Actor's Dialects

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:29 AM -0800 3/8/04, Kim & Rima McKinzey wrote:
>>Question: Are Southern accents infective? Does this phenomenon happen to
>>many people or just me?
>
>When I was in the 5th grade we drove down to Atlanta from NYC to
>visit relatives.  By the time we got there, my accent had gotten so
>thick my mother said she could no longer understand me.

There's a nice instance of this in the "American Tongues" video, in
which a Yale undergrad describes how her new boyfriend was driving
her south to meet his family and his southern accent increased with
every mile on the trip, until (IIRC) she jumped out of the car and
took a train back north.

>  In another
>example, my husband - born in Oklahoma, BA from UT Austin - was
>reading "Semi Tough."  His accent started coming back and I was ready
>to kick him by the time he finished the damn book.
>
See, it's that synergy with football.

larry