“Daddy, it’s over they-urrr…”
"I’m petting my kitty-cay-ut…
“I need to way-ur my hay-uut on my hay-uuuuud…”
Ummm…while I’m fine with her avoiding picking up the Joisey accent that gets shown on TV, who the hell has been schooling my two-year-old in the finer points of being a southern Belle?
Bonus! Excruciatingly cute pic!
She is a darling.
Has she started asking for sweet tea and grits yet?
Has she been watching a lot of Gone With The Wind lately? Does she have a favorite cartoon character that happens to have a southern accent? Was she perhaps born on a date that a famous southerner died, making her their current incarnation?
Maybe its Labor Day Parkway traffic?
“As God is mah witness, I shall Nevah be Pahked on a Hah-way A-gay-en…!”
Hmmmph.
In my part of the south (that is, when I still lived in the South, as I don’t count northern Virginia as “the South”), you did not ask for sweet tea.
You asked for tea.
This was known to be iced - and already sweetened to a degree that would have killed a diabetic at ten paces.
Therefore, if Miss Briston asks for “sweet tea”, she will be known as a poseur (poseuse?). Or a Yankee. Not sure which is worse 
And of course “grits” has three syllables.
I have noticed over the years that children from all over the States tend to have a somewhat Southern drawl. Being from the South, it took me a long time to realize, but I have recently met kids from Iowa, Michigan, Connecticut, and Oregon and they all seem to speak in the way you describe your daughter speaking. I even asked my friends from Michigan why they stole some poor Southern girl’s young’uns!
-From out of the woodwork…
Because of the Yankee influx to the Raleigh area, I have to be specific about my tea needs. If you don’t order sweet tea, you might get unsweet! :eek: Horrors!
ETA: Oh yeah, Hal, that picture is unbearably cute. My eyes! The cute burns me!
Gee-zus Hal, stop with the cute, I was just about all cynical and like that.
JUST YESTERDAY, my friend CrankyAsAnOldMan and I had a conversation about this. She tells me that there have been migrations of Southerners to Michigan to work in the auto plants (she told me when, but I forget), and there are pockets of their descendants who keep alive their accents to this day.
I can believe it, cause I’ve met native-born Californians who spoke with what I imagine to be a perfect imitation of their Okie grandparents’ accents.
Maybe we should switch kids. My dyed-in-the-wool-southern baby has developed an “Ayuh.” Now, as my niece will testify, “yes” is a multi-syllable word pronounced similar to “yeee-ahhhhuuuuss” and typically followed by a “mayum” or “suur”
However, since she is known as the bacon snatcher, I can not deny her as my own, I’m just wonderin’ who her daddy is.
Obligatory cute link: http://www.chicksrock.net/geisha.jpg
Have I mentioned that she sounds an awful lot like Rain Man at times and I’m tempted to teach her to say “About 100 dollars.”
You’re in New Jersey - at least she isn’t calling her parents “youse guys,” right?
[sub]my parents claim that’s the moment they decided it was time for me to change schools[/sub]
Joisey???
What the hell part of Jersey do you live in that people actually speak like that?
I’d rather she picked up the *faux[/] Southern Belle, myself.
OK, it was me.
Soo cute!!
I completely agree. I’m a Georgia boy myself. But notice where the poster is from: New Jersey. If a southerner, though some misfortune, finds him or herself in such a place they must be specific if they want that beverage that is akin to ambrosia.
If they do not specify that they want sweet tea they will instead be given that unspeakable concoction known as unsweet tea. If they then comment that they meant sweet tea they will be told to just add sugar. This then requires the southerner to explain why that does not work and how to properly make sweet tea.
So as to avoid all this it is best, when in uncultured locales, to be specific.
Expat-Seattleite now in New England here. Why doesn’t that work?
FTR, I’m sure there exists an explanation and/or hot debate already on the boards about how sweet tea is properly made, but you just try and search on “tea”.
Hal, it was obviously her friend Beauregard that taught her the new, proper, manners.
As for adding sugar to cold tea, it won’t dissolve in cold tea. The sugar has to be added while the tea is still hot. This allows for the near-supersaturation of sugar in proper sweet tea.
Tea that is “Unsweet” is the same as a person who is “Undead.”
Try being a Brit, married to a Spanish speaking Chinese woman, raising a kid in Texas! Here’s a recent exchange with our daughter:
“Daddy, how do you spell ‘bin’?”
“Well honey, I would spell that word B I N, is that what you’re looking for?”
“No, my teacher says it’s spelled B E E N”
“Oh, ok, we pronounce that ‘bean’, as in green beans”
"No, she says it’s B I N, like ‘I done bin thayer’ "…
OMFG!
Exactly right. Keep in mind, emilyforce, that I’m not talking about hot unsweet tea here as, in my experience, as long as you are in America asking for tea usually gets you iced tea.
If you put enough sugar in cold tea most of it just sinks down into a sad little lump on the bottom of the glass that taunts you with its presence. It’s a cruel cruel thing akin handing a man dying of thirst a glass of salt water.
