could is another one, double modal.
So Grant and I are always taking in all of these kinds of things.
And yeah, whether we tell the person or not, we’re definitely listening for these things.
And Grant, I don’t know about military in particular.
Loretta’s spot on.
Yeah, the military, people who’ve served in the military and have been stationed at a lot of bases tend to do have more of an amalgam accent.
I wouldn’t call it garbled.
Garbled.
But the only other group that I’ve heard that’s like that are diplomats’ children also have.
Oh, that makes sense.
Again, stationed at a lot of different places.
And they tend to be taught in English-speaking schools in foreign countries where they’re getting kind of an average accent and not any one regional accent.
And so that’s kind of what’s happening when you’re hearing the people from different branches of the military speak who have served for a long time or are the children of people who have served for a long time.
They’ve picked up little bits and pieces from a lot of regions.
So they have a lot of regional features and no one feature.
Martha and I kind of fall into that now because of what we do for a living.
We try on accents all the time.
We try on new language.
We try on new dialect features, and some of it sticks.
Sometimes we’re not really good examples of anywhere anymore.
No, we’re terrible.
We’re magpies.
We are delighted that you shared with us, Loretta.
It was just really fantastic.
Thank you so much.
Awesome.
Thank you so much.
Love the show.
Love you guys.
Keep up the good work.
Take care of yourself.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Bye.
Bye, Loretta.
Words at waywordradio.org.
