Why do the Mannings sound like they have a Different accent ??
I don't quite understand this. Jake Delhomme grew up in southwest Louisiana if i'm not mistaken. He speaks with a straight Cajun accent. Not a New Orleans accent. So he's one of ours? The Mannings speak with a normal accent/slightly southern (because of their aforementioned Mississippi roots and because the Garden District was first settled by protestant Americans mostly from the South, not Catholic Creoles or the Italians and Irish and blacks who all give to our New Orleans accent).
So if you're from another part of the state, you're one of ours? But if you're from our city, but you grow up with money and without a thick accent, you're less of a New Orleanian?
Being from Uptown (Broadmoor, not exactly Beverly Hills), i'm often times confused about a certain bias that lingers to this day.
I can absolutely relate to this. I lived in New Orleans right up to college (N.O. East, to be exact) and I don't have a very discernible accent. I HAVE had people in northern Virginia/Maryland/Pennsylvania claim they can tell I'm from N.O. or tell I have some kind of accent, and I've even had people at LSU claim they can tell I'm from N.O., but I can't really tell, and I know for a fact I don't have a yat accent.
Where's my point? People who grew up
around the city, but not necessarily in it, are more likely to have a "New Orleans" accent. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, but it boils down to the fact that a lot of these accents are simply disappearing. Since I'm a 1st generation New Orleanian (like Peyton and Eli), I think my accent is likely to be influenced by my parents and friends. Well, most of my fiends have my "accent" and growing up, I didn't encounter that many "yat" accents. In my experience, most of the people with heavy accents lived outside of Orleans parish. St. Bernard, St. Tammany, and Jefferson parishes seem to be the actual home to these accents. Post-Katrina, I think this trend has greatly accelerated, and I'm afraid you really have to look to the older folks to find that many left in the city.
Now, with all of that said, I think I'd be very likely to sort of "pick up" or "put on" portions of the accent if you put me in the middle of a conversation with people that have it and give me a few beers. Like I said, I'm sure I have a little bit of one, but no more than the average New Orleans native, which isn't much. And that doesn't make me any less New Orleans. The real New Orleanians know this; the posers are the ones who claim otherwise.