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Didn't Carmelo Anthony spend his early childhood years in Brooklyn? He's also Puerto Rican, which is not typical Baltimore.
Obviously, not everyone in Baltimore will talk like Prop Joe or Snoop. But I don't think their speech is rare either.
His childhood in Brooklyn, from what I've seen and heard, has little bearing on his accent. He has a true Baltimore accent. Again, I agree that their accents aren't rare, but not common in certain sections of the city.
I'm not sure the exact age range, but a child would adopt that accent of the people outside of the home. Think about how biggie has a New York accent, yet his mother has a strong Jamaican accent.
And honestly, the Wire didn't too Baltimore too many favors. Omar sounded totally ridiculous ("You besta be where you be, otherwise you be steppin tew, and I gotsa a little bird on my shoulda sayin the sun don't be shine"). He sounded like a WPA slave narrative. They made it seem like all of the Black people spoke in some type of slave code to disguise their true intentions from "Massa."
Slim Charles has a very strong DC accent.
Idris Elba didn't even attempt a Baltimore accent, which was probably wise on his part.
I wondered why they had actors talking like slaves. Omar did a horrible impression of a Baltimore accent. Mcnulty did he pretty good Baltimore accent and he's British if I'm not mistaken. Daniels is from Baltimore, so he didn't have to change his vernacular at all.
This dude just doesn't give up. Maryland is NOT a northern state...
It's sort of subjective. I mean, I've had people tell me that I'm not southern because I'm from Houston. There are gray areas. I will say that here in Texas, the perception of Maryland as a southern state is not common.
Maybe that's what New York should say from now on: "We're New York. Not Northeastern, or Mid Atlantic, just New York."
If we dissolved all of the regions, and went back to the more state-centric paradigm of the colonial era, all of these threads would finally come to an end. You would no longer have people fighting for the right to be associated with New York or New England, which is really what these threads are about.
I wondered why they had actors talking like slaves. Omar did a horrible impression of a Baltimore accent. Mcnulty did he pretty good Baltimore accent and he's British if I'm not mistaken. Daniels is from Baltimore, so he didn't have to change his vernacular at all.
Domenico Lombardozzi ("Herc") is from the Bronx. Seth Gilliam ("Carver") is also a New Yorker. John Doman ("Commissioner Rawls") is from Philadelphia (graduated from Northeast Catholic). Richard DeAngelis ("Colonel Foerster") is from Boston. Callie Thorne ("Elena McNulty") is also from Boston. Gene Terinoni ("Jimmy Asher") is from Philadelphia (graduated from Frankford).
John Waters presents Baltimore as Southern, but The Wire presents it in a more "northeastern" way (i.e. Irish cops, Polish dockworkers, etc.)
That's also Chicago for you.
I love how the Irish and the Poles are supposed to be more "East Coast".
In Chicago, the Polish are such a large ethnic group that IL is the only state in the US where Polish is the 3rd largest language after English and Spanish. No other state can claim this. If anything, Polish is more Midwestern.
As far as Irish goes, they're as much Northeastern as they are Midwestern. I know Scotch-Irish tend to be more confined to the South, I hear (I haven't met any).
Last edited by EddieOlSkool; 09-10-2014 at 05:43 PM..
Carmelo has the strongest Baltimore accent of the bunch. He's from a rough neighborhood in the city, and usually they're the ones with the strongest accents; same applies to whites in the Baltimore area. Working class whites, especially blue collar, Will have the strongest accents.
I'll take your word for it.
In my opinion, though, none of the other people sound like they could be from one specific region.
I love how certain ethnic backgrounds are supposed to be more "East Coast". WTF
Like Italians? The Northeast has the highest concentration of Italians by far, states like RI, NJ, CT, NY. No other place in the country has these numbers, nor did they have the mass Italian immigration that the NYC area had from around 1880-1920.
I associate Asians more with CA, and Hispanics more with the SW and TX, also, because those areas have a lot as a whole. I don't think it's just an Eastern thing.
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