Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics:

Living in the same small town my entire life, it wasn't until I moved to Southern Illinois for college that I encountered any dialectal mishap.

The first thing I noticed, of course, was the slow, southern drawl the local people used. I couldn't figure out why I felt like I was in Alabama, when I was still in the same state of which I grew up!

I heard words like "ya'll" and phrases like "a lick of difference" and couldn't figure out what these people were trying to say. A lick? Like to a lollipop?

Not to mention the name of the little towns around here; all of them end in ''boro''. Murphysboro, Jonesboro, Hallidayboro; a little further south in Kentucky there is Murfreesboro, Hollowsboro. There are ''boros'' in the south; what exactly is a ''boro''?

But perhaps the biggest surprise of all was when these slow speaking locals labled me a "city girl". City Girl?! I grew up on a farm in a town with less than 2,000 people and you're going to call me a city girl?

"Well, you have that Chicaahhgo accent," they'd say, holding their nose on the Chicago apparently to imitate my nasaly dialect I had previously been unaware of.

But, I don't have an accent...do I?

After living in Carbondale for four years, I've learned the truth. If you live in southern Illinois, anything north of Champaign is "Chicago" and therefore anyone with the slightest Chicaahhgo accent is labeled such.

But I've also learned that my dialect changes with my environment. It is easy to fall into step with the laid back, slow speaking style of the south. However, once I am back home to "Rural Chicago", I revel with my northern peers in whining out our "a" sounds and even talking through our nose from time to time.

As they say, "When in Rome..."