Regionalism

Or Why do the Brits think we all sound like we're from Texas

I have a friend in my on-line guild (I play Star Wars, The Old Republic these days) who does this Minnesota sex-tape voice "oh yah, baby. Just like that. yah, oh yah." If you've seen Fargo, you know why this cracks me up, Every Single Time he does it. One of these days I'm going to get a recording of it... I might even use it as my ring tone...

Now, I watch a lot of movies from the UK (Love, Actually being one of my favorite "chick flicks"...) and the only thing I hate about it is that Colin goes to WISCONSIN and ends up hooking up with a lot of "American babes." Who all sounded and looked like they had guest star appearances on Dallas. Straw cowboy hats, shorts skirts and cowboy boots. Okay, seriously, I'm here to tell you that very few people wear heeled cowboy boots when they're walking around in the snow. Okay? ok.

Talking with one of my writer-friends, she was asking about how much of a southern accent she should put into her novel; one editor was saying "please take out all these apostrophes and put the g's back in to works like waitin', readin', and thinkin'." A good Southern expression is "fixin' to get ready." Another one is "y'all." True Southerners will sometimes say y'all's. Or even, "all y'all's."

• Y'all - You All. Y'all come back now, y'hear? (All of you, feel free to visit again soon!)
• Y'all's - You All's. Are these y'all's dogs? (Do these dogs belong to your entire family, or are there some neighbor dogs mixed in?)
• All y'all's - All of your stuff. "Get all y'all's shoes out of the foyer!" (Could all of the children please remove their shoes from the front hallway?)

One of my best friends is from New York. We have horrible arguments about whether the field-mouse batterer in the song's name is Little Bunny Foo Foo or Little Rabbit Foo Foo.

I say Bunny. She says Rabbit. We have been arguing about this for approximately twenty years. (Feel free to weigh in on that discussion... I'll bring it up next time we talk, provided y'all agree with me.)

I spend a lot of time doing research when I'm writing.

I wish the folks at Disney had done some...

 Here's a picture from Pocohontas... nice waterfall. Too bad Jamestown is a freaking swamp. There's no waterfalls. Hell, there's barely any hills around here at all. It's woods and marsh and muck, and by the way, it smells terrible. Also, floods a lot.

look how FLAT that is...

I was talking earlier today with one of my editors; somewhere there's a fine line between accuracy and readability. A military dress shirt is called a blouse, even when worn by a man. This may be accurate, but your average reader is going to assume typo, if they don't have extensive military background. Heck, I didn't even know it until I was told, and my father was in the Navy, my grandfather in the Air Force, and my ex-husband was a Marine.

In the end, you really need to decide if it's important to the story to be accurate...

(And yes, it's still a Chocolate Chess Pie, not a chocolate cheesecake.... you Northerners need to get some culture!)