Nationwide Poll on Accents Finds We’re, Like, Total Airheads

U h mah guh!

Tiffany! Heather! Amber! You’re totally not going to believe this.

People from, like, around the country and stuff think we sound dumber than anybody, even people from New Jersey.

No way.

Way .

Earlier this year, the marketing czars at Hyundai Motor America--looking to promote its “new intergenerational subcompact car, the Accent”--commissioned a nationwide poll, asking people what they thought of various regional accents. This was accomplished by posing seven questions to groups of 100 to 150 people in every state but Hawaii. Half the people polled said they found the “California Valley” accent the “least smart.”

Boston edged out Chicago for sounding the “smartest,” 34% to 29%. While absolutely no one listed the Valley accent as the smartest, all is not lost. Four percent of the respondents at least found Valspeak, like, totally sexy.

No one thought the New Jersey accent was sexy. On the other hand, most of y’all found that Southern talk right darlin’, a turn-on that may owe more to Scarlett’s Hollywood-coached drawl than to the adenoidal whines of Gomer Pyle and the Clampett family.

Australian was chosen the sexiest foreign accent, probably due to the Mel Gibson factor. Jane Seymour and Sophia Loren had the sexiest female-movie-star accents, followed closely by Kathleen Turner. For the men, it was Sean Connery, then Gibson.

So I’m like, this is the fault of Moon Zappa and that “Valley Girl” song, like for sure.

We tried to talk to her about it, but the folks at MTV told us she’s on vacation and incommunicado. Besides, she’s based in New York now, which according to the Hyundai poll features the most intimidating (62%) and least liked (31%) accent of all.

Fugghedabowdit.

So, ba-bing, we turned to other experts.

Marlys Meckler, director of the Tarzana Speech and Language Center, says that in the 10 years in which she’s been the Professor ‘Iggins to the dipthong-deprived, getting good money to couth up the speech of her clients, she’s only had one request to smarten up a Val accent.

Told about the car company’s finding that the Valley’s accent was deemed the dumbest, she said, “I find that hard to believe.”

Meckler said she performed her sole Valspeak exorcism two years ago, as requested by a 24-year-old actress who said she was looking for a broader range of roles.

Addressing for success, Meckler said, is “a very personal thing.” And there’s nothing wrong with a little inflection correction.

“It’s sort of like getting your nose done,” she said. “If it bothers you and you will feel better about yourself for doing it, I say go ahead.”

Mostly, Meckler’s Valley clientele consists of immigrants with foreign accents who are striving for success in business. Many of her clients are Asian engineers, or immigrants from Iran and Latin America.

“There are people who for many reasons want to sound more American,” Meckler said. “They really feel that they will do better personally and professionally with an accent reduction program. We use a lot of their own professional vocabulary. Sometimes an employer will send a person and pay for them.

“They feel they’ll be more marketable out there in the business world,” Meckler said. “I had a woman here from South America who wanted to change her accent. I thought her accent was charming. She felt she could do better.”

“The Valley accent you know is just a subculture,” said Larry Moss, a Hollywood dialect coach and speech consultant who has helped stars such as Barbra Streisand, Leonard Nimoy and Drew Barrymore lose and find accents for their roles.

The Valley accent should not be confused with the Valley Girl stereotype, he stressed.

“It doesn’t mean reflecting the speech of people from the Valley,” he added, “but a certain type of speech that was popularized by Frank Zappa and his daughter singing that song. “People have this way of simplistically coming up with a judgment,” Moss added.

“As for patterns of speech that might be Valley, so called, there is a tendency to overstress weak syllables. If I say ‘How’s your sister?’ they hold on to the weak part: ‘How’s your sisterrrr.”

We seem to have found the Rs they lost in Boston, where “How’s your sista?” is the way it’s said. Nonethless, Boston’s accent is deemed the smartest. It’s that Hahvahd Yahd-Kennedy mythos, Moss believes. He added that the scorn heaped on the Valley Girl accent much resembles that bestowed upon the Brooklyn accent of 60 years ago.

“People were saying, ‘I hoid da boid choiping.’ Then it started to go out,” he said, because so much derision was heaped on the Flatbush accent that it melted away. “People over 60 or 65 might retain it, but most other people dropped it because it was the laughingstock of the country. The Valley accent will meet a similar fate.”

Whatever.

Right now, though, the second-stage rocket is about to fire, with the impending release of “Valley Girl II,” a sequel to the first film, which replayed “Romeo and Juliet” in Miss Zappa’s milieu.

According to its makers, the little darlings in the sequel communicate in an updated Valspeak, reflecting the powerful hip-hop, rap influences of today. “Grody to the max”-- nobody says that anymore--will be replaced with sparkling phrases like “Yo, whassup?”

“Uh mah guh, Tiffany. Like, now we have to learn whole new words and stuff. “