The South will never be the same again

[Psycho Bass Guy]

The people I LIVE around who were born here in East Tennessee can sometimes not understand me through my accent, but they're all native city-folk whose accents are a mixture of TV Midwestern and Michigan/Ohio/Illinois where their parents were from. Listening to my niece and nephew who were raised by my parents and television is a trip. They sound like perfect little Northerners until the odd "country" word comes out.

[Highlander]

This heading, sort of, works for London and the "South" of the UK as well...

The "Square Mile" (UK's Wall St) speaks CASH in various dialects and flavours...
The "West End" (Broadway) has just about any accent and language you care to think of...
To the East, the call of the minarets and a mix of Arabic can be heard...
To the South can be heard the lilt of a Caribbean accent, with smatterings of Korean to the South-West...
Acton to the West has a distinct Somalian twist...
In North London there can still be heard, that Turkish and Cypriot twang...

As for that "Gore-Blimey Guv'nor..." call of the black-cab driver, East-ender... almost resigned to TV...

As for Londoners in general, over all points, Rumanian, Latvian, Chech, Slovak, Lithuanian, and not forgetting Polish accents, can be found everywhere...

I often have trouble remembering what London was like only a decade ago...

... and, with luck, we will be up for sale by the end of the month... my "handle" beckons...    

[westen44]

Polish and Polish-accented English are also very common in Dublin. 

[Highlander]

There's a lot of Dublin in Kilburn (and the High-Roads) ... 

[westen44]

There's a lot of Dublin in Kilburn (and the High-Roads) ... 

Considering how the Irish economy started going down after 2008, I can see how there would be those leaving in large numbers to places such as London.  I was there before 2008.  But I've heard that a lot of the Polish decided to go back to Poland and take their chances there again. 

[Dave W]

Plenty of different dialects in my neck of the woods. Northeast Minneapolis has seen waves of immigrants for well over a century, starting with the Poles.

[Highlander]

Everyone forgets how long the Poles have been here, and the most obvious pointer is the two Squadrons of Spitfires that flew in the BofB, entirely crewed by Poles...

[uwe]

Howdy! How y'all? Just to say I'm back. Will share my impressions later. Why was I silent for so long? My BlackBerry got caught in some incessant software loop a few days into our vacation and would not get out of start mode to load (until it ran empty everytime), so I could neither send nor receive any emails or have internet access. And getting a BB repaired or buying a new one (that was unlocked and could be employed with my Deutsch Telekom SIM card) proved impossible - I learned the hard way that the South is I-Phone and Samsung smart phone country.

Nashville, Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Pensacola and the Gulf Coast/Redneck Riviera, Montgomery and a lot more of Alabama, bits of South and North Carolona, the Great Smoky Mountains/Appalachians as well as Knoxville were hit along the way. Lots of things to learn and see (some pleasantly confirming what we had expected/hoped for, some utterly surprising: for instance I never thought that Alabama would have so many seemingly untouched woods and forests) - very friendly people, lots of rain (that is what you get when you travel in April, serves us right, but it didn't deter us) and oversize food servings.

[uwe]

Everyone forgets how long the Poles have been here, and the most obvious pointer is the two Squadrons of Spitfires that flew in the BofB, entirely crewed by Poles...

But those were (valiantly) flown by Polish volunteers, ex-Polish Airforce men, who had made off to England after Poland surrendered.They were not so much immigrants but patriots re-enlisting in the army of an allied power to free their country and return there.

I always found that those Polish RAF squadrons (along with the French ones) had a fair share in getting mentioned in RAF history (as you would expect from those sporty Brits, I know no other country which commemorates the valor of its own lost men and the men who caused that loss in one and the same place - when we were in Scotland lots of churches commemorated the casualties of the sunk Royal Oak, but very often also mentioning "Günter Prien and his brave U-Boat crew"). There was even a nice film about a Polish Spitfire pilot falling in love with an English Rose a few years back (planes didn't play much of a role, it was a romance).

[Highlander]

A lot of the Polish never went home after the war and settled the area east-and-west of where they were based, so some have been here over 70 years; those that are still living...

My favourite war film is Das Boot, in German; not the dubbed version, though I have both... my Swiss/German ex neighbour - his dad was on U Boots throughout WWII...
A WWII U Boot sunk a ship my granddad was on, but he lived (not to) tell the tale...

[uwe]

I understand that war-destroyed and Stalin-controlled Poland wasn't much of an attraction for them. Quite a few of the German POWs stayed too.

[Highlander]

... and the Italians... and they opened numerous little restaurants...

I still don't understand why lederhosen never caught on...

[uwe]

Yup, we learned at the Orkneys that the Italian POWs there introduced pasta to the Scottish townfolk in the 40ies. While the Italian POWs were generally happy about their very fair treatment (not so much about the Orkney weather!), they found that the Orkney cuisine needed some development.

Oh, and they also showed how you can turn two Nissen huts into something beautiful, even sacred:







http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/eastmainland/italianchapel/images/grillex.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/eastmainland/italianchapel/&h=338&w=450&tbnid=gmX0PNSlzdJuLM:&zoom=1&tbnh=90&tbnw=120&usg=__1ZGFM57Nung0DQ-tXbyiysrLxfo=&docid=ZderkpG0wOCeEM

[Blackbird]

Did you get into the Civil War stuff in any of those places, Uwe??

[uwe]

Sure - we spent nearly a complete day at Vicksburg National Memorial Park. Reminded me of the fields of Verdun and the WWI slaughter there. It hadn't crossed my mind until then that the Civil War was the US' incisive first experience that old tactics and beginning modern weaponry equated in senselessly high casualties. And Grant might have not been the most naturally gifted tactician in the Civil War, but he sure was dogged and repeated failure seemed to breed thinking out of the box moments with him. That in turn reminded me a bit of how the Red Army eventually won its victories against the only initially superior Wehrmacht in WWII.

We saw a couple of smaller and larger Civil War cemeteries along the way too.

And to balance things: The very compelling Civil Rights Museum in Montgomery - the Martin Luther King National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis was unfortunately closed when we were there on Easter Sunday - so we just saw the fateful motel (where it is is located in) and its balcony where he was shot.

Plus: The new WWII Museum in Nashville (nicely done and still developing, but it needs to make much clearer how much the Red Army played a role in beating down Nazi Germany, it is very light on that; also one howler in claiming one military cap with a deathshead skull found in the North African theatre to be a "Waffen-SS cap" - it wasn't, both Wehrmacht tank soldiers and snipers had the skull insignia too, no Waffen-SS soldier ever saw Africa, maybe I'll write to them about that) and of course the Johnny Cash Museum there (very lovingly done). Plus Graceland in Memphis which I had expected to be much, much larger!!! By today's living home standards that is an upper middle class building (in a less than classy or glossy neighborhood) sizewise, nothing more.