Language and Human Interaction

Blue's News linked to a quiz today asking "Which American Accent Do You Have?"

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The Inland North
The Northeast
Philadelphia
Boston
The West
The South
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

The sad thing is that all it really did was make me think of how much progress I've lost over the last two years with my speech.

You see, when I was a child, I had quite a few speech impediments. It took over three years of working with a speech therapist to get to the point where I sounded "normal." A big reason why it took so long was that I never really had a lot of "face-to-face" interaction with people back when I was a child. I was pretty withdrawn, and spent more time with books than anything else.

Over the last two years, my interaction with people has been mostly through E-mail or over forums. My previous job didn't leave me a lot of time for a social life of any sort so I never really had a chance to get out and interact with people, and unfortunately, some minor impediments have started creeping back into my speech patterns unless I really concentrate on my speech.

Oh well...it happens. At least I have time now to get out and interact with people again. Last night, I even went to a Shackmeet over in Fort Worth. It was fun geeking out with the holiday spirit. After all, how often can you make a "Hand of Vecna" joke during the Christmas season and have it be appropriate?