Hon!

At 9:13 PM on Wednesday, October 04, 2006

As I listened closely to the voice John Travolta is using for Edna Turnblad, I began to get use to it. I concluded it must be some regional Baltimorean accent.

I then did a litle hunting on Wikipedia, and came up with this interesting read:

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Baltimore's culture are the people themselves. Though nowadays the city is extremely culturally diverse, the lasting image of Baltimoreans seems to be the "Hon" culture exemplified most markedly by the longer established families and residents of the Highlandtown, Canton, Locust Point and Hampden neighborhoods. Between the 1950s and 70s, it wasn't uncommon to see working class local women dressing in bright, printed dresses with out-dated glasses and beehive hairdos. Men were often dressed casually, but with a general factory or dock worker look, as many in town did indeed have such jobs. Now within the younger generations you can always spot someone from Baltimore because the girls will have on the "flyest" clothes with the tackiest colored hair and the boys will have on Dickies male capris with new balance sneakers, and a fitted cap.

The name of the culture comes from the often parodied Baltimore accent and slang. "Hon" was a common informal name for someone else, properly pronounced "hohn", with emphasis on the vowel. Baltimore’s accent exemplifies a dialectal continuum between Tidewater American English and Delaware Valley American English, loosely possessing the vowel shifts of the former and general pronunciation of the latter. For instance "Baltimore" is pronounced "Bawlamer" or even "Balmer," and "Maryland" becomes "Murland" or "Murlan." Other common pronunciations include "ool," "amblance," "wooder," "warsh,","sharr","dug" , tew(oil, ambulance, water, wash,shower and "dog",two respectively).

John Waters parodies the Hon culture, as well as Baltimore itself, extensively in his movies. For a somewhat accurate representation of Baltimorese, one can look to Waters' narration spots in his 1974 movie Pink Flamingos. Waters himself used a local commercial for Mr Ray's Hair Weaves as his main inspiration. The commercial was famous around town for Mr. Ray's extreme Baltimore accent. "Cawl todaey, for your freee hame showink..." was the most memorable line from that commercial, translating as "Call today, for your free home showing..."

In fact, the clip that was shown on ET today, Edna calls Tracy to her arms saying "Hon."


Any Baltimoreans out there? Is this accent common in the city?

Love,
Hairhopper

Hairspray Movie Musical