Chinook by George M Hosier II - The Fondue Pot

Alaskans are blessed in many ways. However, in other ways we are woefully deprived. One of the areas in which we have been most deprived is in the acquisition of a distinctive regional dialect, unless you consider the speech of Alaska’s indigenous people to be our colloquial heritage. You see, an accent is kind of like cheese. It must be allowed a long time to properly age. Likewise, to cultivate a full-bodied accent, residents have to be rooted to an area for several generations in order to develop little quirks of inflection and mispronunciation unique to their local culture.

Furthermore, cheese must be left alone while it develops its full flavor. People also must remain isolated from other folks during the dialect brewing process, so they don’t start copying their neighbors. On this point fate was not kind to Alaskans. By the time white folks began arriving in the Last Frontier in any significant numbers, radio had already been invented. Television wasn’t far behind. As a result, Alaskan dialect is about as piquant and nuanced as Velveeta when compared to the Gouda jargon of deep-woods Maine, the Romano vernacular of Puget Sound or the Extra Sharp Cheddar brogue of the Louisiana Bayous.

To read the entire story, please visit our Chinook pages.