ACA Home Forums accents at camp

On somewhat of a light note, have any of you noticed regional accents at your camp? Have any of your campers or co-counselors ever used unfamiliar words or phrases that were funny to you? Have you ever picked up an accent as a result of camp?

Another counselor and I were talking about this online a few days ago. We'll be working for a camp in Wisconsin, but neither of us are from that part of the country . . . she's from the South and I have a slight Northeastern accent. So it will be interesting to hear all the different dialects and how people react to them.

Speaking from a midwesterners point of view, there are some noticable regional accents, mostly from the south. I think the others kind of blended in a bit because the most noticable accents were of course from international staffers.....generally there were so many of those and so varied that regional US accents didn't seem to be as pronounced, at least IMO.

hahaha... at my camp there is always a mix.. ya got the jersey/ny accent, brits, irish, polish and whatever else we have.. and then there is me.. mine is a mix of "normal" what everyone around me speaks, jersey, southern, british.. ya never know how i am gonna say a word and and i ALWAYS get made fun of for saying ya'll because i live in jersey.. haha i love the differences between accents in the us..

I travel alot and I've always seemed to have an ear for accents. I spent summers growing up a little north of atlanta, so i slip into a drawl very easily. I won't be suprised if within a few days you'll not know that i'm from indiana and not kentucky.

I notice the differences at y camp because i live in florida and my camp is in new hampshire. so theres alot of people with the new england accent and then theres those with the new york accent and then all of the international counselors have their country accents. its alot of fun, i love having so many different accents put together in the camp setting. i know one word that i love that alot of new englanders say all the time is "wicked" and then "random" was a word that i now say alot because of camp.

well, seeing that you'll be in Wisconsin (and I've lived here most of my life)...
you might get a bit of that Northern Midwest "ya der hey" thing.

also, many people here call soda "pop" (which annoys the crap out of me!)
water/drinking fountains are "bubblers"
(another one I still find odd to use)
I know we have other ones, but those are the biggest ones that stand out to me.

Ok... i have no idea what "ya der hey" is. maybe I have to hear it and then I'll know.

We definetly have different accents. But like most people already said the most noticable are the southern US and international accents. I think it's sorta funny how we notice all these accents within our country and (atleast at my camp) most people don't notice regional accents from other countries. I mean even I have to admit, before working at camp, I didn't know there were SO MANY different British accents. Also, just wondering for all you non-New Englanders... what do we sound like to you? You can never tell your own accent until you're around a bunch of people that don't speak like you.

i already have a slight new york accent (i'm a native new yorker, it makes sense lol) but every summer the accent gets much stronger from being around the long island people!

I grew up in the Northeast AND the south. We moved down here when I was 8 and southern accents sounded very strange to me then. I'm not usually a big "y'all" person (in Connecticut, we never said "y'all"...) but I have a slightly southern accent just from living her for most of my life. The southern accent definitely gets a bit thicker during the summer.

I grew up in CT... I still think we DON'T have an accent cause we say words the way they are written (no dropping letters or adding letters.) However, after spending 4 years in Virginia for college, I ended up with a seasonal southern mini-drawl. Y'all became part of my vocab.

After graduating I moved to Missouri, and I have noticed some differences. More in wording than they way words are said, but they are both noticable. For example... people in CT say "My shirt needs to be washed." In St. Louis its "My shirt needs warshed." A lot of times they skip the "to be" and just say needs washed, but they say it warshed. And the word here for loser is Hoosier... I always think of the movie, and of basketball when someone calls someone else a hoosier. I've been here 3 years, and I pride myself in never calling someone a hoosier.

Well I'm from southern Texas near Houston and I have a southern accent. If you have ever watched the show "King of the Hill," I tend sound a lot like Hank Hill. I can also do a pretty good impersonation of him. I say yall, yup, and all kinds of other stuff without even knowing it. I will stand out at camp maybe cause I'm a bit of a redneck.

on behalf of those on this board from wisconsin, i'd just like to say that not all of us have a "ya hey der" accent, and not all of us say "bubbler", and some of us do say "soda" instead of pop.

I get harrassed (in a good way) about my accent all year long. Im a born and raised new yorker- lived in the city my entire life, but I go to school in Boston. They rag on me about my car and my coffee, and to piss everyone off i make my accent thicker. But when i come home, my friends swear they hear the boston in me.. weird

A) I've never heard of the phrase "bubbler"
B) "Ya der hey" always makes me think if Minnesota, not Wisconsin.
C) It IS pop.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Down here in Texas we call all soda coke. Then someone will ask what flavor and the you would say dr. pepper or sprite or what have you. Where did yall get the word "pop" from. It doesn't even pop.

in boston they say bubbler- damn its a water fountain and some people say pop
but what my friends and i argue over every single night at dinner is the issue of jimmies vs sprinkles
i call them sprinkles (cause thats what they do- sprinkle) while some people call them jimmies, and some others reffer to only the chocolate ones as jimmies..
to make it worse, where my roomie lives in MA they call them wilburs- weird!!
wicked weird!

About the sprinkle thing. In australia they are called hundreds and thousands and that's what my dad calls them, so sometimes i say that and everyone looks at me weird. Everyone here says aprinkles.

With the sprinkle thing, whenever we have sundaes at camp, we get into this huge all dining hall debate over what they're called. Pretty much most of the campers call them sprinkles because they're all from the same general area, but counselors call them: jimmies, shots, or hundreds and thousands. Too confusing for me. Oh and no one's told me what "ya hey der" means yet.

We call them hundreds and thousands too! LOL

That's a new one on me, and I've heard all sorts of different British and Aussie vocabulary between college and camp. Never heard em called anything but sprinkles, really. Huh. As for pop, sure it pops! It is a carbonated beverage after all....you hear the fizzing and popping after you pour it. How could ya not?

Soda... er as some people say... soder

Pop also comes from the term Soda Pop. Some people just keep the soda- some people just keep the pop. But if your like me- it's a coke!

Funny story about coke- I was with my mom in NYC last summer and we couldn't figure out where to buy cokes. So, a New Yorker comes over and was like- "You look lost- what are you looking for!?" And my mom said, "We can't find any cokes" And the many pointed us in the right direction- then asks "You do mean the drinking coke right!" LoL! It was funny- but the man was just joking- and it just goes to show how nice New Yorkers are! I love that city!

funny..... when iwant coca cola, i will say "do you have coke?", but if i want any other carborn nated berverages i'll belike "do you have any pop". i never say soda. I call water foundtains waterfoundtains. some people call them springles, and hundres and thousands? another ting. i'm from canada, and regarding accents. do you non-canadian ppl find that candian say "eh" all the time, 'cause i don't. what else do you notice canadians say, that other americans, and non-canadians does not say? does canadains actually have an "canadian"accent?

okay- the Canadians I've met do say eh a lot. They also pronounce about more aboat. And theres a few verb things like that... but I think it's cute! :-D

crewbie-
im from NYC and i think we're a unique species of people.. not as brash or rude as people make us out to be soemtimes, but we're interesting and tough cookies, very emotional and yet somsthings just dont phase us.
I referr to every soda really as coke- and with the mistake over the soda or the drug, at school we all joke about being "coke addicts"- for better or for worse.