Now listen heyah y’all

“Are yew jus’ tryin’ to git me to talk, is that the ah-deah?” [Quote from dialogue overhead on a Texas college radion station.] Today’s NYT has a report about a serious academic study of the way my fellow Stetson-wearers talk and what it says about their sense of place! Extract:

Among the unexpected findings, said Guy Bailey, a linguistics professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio and a leading scholar in the studies with his wife, Jan Tillery, is that in Texas more than elsewhere, how you talk says a lot about how you feel about your home state.

“Those who think Texas is a good place to live adopt the flat `I’ [~] it’s like the badge of Texas,” said Dr. Bailey, 53, provost and executive vice president of the university and a transplanted Alabamian married to a Lubbock native, also 53.

So if you love Texas, they say, be fixin’ to say “naht” for “night,” “rahd” for “ride” and “raht” for “right.”

And by all means say “all” for “oil.”