Fourth Floor
A recent podcast dealt with the New York accent. Someone did a study, where sales clerks were encouraged to say the phrase “fourth floor”. “He knew where the men’s suits were but he was trying to get people to say the words “fourth floor” to see if they dropped the Rs and said “fawth flaw.”
Twenty years later, and eight hundred miles south, PG was driving a truck for Redo Blue. One of the leading customers was a firm on West Peachtree Street. If you listened to the delivery radio, you would hear people say “Eerie eerie foth flow, eerie eerie sack and flow.” The driver knew to go to Heery Heery, both on the fourth floor, and the second floor.
In Georgia, people have their own way of saying four. The black people say fo, as in friend or foe. The white people make up for the R dropping elsewhere, and say fo-er.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The spell check suggestion for fawth is faith.












[…] or foe. The white people make up for the R dropping elsewhere, and say fo-er. Pictures for this repost are from The Library of Congress. Spell check suggestion for fawth: […]