N.C. talks slow? What do eee-uuuwww think?

“Last week, I spent two months in North Carolina. I was in a courtroom, listening to the testimony of locals. Locals speak slowly.

“I know North Carolina is not the Deep South, and yet somehow its cadences are slower than in places such as Mississippi, where the syrup is thicker but seems to squeeze out more rapidly, like a blaat from a ketchup dispenser. In North Carolina, words and phrases ooze, like sap. The pace of discourse is glacial. The word ‘you’ is two and a half syllables, pronounced ‘eee-uuuwww.’ ”

— From Gene Weingarten’s column in the Washington Post

Among the 106 (at last count) online responses: “Ever few yars we enlist Gene to come down and write a dismissive and derisive column about N.C. To keep you carpetbaggers away. Thanks again, Gene. The check’s in the mail.”