Accent Reduction

The Long Island-bashers are at it again. No sooner has a year managed to pass without any Joey Buttafuocos or Amityville Horrors hogging the headlines in the supermarket tabloids than someone decrees that Long Islanders - sorry, Lawn Guylanders - talk funny, and sets out to make us all sound like we just got off the bus from Omaha.

Perhaps it shouldn't be so surprising. These, after all, are the dogged '90s, the self-improvement decade that strives not just for personal fitness but for personal perfection, the era of stomach reduction, thigh reduction, breast reduction, and reduction ad every other possible absurdum, so why not "accent reduction"?

"Karen will attempt to make people aware of how their mouths make the horrible sounds they produce," assures a straight-faced press release. "She will help Long Islanders to 'tawk' less and 'talk' more."

What exactly does a Long Island accent sound like? Flushing? Hewlett Harbor? Babylon? Mattituck?

Depends where you come from, and also where you go. A friend who was born and raised in Nassau County but has relatives in the South remembers suffering agonies as a child every Christmas, when it came time to visit the old Kentucky home. His parents would make him stand in front of a mirror saying "cahndy" instead of "caaan-dy" and "ahnt" for "aayent" over and over again, until they were sure Grandpa and Grandma would have no cause to say he sounded like a nasally challenged Yankee.

It does seem too bad, though, when accents and dialects all across the nation, including this region's distinctive Bonac, are disappearing faster than you can say "national television," to help the process along. For those who disagree, Karen will be waiting at the Jericho Library at 8 p.m. Wednesday.