Regional Dialect

Well I was over on Bye Bye Pie and I mentioned my regional dialect and it occurred to me that this is an opportunity to get at least 4 more people to join my region.  Even if you live in different parts of the country.

So about 10 years ago, when Brother and I were living together, we decided to develop our own dialect.  We clearly had a lot going on in our lives.  We were also playing gin until one of us reached 1 million points.  We quit before either of us made it that far but I think he was in the lead in the end.

I think our dialect started out by pronouncing words with the emPHAsis on the wrong syllAble.  I employ this technique every chance I get.  It drives people insane.  We have a store in our area called Fred Meyer.  I always call it The FRED Meyer.  THANKSgiving is another good one.  People want to correct you but they don't because they aren't quite sure that you've pronounced it incorrectly.

Then we began to add "the" to locations that didn't have "the" in their names:
"I'm going The Sears", rather than just Sears.  "I was just at The McDonalds", We're going to The Best Buy, etc.

A while later Brother started adding words where he had completely changed the pronunciation.  An example is caramel, which he started calling carameel.  I think that's the only word we've changed and no one knows what a carameel is.  This is where our dialect has run into a snag.  We both have to agree on the pronunciation and I had to give him this one since it was the first one he came up with.  I've come up with several other since then and he won't agree to them.  For example.  I think "prelude" should be pronounced "PRELL-you-ed".  He wouldn't go for it.

The other flaw in our plan is that he moved to the other side of the state and it's hard to have a regional dialect when your region covers several hundred miles and only two of you are speaking it.

So there you have it.  Feel free to adopt our plan and let me know if you come up with any other words.  I'll have to run them by Brother and see if he agrees.  I'll see him over THANKSgiving so it's a good time to go over any changes.

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