Your Business and Cultural Differences Online

 @KenMueller , I hear you calling my home state a frickin' nightmare!  I was going to invite you up to Cape Cod to share my sand as I have heard you complaining about the heat for days. But now I am thinking about closing off the bridge and taking away the engraved pail and shovel I had made for you.

I say, blame the nightmare on the British. Most of the towns here are replicated from England. I thought we won the Revolutionary War and declared independence!  As @RainbowChazer noted, driving around here one may think they are in the UK.  Our Lesta (Leicester) is a perfect  twin. 

Never mind the various accents that comprise the few New England states from Maine to Connecticut but Massachusetts itself has so many dialects I can't understand my fellow statesmen who live within a 50 mile circumference.   We laugh when we see the likes of Sean Penn in the movie Mystic River or Jack Nicholson try to mimic the Baastin (Boston) accent. Then you have the Haavid (Harvard) contingent with a bit of high brow added as you cross over the bridge to Cambridge. 

As for my pal @LizJostes who flew the Yankee Doodle coop, my birth town is Wussta, not Wooster (Worcester) which is frequently mispronounced Worchester by the national media.  You must have been gone so long you forgot we don't have R's in our alphabet, however we enjoy drinking from the bubbla (water fountain).  Concord, NH is Konkid and I can't even begin to explain the down east Mainers language.

I recall with fondness my years working on Capitol Hill as a staffer and as a lobbyist but when there was heated discussion with a Southern Congressman on an issue we might as well have been in the United Nations in need of the headphones for translation. Neither of us thought the other was speaking English. 

This was a fun post but cultural and geographic variances are important in our global economy and require understanding and forethought in all business, social interaction and government relations. We need to be aware of our differences so that we may not, inadvertently or through ignorance, disrespect or disparage our increasingly closer community of neighbors. 

Topical discussion and enjoyable commentaries.

Thanks

East Anglia UK resident here. But I went to the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne up in the north east of England. 'Ne-CASsel' don't you know? Not 'New-CARSEL' as the plummy southerners would have it. I married a guy whose family hail from the north east too, so that pronunciation still goes. The UK is great for odd pronunciations as well: Leicester is 'Lester', Marylebone in London is 'Marlebon' and Hawick in the Scottish Borders is spoken 'hoik'. I love language, it's wonderful.

@annedreshfield thanks, Anne! how was your holiday?

Actually, with online community making it possible for many people to connect who are unable to in other ways, you would think this kind of thinking would start to dissipate. I've lived in many different places, throughout the U.S. and in Europe. When we start to look at people as "insiders" and "outsiders" we are closing the door to meeting new people and learning new things. We become inhospitable, and when we do that, we breed opportunity to become discriminating against people different from us. I think Social Media can help change this. For instance, I didn't know there was a difference with pronunciation (I have lost my hearing) and it was  another friend who tried to explain how to pronounce Lancaster as the natives, and Roots, as well. But it would be hard to teach someone that who doesn't hear well. That's a good example you used, by the way.  We are in the 21st century, it's time we break these barriers down and not look at people as different in a closed or suspicious manner. We are all different, and our different experiences shape us. We should be curious about other people and accept that different isn't "bad".

Along those lines, let me share with you just how closed the Lancaster area is. We were invited to a "Deaf Club Meeting".  We arrived, no one was there. We waited... and waited,,, and no one showed up. We took time to get a babysitter and made a point to be there. The next time we saw the person who invited us, they told us the meeting was moved.  While I am deaf, I am not accepted because I am not "in" the deaf community.

We tried to make connections, but it is a 2 way street. As far as technology, I depend on many of the same technologies as any other deaf person. There is also the discrimination between deaf, hard of hearing and the hearing impaired. The deaf don't like the term hearing impaired because they believe it means something is wrong with them. They would rather be hard of hearing. Some think it is better to be hard than impaired. However, there are those who lose their hearing as they age, or from an illness, head trauma, etc. and they no longer hear as well as they did, their hearing has become impaired, just as someone has a vision impairment. This group is overlooked not only by the deaf community, but by the hearing community as well, but mostly here in the East.

For the record, I was raised in an area out west where we used was hearing impaired, (we didn't use hard of hearing) because our ears didn't work as they should, they are impaired. Today, to be more accepted by everyone in the North East, I am phrasing it as "a hard of hearing child, who became a deaf adult". My hearing loss became severe to profound a couple of decades ago. However, I also use "hearing impaired" because it is accurate for the group wedged between the cultures. Hopefully, both cultures will be more accepting to them soon and allow for them to be recognized and acknowledged as well.

Interestingly enough, however, there are areas throughout the U.S. more accepting of people with different dialects, regional signs and accepting that people don't have to think or act or have the same view to share the same hardships, life experiences, and that it's ok to be different, come on in and make yourself at home. Lancaster is extremely the opposite.Why is it we are always giving only 2 options, "inside" - "outside", "deaf" - "hard of hearing". Why always extremes?

@C_Pappas thanks, Christina! Did your day off get exciting?

You forgot to point out that "Lancaster" has the accent on the first syllable - LANG kiss ter. :-)

Being a Yankee living in Dixie and representing several Dixie-based clients, I force myself to drop my Midwestern "you guys" and type out "y'all" when appropriate (those I refuse to verbalize "y'all").

In the Memphis area specifically, there are several towns or counties nearby that have a name based on a city that has been in existence for centuries longer, yet these local towns pronounce them differently. One example: Milan is pronounced MY-lin. 

Coming from New York, I pronounce Maryland (where I am now) something like "Mare-lend." I figured that gave it enough drawl for a Yankee. But they actually pronounce it "Mer-lin" here. The Southern accent isn't as pronounced here, other than oddities like that one, though every now and then they can surprise me with a very deep drawl in Baltimore.

Very observant of you to point this out as something businesses should look out for. Thanks for the prompt, @LizJostes !