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I did meet someone from N.O. once, got to know him fairly well, his accent wasn't that strong but what struck me was that it seemed like people from N.O. have an attitude similar to Texans in that they think of their home territory as virtually another country.
Yes. they speak a lot of broken english down there,
but they sound southern to me, just in the distinct
new orleans way. i guess creole culture has something
to do with it, plus a lot of european immigrants landed
there at one time back in the 19th century and mixed
it up.
I did meet someone from N.O. once, got to know him fairly well, his accent wasn't that strong but what struck me was that it seemed like people from N.O. have an attitude similar to Texans in that they think of their home territory as virtually another country.
Some Cajuns in NOLA have accents you'd swear were Brooklyn.
My roots are ENY and the BX and I worked 4 years in NOLA.
I was surprised by this as well. Just moved to NYC after 3 years in NOLA and heard a lot of what seemed like a Brooklyn accent. I imagine it may be somewhat due to a shared heritage of similar immigrant groups migrating to the two cities, but I'd be curious to know more.
I first became aware of this back in the late 70's. I'm a native Brooklynite, and I was working on a large construction site in the San Francisco Bay Area. A crew came on the job to do some specialty work. Their foreman had a thick accent that I assumed was from the New York area, but I couldn't place whether it was from Brooklyn, the Bronx, or New Jersey. I almost fell down when he said he was from New Orleans.
He wasn't surprised when I told him I thought he was from the NY area; he said he traveled a lot in his business, and that he had heard that many times before. I remember him saying that he was from Backtown, and that people talked the way he did from that neighborhood. Funny thing is, I've been to New Orleans three times and I've never run into another person who spoke like that (I guess I didn't run into the right people).
I first became aware of this back in the late 70's. I'm a native Brooklynite, and I was working on a large construction site in the San Francisco Bay Area. A crew came on the job to do some specialty work. Their foreman had a thick accent that I assumed was from the New York area, but I couldn't place whether it was from Brooklyn, the Bronx, or New Jersey. I almost fell down when he said he was from New Orleans.
He wasn't surprised when I told him I thought he was from the NY area; he said he traveled a lot in his business, and that he had heard that many times before. I remember him saying that he was from Backtown, and that people talked the way he did from that neighborhood. Funny thing is, I've been to New Orleans three times and I've never run into another person who spoke like that (I guess I didn't run into the right people).
The creepiest thing I remember once hearing a radio host on a radio station in New Orleans saying he was a native New Yorker transplant who moved down recently talking about how much he loved it here. He said word for word jokingly some of you people down here sound just like us New Yorkers I sometimes feel like I'm still at home. The caller who was on the phone had the YAT dialect laughed out loud saying we are a strange breed people and culture but it's New Orleans. It was strange hearing them going back in forth but the accents are shockingly similar. I would have never known who was from where if I had to even figure it out.
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