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Date Posted: 09:02:17 10/04/08 Sat
Author: ozzie
Subject: personally, i get offended when people criticize her accent. i have the same one.
In reply to: Jeannine 's message, "I didn't use the terms folksy or down-home" on 12:44:06 10/03/08 Fri

i don't offend easily. i haven't decided how i am going to vote yet but i would never (nor am i implying anyone here would not vote for her based on this) not vote for her based on her accent. that accent, to me, and to where i was brought up, labels my demographic area as down to earth and genuine. midwesterners, accents and all, are NOTORIOUSLY known as hard workers and for their honesty. some may call it folksy or down home. i take that as a compliment. it does NOT however mean that we aren't smart enough to run major businesses or schools or lead the country. i will base my decision on her experience, what isn't much at this point, not on her accent.

interestingly enough, i just read this article this morning about her accent:



Sarah Palin is no Minnesotan. But she can sure sound like one.

Turns out, there's a darn good reason for it, too.

The GOP vice presidential candidate's hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, is in the middle of the valley where more than 200 broke families from the Midwest -- many of them from Minnesota -- relocated during the Great Depression.

Which means Palin grew up listening to the children and grandchildren of those Minnesotans and being fed a steady diet of "yahs" and "ya knows" and even "you betchas."

"When people settle a new area, there's not a set accent,'' said Joe Salmons, director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "And it takes several generations for a new accent to form. What that means is, she was raised in an environment where there were a lot of people who were new to Alaska, and those Upper Midwestern influences were going to be very strong."

From the sound of things, Palin listened well.

Like a true Midwesterner, her O's tend to sound "pure," or long, Salmons said. She also tends to turn "you" into "ya."

Palin also emphasizes the S at the end of words that typically sound like they end with a Z. (Think of the Saturday Night Live skit in which the actors played Chicagoans cheering for "Da Bearsss!")

"That's the stereotype of Upper Midwest speech," Salmons said. "People do that, not just in Chicago but in Wisconsin and Minnesota. And she has that."

"She certainly has a distinct accent," said Randi Perlman, assistant director of the Chamber of Commerce in Palmer, Alaska, which became home to most of the 203 Midwestern families when they resettled in 1935. "A lot of people here call it an Alaska accent, but I don't know that there is such a thing."

Salmons agrees. He said that Palin, whose parents are from Idaho, has a mix of Midwest and Northwest dialects.

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