Fred First has been writing about speech dialects lately, which has inspired me to write down a few comments of my own on this topic.

When I was growing up in Fort Worth I was acutely aware of the difference between the speech of my relatives who were from rural East Texas and that of the people around me, which was more “citified.” I wanted to talk like the people in movies and TV, not like uneducated hill-billies. Among my friends was a boy whose family had just moved from Massachusetts. His mom helped out in our cub scout group and I loved the way both of them talked. One day my third-grade teacher kept me after class. She thought I was making fun of my class-mate’s speech when I was merely trying to be like him.

Now, my own speech is probably a kind of a smoothed-over mixture of different influences. Many native Texans assume I am a Yankee when they hear me talk, while most people from up north still peg me as a Texan. There are a few things that I have carried over. For one thing I still refer to the kind of sliced bread you get in grocery stores as “light bread.” I think that is a fairly unique regionalism. And I still say “fixing to” and “over yonder” as in “I’m fixing to go over yonder and get some light bread.”

The small company where I’ve worked for the last several years is kind of a mini UN. Upper management is Canadian (we all smile when they say PRO-cess), and the IT department where I work has Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Vietnamese, a Cuban, and several flavors of Europeans. So I hear a lot of different accents during the day now. The differences between Texan and, say Minnesotan or Californian, seem pale by comparison.

Probably because of the civil rights struggles during the time I was growing up, I always had negative associations with southern dialects. I always took pains to let people know that I was from the “west” and not the “south.” Lately I have been pleasantly surprised by how nice some of the southern speech can sound. On a recent trip to Birmingham I shared a shuttle from the airport with some young women on a business trip. Eavesdropping on their conversation I was enchanted with their voices. The cadence was so slow and relaxed, it was hard to believe they were talking about business. If I closed my eyes I could have imagined that I was out on a verandah with a mint julep.

With all the influences from television and the movies, and so many people moving around, it is surprising to me that there still is so much regional dialect. I wonder how much longer it can last.