Accents

At times, there are noticeable differences in pronunciation, specifically in reference to northern and southern accents. On Friday, a fourth grade student turned to me and asked, “How do you spell coh-wat?”

I said, “Like in the sentence… I caught the ball?”

“No, like… I coh-wat the ball.”

“Right, like you caught the ball.”

“Noooooo, maybe, wait… I didn’t C-AW-T the ball, but I did COH-WAT it.”

That, folks, is an example of what we call a dialectal difference.