Rosetta Stone, Anyone?

No matter where you live you will encounter different accents and dialects that are native to the surrounding area in which you reside. Having spent most of my life growing up in New York, I never realized that some sayings I've known as normal were considered slang to outsiders. I was told yesterday that the New York lingo is too commercial,  but I beg to differ. It may be confused with being commercial only because all awesome famous people tend to hail from New York, so movies are frequently about New York and good hip hop generally reflects the urban vernacular of my home city. I swear I'm not biased.

I spent a few years during high school living in Flagstaff, AZ and the only word that made it's way into daily usage was "dude", which I never said before living there. Flagstaff doesn't have slang, at least not from what I can remember. I think it's because everyone is so laid back, and the air is so thin on top of that mountain that no one can come up with some their own distinctive jargon. I did of course run into the accent difference there. Arizonans have the non-accent accent; they all sound like newscasters. I, on the other hand, do not. While I don't have a very heavy accent, it's still there and noticeable. I can't begin to tell you how many times people would ask me to recite things to them, or have me repeat words so they could giggle at me in amazement like I was some kind of science experiment gone horribly wrong. I hope all those people amounted to nothing.

After living in Northern Virginia for a little over ten months now, I've learned that the people of the DMV (aka DC, Maryland, Virginia) sound... unique. I need a personal translator to talk to my own cousins. I went out to a gathering in DC once, and sat there astounded that I could only grasp about a third of what the conversation was about. If you thought New Yorkers spoke fast, think again. Not only do the DMVers speak faster than New Yorkers but they all sound like they have marbles in their mouths.

  

I would now like to demonstrate some sample sentences you are likely to hear on any given day here in the delightful DC Metro area:

1. "Ugh! Look at his shape-up...and his beat-up Pro Wings. Hes such a bamma"

2. "She's the complete package; looks, smarts and she cool to be around. I had to bun her"

3. "I dared him to touch her butt, but he a gump"
4. "Did u see that dudes shape-up? They was joning at the lunch table all period"
5. "Ima ja blown cuz I went over her house, and her parents were there, so I couldn't smash"
6. "During my free periods, we just be walking around or straight lunchin, cuz we be bored"
7. "Young, Im sick of school" (which is similar too...)
8. "Chill out, joe. It ain't even that serious"
9. "Why you fakin like you got money when you are really as broke as the rest of us?"
10. "That joint was jive tight"

I had to steal all of the above from someone online who was knowledgeable in DC gobbledygook because I feared my brain might have imploded if I attempted to come up with my own sentences. It's easier to figure out some of the meanings when you get to read it; hearing it in live action is a different story. Unfortunately, some of them make absolutely no sense no matter what. I can't comprehend how and/or why people came up with any of these sayings. I'll keep things spicy though and let you figure out the definitions yourself.

Aside from the above issues, there are some strange pronunciation issues here too. The one I would like to make special note of are the names Aaron/Erin or the word Area. First off, to me, the names Aaron and Erin sound dramatically different. I do know in Arizona these names were pronounced the same, but you could still make out what the name was. Down here, however, it's not quite so simple.

New York: Aaron - AAH-ren and Erin - EH-rin

Arizona: Aaron and Erin - AIR-ren

DMV: Aaron and Erin - ERRRRRN

(sounds like an exaggerated "urn", you know, that pretty vase that holds the remains of your dead Uncle Stu)

NY and Arizona: Area - AIR-re-yah

DMV: Area - ERRRR-re-yah

Also, take note that all the words mentioned in the numbered sentences may not be pronounced like a normal human. Take the word joint, for example. We run into the same pronunciation problem with joint as we do with Aaron, Erin and Area. Joint sounds like "jerrrr-nt".

Now, I could almost understand how Aaron and Erin get pronounced so strangely since they both end with the similar sounding "-ren". If we stretched the imagination, I could also almost understand the Area pronunciation. Joint, on the other hand, has no "r" present. There is no logical reason to insert an embellished sound that has no reason for being there!

You people make no sense. I'll stick to my over-commercialized ways. At least everyone understands me.