Jeremy Speer

My mother is from Southwestern Pennsylvania, my dad from Pittsburgh, and my in-laws from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

When I visit these places, the first thing I recognize is the dialect. My Pittsburgh grandmother spoke in tried and true Pittsburghese. The toilet was a commode. The beloved football team was the “Stillers.” And a group of people was not “you all” or “y’all,” but rather “yinz.”

About an hour and a half away, near the West Virginia border, was where my mother grew up and when I’ve visited there, I quickly realize a distinct Appalachian accent. In my opinion, this accent contains characteristics of Pittsburghese, but veers more strongly to the Appalachian English spoke in a lot of West Virginia. Either way, listening to people from there was always a shock to a boy who grew up in Michigan.

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is influenced heavily by Scandanavian settlers, and thus the recognizable Finnish/Canadian-sounding accent. “Say Yah to Da U.P, Eh.” encompasses speech in that part of the country better than I could describe. I still toss in an ‘eh’ for emphasis at the end of some sentences, and I still notice a slight accent in my mother in-law when she pronounces the word borrow like “boor-ow.”

Following a recent trip to the U.P., I’ve been thinking a lot about dialect. Growing up in Michigan, I noticed that after a couple of days on the road, I slipped back a little bit into ending many sentences with “eh.” I’ve always thought that when I visited the south, that I’d also find myself with a slight drawl after spending time with those who speak in such fashion.

I’ve talked to my sister-in-law, who often travels to different parts of the country. She has said she has a tendency to quickly adapt to a given accent. Others don’t experience this phenomenon.

What’s up with that?

According to isciencemag.co.uk, psychologists discovered the “chameleon effect” related to accents.

“Accents are a sign of belonging to a group just as much as they are a sign of separation, and both the conscious and subconscious mind notice this. This causes us to mirror the people around us, which we do through our vocabulary, inflections and hand gestures…(This is) motivated by the need to be more likeable or to feel less threatening to those around us.”

Not to get too deep in psycho-analysis, but I’ve always scored off the charts on people service when I take personality tests. I’ve been told serving people helps drive motivation.

Practically, I’ve always prided myself on trying to connect with anyone. If you read this column, you know that I am a sports nerd, and I used to connect with people in college by them telling me what high school they went to, and me reciting their school’s mascot.

I love conversation with people and always try to find something that makes them tick, and discuss it with them. I wasn’t a huge hunter when I living in Michigan, but I could talk hunting and fishing with the best of them as a way to make those whose passions were the woods more comfortable.

The downside of this personality — seeing the world through the eyes of others sometimes makes it hard for me to know exactly where I stand — is a topic for another column.

But sitting in an Upper Peninsula newsroom, discussing the proper protocol for eating pasties, I noticed my accent thickening four days into my trip. For a week, I was a Yooper, and I guess I unknowingly played the part.

If I were to soon go to a South Carolina beach (hey, Betsy, you up for a quick getaway?), my guess is I’d start a slight drawl by the end of the weekend.

Maybe it’s the way I like to travel. I’ve always found travel more rewarding when you try and live like a local instead of a tourist. Maybe it’s empathy. Maybe it’s just silly. Maybe, even, it’s the fact that working in newspapers and having a teenage and pre-teen daughter make adaptability a necessity.

Y’all/Yinz, I’m just a chameleon, eh?