"Welcome home"

I read an AP story today about New Orleans dialect. The author, who apparently just discovered that New Orleanians don't drawl, says that "How's ya' house?"¹ has replaced "Where y'at?"¹ as the unofficial local greeting.

The AP story doesn't reflect my experience. The most common local post-Katrina greeting I've heard  is spoken in plain American English. It's "Welcome home."

To understand how good this greeting feels, imagine that you hear or see a news bulletin telling you that you and your family must leave town today; if you don't, you may drown. So you spend about a half hour packing for what you think will be a two-day road trip; which, if things get really bad, may stretch into a full week. Things get worse than really bad, and your road trip stretches into two months. Two months without seeing your neighbors, your friends, everyone that you used to socialize with. Then, you finally get home, and once again see a neighbor, friend, or acquaintance who has just endured the same separation you have. Your neighbor or friend or acquaintance sees you, recognizes you, smiles, and says, "Welcome home." You reply, "Welcome home yourself."

That's how we greet each other in New Orleans, when we see each other for the first time since Katrina. We welcome each other home.

After that, we ask, "How'd you make out?," which really means, "How's your house?" The question is not a greeting, but a conversation starter.

If you want to read a more informative article about New Orleans dialect, read this Slate article.

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¹Dialectal spelling by the author of the AP story.

Comments

[Aaron Weidenhaft]

I had a huge problem with that story as well. I felt it trivialized my entire upbringing and reduced my community to drooling yokels. The fact that one of the only people he cited for the story was Benny Grouch didn't help any either - I'm pretty sure Benny treated the interview as an advertising opportunity for his Christmas CD's. That story was representative of a larger problem I have with the AP, that they have no real accountability to readers since the stories are just shopped out. Whenever you write a letter to an editor who published an AP story they always evade criticism by pointing out it was just an AP story they picked up. I think that author should stripped of responsibility; he did next to no research, never consulted a linguist and made braod statements of fact besed on speculation and a miniscule sampling of the population.

[Aaron Weidenhaft]

Post Script: I do know how to spell "based" and "broad." If only there was an "edit" button for the comments.