Sunday, April 17, 2005

We done sold it



Your Linguistic Profile:



50% General American English

35% Yankee

10% Dixie

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern


Despite spending my first 8 years in Kansas and the next 10 in North Carolina, I've got zero Midwest and half as much Dixie as New Yorker Yglesias! Maybe that's just how it's going to be for an Indian boy growing up in college towns. I do sometimes lapse into a Southern accent, especially when I want to be both polite and informal.

Strangely enough, the paradigm case of Dixie talk I have in my mind came from David Rusnak, one of the scientists at Glaxo where I did a summer internship. When an IT guy came by to ask him where a certain computer was, David gave the deadpan reply: "We don't got it. We done sold it. Spent the money, bought beer."

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