Sticking Up For The South

In a phenomenon known to scientists all over the world, we always long for what we don't have. It's the whole "grass is greener on the other side" thing, but much more than a cliché. We always want what we don't have in front of us, the better thing, the newer, cleaner version, the 2.0 upgrade. Similarly, we always long for where we are not. The heart, landed in Madrid, immediately turns its thoughts towards home, singing praises of Southern differences. I've thought a lot about this lately.

Most of these thoughts stem from the fact that a particularly outspoken student of mine and I continually fight over the merits of Atlanta and its Olympic Games. He insists that he knows nothing new about Atlanta after its Olympic Games, which to him means that Atlanta poorly promoted itself and was not in actuality worthy of the Games. I stumbled over words in indignity. Who are you to question Atlanta in such bad English! Pshaw! I have found camaraderie in another student in the same class, who happens to come from the South of Spain. We glance at each other, rolling our eyes when the other guy is talking, and making faces. Apparently there are a lot of similarities between Southerners the world over. And apparently I'm a horrible teacher.

Outside of class, Colombian-Japanese Taiki has been asking me about my Southern accent and could I please use more Southern phrases in my speech thank you. He tries to mimic his idea of the accent, but his fake southern accent is atrocious and I feel bad for him. It inevitably sounds like a Puerto-Rican girl from the Bronx. Last night he asked me to use some of our different vocabulary, and after years of practice I was immediately able to produce buggy (shopping cart), my double modals (I might should go), coke (any carbonated beverage). At home this morning, still intrigued by these differences, I went so far as to look them up on my favorite new site in the world, which conveniently has a section over Southern American English. Who knew I speak a DIALECT of English? And I'm totally in favor of calling it Southern American English instead of Hillbilly, Country or Ghetto. That's fancy!