After a long absence from Acadiana, I have returned home and it is so nice. It didn’t matter where my career took me, I always had someone mention my accent.
The strangest comments were tossed my way. I would have people guess my accent was from the East or West Coast. Even stranger, I had people ask if I was from Australia or London. When I would let them in on my secret of being a Cajun from South Louisiana, they were surprised! I would also share with them not everyone in Louisiana talks like the alligator trappers on Swamp People.
It is no secret being born and raised in South Louisiana, there was no way to escape the region without having picked up some local dialect. Fortunately, if you consider this fortunate, being in radio and TV, I had several professionals point out some of my mispronunciations. I knew if I wanted to succeed on this career path of broadcasting outside of South Louisiana, I better learn how to talk. Which I did and it took many years to overcome. The weird thing is once I shared my hometown with anyone who would inquire, I always got the same reply; “you don’t sound Cajun”.
Big Events Travel.com recently published the Sexiest 50 accents in the country. The travel web site asked the 1.5 million social media followers they have and after the responses came in, the team then produced the Top 50 Sexiest Accents in the country.
Coming in at the bottom of the list for the worst accents in the country include Long Islander, New Jersey, Minnesotan, Alaskan and California Valley.
The sexiest accents in the country are
- Texan
- Bostonian
- New York
- Mainer
- Chicago
People from the survey seem to enjoy the Cajun accent from South Louisiana. Our Cajun accent came in 15th.
The Creole New Orleans accent landed 25th.
It drives me crazy when Hollywood tries and fails at the Cajun accent. Never fails, the accent Hollywood projects just sounds stupid and silly.
See the complete list here.