Speech Class

I loved the whining/whinging discussion, and it got me thinking about accents that have gone missing. Like this:



No one talks about progrums anymore. No one puts a fancy little lilt when pronouncing the L in “language.” I think this way of talking starting disappearing when I was but une jeune fille myself.

This simultaneously saddens and delights me. Faith Salie had a bit on her radio show about Wilfred Brimley and his calling out to help people with “diabetuss.” Sarah Thyre, in her book, Dark at the Roots, cracked my ass up describing the volunteer who talked about “ravioliss.”

I used to have a Pittsburgh accent when I was a child. I slowly lost it and all that’s left is the vestigial: pronouncing “our” like “are” (or “ARH!”), saying “house” in a vaguely Germanic way, reassuring people that I’m not neb-nosing. It would be fun to have it back. Maybe there’s a progrum for just this thing?