Dialects and other archaic languages

I can always tell who my mom is talking to--whether it be on the phone or just listening to her speak. She has this incredible superpower of changing her voice to sound exactly like the person she is conversing with.For example: For years we have been a host family to Ebru, who came over from Turkey when she was in college. Ebru has been around us for 10 years. But whenever Mom talks to her, she slides right into an English dialect that just walked off the boat from the mother country.Take one step further south of the border of Ohio, and my mother becomes a walking, talking southern resident. Her speech is punctuated with y'alls and probably a life-long southerner would embrace her for the Rebel she has become.

Her sudden change in ethnicity or regional dialect would embarrass us. We would tease her in an effort to make her stop whatever madness made her speak like she had marbles in her mouth when we went to the East Coast. But if you ask her to consciously speak in a certain accent, she can't produce three authentic words. But imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.One such southern vacation and accent took us to Charleston, S. C. where Mom was in the heighth of her glory. After seeing many of the sights around the city, we checked into a hotel to rest. Mom insisted that we see what the desk clerk recommended for a restaurant while my brother and I tried to quietly hide behind the nearest ficus. Only my dad was oblivious. After securing an "authentic" place to eat, Mom plucked a piece of candy from the bowl and popped in her mouth, declaring that the licorice-flavored sweet was her favorite. "I just love anus candy." As teenagers, we knew that somehow this was going to get back up to Ohio and ruin our hard-fought "coolness" at our school.

Mom has never had a good sense of direction. This is the woman who pulled into a toll booth in West Virginia and asked "what state am I in?" I'm still surprised the operator didn't call the highway patrol on this obviously drunk or mentally incompentent person. He simply informed my mother of her geographic location and she paid the toll. She still can't understand that toll operators are not there to reassure people what state of the union they are in.

Highways, even around our hometown are particular troublesome to my direction-challenged mother. One particular afternoon I realized that she was attempting to drive around the outerbelt of Columbus (which is of course a Circle) because she "knew that eventually it would take her to I-71). They never intersect. But that wasn't stopping her. She was going to make it happen. I finally convinced her to exit. However, she may still be driving around that loop looking for the Freeway.