How to sound southern. Or just country.

If you're anything like me, you really like to blend in, and you will do just about anything to not stand out in a crowd. At least not on first sight. I think it's fairly obvious to once someone has gotten my basic information, that I'm very little like most southern women. There's the whole working step-mom thing for one, not to mention that penchant for bleeding tree-hugging political tendencies, or that tendency to prefer tennis to Nascar, martinis to beer, and things like that. But anyway, I digress.

My point is that I at least like to appear as though I'm just like you, and please! be! my! friend! And one important part of blending in is how you sound. In fact, I would go as far as to argue that in a country where no one really cares what you dress like, your voice, your accent, and your vocabulary are what most people will use to assess where you're from, what you do, and a whole host of other socio-economic characteristics.

So for the past four years and some change, I've made a detailed study of southern speech. Now southern speech itself is not new to me. Before moving to Georgia, I lived in Texas, where the flat vowels quickly became part of my accent. But before Texas, I also spent some time in New England (not to mention an inordinate amount of time at American schools overseas, where the accent can be best equated to a blend of mid-Atlantic and New Englander anyway), and let me tell you, that has been almost impossible to shake. Although I did quickly lose the "wicked", when people in Texas would look at me like I had just lost my mind whenever I would say something was "wicked good" (really good), or "wicked hot" (really hot), I seem to have an especially hard time losing the northern lack of lilt to my voice.

Here in the south, women especially love to phrase every single sentence as though it is a question, i.e., their sentences might start on a middle "C", but they'll pretty much always end on a B-flat or somewhere around there. When you've lived in the north, like I have, you've actually learned to lower the tone in  your voice as you speak, to the point of it almost becoming gravelly (which lately, apparently, has become a trend among younger women). No matter how hard I try, I just cannot get myself to raise my voice any higher than an "E" at best. It doesn't help that I'm an alto, was taught to project my voice by lowering it, and have always my deep voice to compensate for my lack in height.

And this inability to raise my voice has been causing problems lately. As I've mentioned before, I have a real knack of adapting local vernacular. I've even noticed that, lately, instead of saying "What?" or "Excuse me?" when I can't understand someone, I say "Do-what?" (another southern-ism), and that "doo-hickey" has become one of my favorite words (as in, "Give me that doo-hickey over there, that, uhm..uhm..pen! Yes, that pen"). However, when you combine that with a voice lower than any southern woman would use, what are you left with?
Country.

I'm not making this up now (see, another southern turn of phrase - oh God, now I'm starting to write like them too), even the kids and husband-dear have been poking fun at me for sounding country. Now I'll get right back at husband-dear by telling him that at least I don't say "The washer's broke" when I mean it's broken (as opposed to suffering from a negative cash flow), but he then rattles off an entire list of things I say that only country folk say (doohickey, that there, do-what, y'all), and I'm done, you know?

So now I don't know what to do. Obviously, I'd rather not sound country, since I'm really not country (as in, I don't know the difference between a bull and a steer, or even if there is a difference, and wouldn't know how to shoot a deer/skin a rabbit/grow my own crops if my life depended on it. Really. I'd probably die of starvation within three weeks). But what are my options? I would start to imitate my students and sound more southern-urban, if that wouldn't be absolutely ridiculous for a white Dutch-born woman who is starting to slowly push middle age. I could hang out with my non-southern colleagues, and start talking like I'm from Chicago or Michigan. But there's only like two of them, and I'm pretty sure it would look awkward if I suddenly became their new best friend. I could, I suppose, work on retrieving that Dutch accent I must have had at some point twenty-five years ago or so. Or, I could just watch lots and lots of Taxi reruns, and embrace my inner New Yorker.

Hm. That might not be a bad idea. Let's try that for a while.

Now get outta my face, I gotta lunch to make, 'kay?

(Too much inner New Yorker?)