Except for "neutral ground". That always amuses me.

well we say parking garage -

Portland is a right proper place, and I may well move there one day.

I was born and raised in Texas, but have no discernible drawl and only sprinkle in "ya'll" here and there. My primary transgression is the excessive use of the ridiculous term "fixin' to," as in, "I'm fixin' to watch the Cowboys game," or "She's fixin' to start chasing me with a rolling pin."

i have no idea what a parking deck is

The woman is stupid. She is not representative of all southerners. I use y'all fairly often. The only thing I can say in her defense is that she at least contracted the words correctly: y'all, instead of ya'll.

As far as I know, "y'all" is a relatively small group, maybe 4 people or less.
"All y'all" is more than 4 people I'd say.

what about vosotros?

...got me on that one. But I'm imagining they're some sort of small robot. That, or a new brand of vodka.

Don't lump the rest of the Midwesterners in with your cheezehead neighbors.

We call it a parking garage too.

I like y'all, although I don't use it.

good thing you kept tammy so anonymous

Stupid Chicagoisms:

- Inability to use turn signals
- Tolls recently DOUBLE yet roads continue to WORSEN
- and everything seemed to be "cash only" when I went last. Drives me crazy.

Buuut, people did sound a whole lot less Scandinavian.

interesting link re: dialects
http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/

Chase,

her name is Tammy, what do you expect? What I want to know is how a person that is so hickalicious got in to Vandy?

say what

her name isn't tammy, i changed it to an equally southern name...her name was something else...again, i was protecting anonymity.



That's kind of what I'm wondering...and what this post is addressed at I suppose.

To answer that:

I didn't realize what I was getting into when I came to Vanderbilt. I wanted to get to know your people and see a part of the country I hadn't before. I didn't want to enroll with a bunch of mooks in the northeast, b/c I already know a bunch of mooks in the northeast. I wanted to meet people from other places in the country and broaden my horizons a little bit.



I can't leave the southern thing along...I'm faced with it all the time and I'm trying to understand it.

I'm not trying to enflame anybody, I just want to talk about dialects and the south a little bit. Don't get enflamed....but I shouldn't have either.

It's cool if you are trying to gain understanding, but many on this board just blanket dismiss Southerners. Maybe I took you out of context, but I really don't think its as bad as you think.

I have spent time EVERYWHERE. And there are dumbasses EVERYWHERE.

dude, the mass transit, the place we ate, the parking garage in front of the transit, the toll booths every 4 feet, friggin nobody took anything but cash (a granted on the tolls but still). My wife is cash-phobic... thinks it somehow gets spent faster if it's readily available. This caused problems.

of course there are man...i could easily complain just as much about the use of "youse" in the philly and certain northern areas....or saying "so i says to him" when discussing past events.

i just already know those and it's a lot more fun and interesting to analyze what i'm not familiar with.

a big part of me going to vanderbilt was to try and stop "blanket[ly] dismissing southerners."

i'm kind of sad to say that spending time down here has confirmed a lot of what i previously thought but has given me a lot more appreciation for the niceness of the culture and the hospitality factor.

Man, that is so deck.

I so feel like a black guy right now.

Whatever, Nader.

I had to stop using "y'all" in college to get certain people to listen to me. And I went to school in fucking Atlanta (Midtown, though, if that explains anything). Now I have to deliberately make an effort to use it.

Chase, from my experience, Vandy is mostly rich, Southern greeks (Am I wrong in saying this?). I guess you've figured that out. A lot of those people are the most ignorant and incosiderate (but damn polite!) humans on the planet. I can say this because a LOT of my friends from UGA are rich, Southern former greeks.
Do you branch outside of the Vandy atmosphere? There are a lot of cool people in this town that get overshadowed by dumb, backward-thinking Southerns. I guess I'm used to it, so it doesn't bother me as much.