Wouldn't it be boring
Perhaps you've noticed the subtle differences between people who come from different places. Sometimes it's blunt.
We're not talking about words such as calling a cemetery the graveyard, a truck a lorry, or calling a pond a tank.
A few years ago during one of our 99th Infantry tours to Europe two of our good friends, one from Texas and one from North Carolina, were among the group. A European friend, who speaks excellent English, said he could understand all of the group except those two. "What language do they speak," he asked. One talked Texican and the other spoke southern. They had difficulty understanding each other.
Last week was spent at Milwaukee where the clipped northern accent and word usage are a delight. They think we Kansans have a southern accent. Radio and TV folks try to talk like they're from Ohio. We prefer Milwaukee. While our son was there we visited often and learned to enjoy that Wisconsin/Michigan pattern of speech.
Telephoning a person in metropolitan areas is much different than a phone call to a rural resident. Ask, "Is Sally there?" and the city answer is "No" while rural folks respond by saying "No, she's at the grocery store."
In fact, "grocery store" is a redundant usage. The grocery is a store.
Speech inflections and word usage provide an interesting hobby. So does body English, studying how folks speak with hands or other movements. Often, body inflections betray what's coming from the mouth.
Without differences, life would be boring.
— BILL MEYER
