Pretending to be Southern

[Anonymous]

My DH insists that we raise our children to speak like they are southern. I love the south and the southern culture, but we live in Northern Virginia. People don't speak that way here. My DH is just a poser. Whenever I am telling a story or visiting with other moms, my DH will interrupt me to correct a term I use if it isn't southern. For example, if I refer to a BBQ, he steps in and says "cook out". If I use the word "mom", he steps in and says "momma". All the flipping time. I should add he was raised is rural Pennsylvania and no one else in his family uses southern terms. I have progressed from giving him the evil eye to telling him how unattractive his behavior is and that enough is enough. Bless his heart!

Rant over.

[Anonymous]

How strange. Why does he say he does this?

[Anonymous]

What on earth lmao (from a North Carolina native). Can you mention that people with Southern accents are often assumed to be stupid? It's why I lost mine. Sometimes I miss it, but I think losing it has gained me some IQ points in the eyes of others.

[Anonymous]

That’s very weird. My husband is actually southern, but doesn’t have an accent, nor say “cookout” or “momma”.

[Anonymous]

This can't be real. How absurd.

Incidentally, a branch of my family ended up in Texas (from PA) for work, and the children (born and raised there) of the family were actively discouraged from adopting any Texas accent. None of them have one to this day.

[Anonymous]

That’s pretty weird but they are his kids too. I think you should compromise, like yes to bless your heart and no to ya’ll. I’m from Michigan and say cookout, btw, so I’d drop that. fwiw my husband is from the south and I also would really cringe at my kids saying ya’ll but luckily he’s shed all southernisms.

[Anonymous]

Rural central PA is essentiallyKentucky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That’s very weird. My husband is actually southern, but doesn’t have an accent, nor say “cookout” or “momma”.

Mine is southern as well. It isn't his accent (which is mostly vanished) or his words (although he does have some beauts) that give him away. It's his Southern Gentleman type attitude. Polite, polite, polite. Never quite saying you don't like something. Putting others before himself, always. At least in public. Gentle. It is his manners. Not his "momma" or going to a "cookout" (I say cookout, not him, and I am definitely NOT Southern!!)

[Anonymous]

I’m from the Deep South. I would recognize a fake accent and fake speech pattern and wonder what was wrong with the speaker. Tell your DH he isn’t fooling anyone. You don’t become southern. A cat could have kittens in an oven but it wouldn’t make them biscuits.

[Anonymous]

This would be a huge turn off for me. Just really strange. I don’t think cookout is a southern word - we say it in New England.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DH insists that we raise our children to speak like they are southern. I love the south and the southern culture, but we live in Northern Virginia. People don't speak that way here. My DH is just a poser. Whenever I am telling a story or visiting with other moms, my DH will interrupt me to correct a term I use if it isn't southern. For example, if I refer to a BBQ, he steps in and says "cook out". If I use the word "mom", he steps in and says "momma". All the flipping time. I should add he was raised is rural Pennsylvania and no one else in his family uses southern terms. I have progressed from giving him the evil eye to telling him how unattractive his behavior is and that enough is enough. Bless his heart!

Rant over.

Maybe low country SC isn't southern to him, but mom was mom and the term cookout was never used. BBQ was a synonym for pulled pork, but you could use it interchangeable with inviting people over to throw meat on the grill

[Anonymous]

It's poseur.

And please tell him that whatever aspirations of elegance he is entertaining with his Southern obsession, people around the world consider the USA to be full of fat, badly-dressed, ill-mannered, uncouth people. Foreigners who live here understand that's not the case, of course! But this is the image of the USA abroad... so if he wants to rectify this image, all he has to do is be courteous and pay a little more attention to his appearance. There is no need to affect a speech that isn't his - the speech is NOT the problem

- foreigner.

[Anonymous]

This must be a troll. I don't understand this at all.

I don't know anyone who says cookout. It's BBQ. But I'm from TX, not the South, so maybe it's different there but never heard that.

I will say that while I have hints of Texas-isms in my speech I don't force that on my kids. My kids speak like they're from NOVA, which is how it should be. How odd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This would be a huge turn off for me. Just really strange. I don’t think cookout is a southern word - we say it in New England.

Not OP, but I’m guessing her husband distinguishes between “barbecue” (the noun, which in eastern NC means pulled pig) and a “cookout” (the event of getting together with grilled food outside).

I’m from the DMV but I went to college in the South, my husband is southern, and our kids know good barbecue. I have also adopted “y’all” because I like the second person plural that other languages have.

All that being said, I still think OP’s DH’s insistence on this is super weird.

[Anonymous]

I'd go all in. Get yourself some of those old fashioned Southern Belle dresses, complete with parasol and giant hat, adopt a Southern accent, and talk only in Southern phrases. Keep at it all day, every day until he gives in.