Two different accents?
Is it just me, or is Dennis Quaid doing two or three different accents in this movie? He seems to fluctuate between Cajun, southern, and what I call the Emeril/New York accent. It's very odd.
shareWell, it is possible for someone's accent to be a mix. It depends on how/where you grew up, the influence of your parents' accents, etc. Someone in another thread mentioned Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady/Pygmalion--he was able to identify not just where you were from, but your parents as well, all from which words you pronounced in a certain way, as well as other speech patterns.
One aspect of the New Orleans accent is pronouncing T's as D's--this is from the Italian influence. Brooklyn also had an influx of Italian immigrants, which is why the two accents can sound similar at times--Brooklyn's is sometimes called the "dese, dem, dose" accent. So Italian immigrants came in, subtly influenced the way people around them talked, who were also influenced by the French settlers. Accents can definitely change and mix even within a single person, which is why they're such an interesting sociological marker.
I've always heard that a talented linguist could place you within about 6 blocks or so of where you grew up. I don't know how that works out if you lived in a more rural area.
Concerning the film, I've heard more "where y'ats?" in the first 15 minutes of the Big Easy movie than I heard in the same amount of days on vacation in town, over the years.
I prefer the toad less raveled.