Some New Yorkers have the nerve to make fun of the way Alabamians talk. They say it is unintelligible and sounds ignorant.
Right. Like “Hey youz guyz, move dat #%@* truck out of my *$&@ way” sounds brilliant. If Einstein had been a New Yorker, the formula would have been “E=M#%@C.”
So as an accented Southerner, I endure the slings and arrows of Yankees too prejudiced to speak correctly. I will admit, however, that sometimes it’s hard to sound competent with my particular accent.
You see, I fall into that category of Alabamians that rarely pronounce the letter “r.” Mark Twain said, “The educated Southerner has little or no use for the letter ‘r’ unless it is at the beginning of a word.” I also tend to obliterate the letter “g” and the letter “t.”
All of this is fine if you’re uttering sweet things to your girlfriend. For example, I would pronounce “Katie, the Crimson Tide’s going to score.” like this: “Kay-dee, BAMA is gonna sco-wah! Hot damn!” That’s a sweet nothing if I ever heard it.
Other Alabamians might say “scorr” instead of “sco-wah.” Some might say “sco.” And still others might say Alabama won’t ever “score with that sorry batch of seniors.” Of course, if those people value their health, they won’t say that too loud in Opp.
But sometimes having an Alabama accent just doesn’t do the situation justice. Take talking about computers for example. I think they need to print computer manuals in Southern English.
We could call it “Rougeonics,” a combination of “redneck” and “phonetics.”
Do you understand this computer manual phrase: “Your ES-3000 will run at a speed of 120 megahertz provided the coaxial cable is connected with 42 megs of ram via the motherboard’?
What’s megahertz? A really big car?
A motherboard? A PTA conference?
Megs of ram? Is that a Dodge driven by a dame name Margret?
Some Alabamians seem to understand all this jargon.
For example, if you can figure out how to get on “the World-Wide Web,” check out “http://alaweb.asc.edu/index.html.”
The governor (or “gubnuh” in Rougeonics) makes the following speech, which may need some translation:
“Hello, I’m gubnuh Fob James, and welcome to Alaweb, Alabama’s online c’nec-tion to state gubment, tourizm, citiz, and bidness. We hope you enjoy yo shy-bu-shpace visit.”
Some less charitable citizens of our state might say our gubnuh was hit at the line of scrimmage too many times while trying to sco-wah.
Nah, he’s just another victim of rougeonics.
— Morgan Murphy