Apple Pickin'

Adaline has added a new impersonation to her repertoire: a Southern accent. She enjoys imitating her new Southern friend at school (who just moved here this fall). This would not be odd if Adaline's own mother was not from Mississippi and recognized immediately as being Southern by every person she meets in the city. It is surreal to hear your daughter speak like everyone you grew up with, but she is merely trying it on for fun.

I never really thought about whether or not my children would have a southern accent--being raised in Brooklyn by one parent of southern speak and one of a...? neutral? variety. They hear every accent imaginable in their little worlds. Their current teacher is Puerto Rican from Spanish Harlem. Adaline's teacher last year was from Trinidad and Arthur's had a stereotypical Brooklyn accent. Who knew what kind of accent they would have? I do know for sure now, though, that it is not Southern...at least not, Southern Southern. (I qualify in case some Northeasterners disagree.)

Arthur has a vibrant imagination himself. He doesn't stop at just imitating accents. He loves to "speak" other languages for fun. Usually this is just silly talk, but he has had his convincing moments. Last school year he tricked us into thinking that he could count to ten in Arabic and Chinese. This wasn't a huge stretch because one of his teachers and classmates spoke Arabic. (The Chinese was random.) He made each "number" distinct with different syllables that sounded authentic to the language in question. It wasn't until we asked him to repeat the numbers that we figured out his creativity.

He hears a lot of Spanish in class now, so he walks around the neighborhood speaking to his sister in "Spanish." Of course in this city, people hear foreign languages constantly. I'm just not sure how "foreign" they think we are--some unidentified nation with a Southern/British-accent English-speaking girl and a Spanish/Arabic/Chinese-speaking boy. Honestly, it doesn't turn any heads in our neighborhood--I'm not sure anyone has even noticed :)