Accents, dialect and the like..........

As an eBay powerseller who ships items worldwide from my little shop right here in the Southern United States, I have "met" many new friends online.

Recently, I got a surprise phone call from a new friend in the UK, one whom I had just "met" on eBay when she purchased an adorable little primitive wood bucket from me.

My new friend Karen and I have found through easy conversation that we have so much in common, even though we live a world apart. Like sisters almost it seems.

We both own and operate Primitive shops, hers in the UK and mine here in the US. She loves everything American and I love everything British!

As we got to know each other over the phone, we shared compliments over each others accents, hers a lovely British one and my own slow Southern drawl. Soon I began to realize how much accents can affect language and the understanding of it .

My new friend and I were sharing website addresses, she gave me the one for her UNIT (shop) there in the UK and then some others for companies that produce merchandise like we both sell in our shops. As she was spelling out the website address, I couldn't get the letters right. She had to say A as in Apple and E as in Eve for me to finally "get it".

I had never realized how differently we say even the simplest things such as letters with our accents. When she was spelling out the website and would say A I would put down E for the sound I was hearing (eh). Then when I spelled it back to her she would correct me and say again (eh) as in A (eh) for apple. In my slow Southern drawl I say A-A-A-A-A pronounced (AY) as in WAY over yonder, I could go on but I'm sure you see our dilemma!

How fun it has been to chat with my lovely new found British friend on the phone, trading accents and the like. Learning different words for the same things such as "trunk sale" in the UK rather than "yard sale" here in the US.

In our most recent conversation, she was delighted to hear I sit on the "sofa", the same as her and not on the "couch" the word she thought all of us Americans (or Yanks) used for sofa and many do. (Now being from the deep South I just can't begin to call myself a "Yank" as many Brits do I hear, LOL!)

I am teaching my new friend to speak Southern with words like 'lite, 'nite, and 'rite and of course Ya'll. Hopefully she will teach me to speak more proper English and soon we will be able to understand each other perfectly.

On a more serious note, I would like to say the world wide web has certainly shrunk our world in my opinion and made it much easier for like minded folks like Karen and I to meet in cyber space.

My hope is that someday this easy access brought on by the www will help folks across the globe to "meet" and get to know each other "one on one" like Karen and I have, no matter how many miles or how many differences may separate them.

I feel that if we could all learn more about each others lives, finding out the many things we all have in common and exploring the differences, that someday we could all learn to live in peace..........