As you may or may not know, the city of Hathian is based off a real town called Hopedale, LA. It is located south of New Orleans and is in the St. Bernard Parish. What you might not realize that Louisiana's accent is fairly different from other southern states, especially in the southern part of LA like Hathian is in. I recently saw a youtube video from someone who lives down there and she talked about the different accents are down here. While there is a diverse amount of accents, the main three are the typical southern accent (in the far north part), Cajun, and YAT.

Originally I thought the latter two only existed in New Orleans. However, after some research that included the youtube video that I will link at the end, I found that in actuality the southern accent you'd hear in other southern states only exists in the northern part of the state. In New Orleans many of the natives have the Cajun accent, who are direct descendants of the Arcadian French. It sounds a bit like a Jersey accent but with a bit of a twang to it. They also add in many cajun french phrases into their everyday language.

The other one is the YAT dialect, nicknamed for saying "Where y'at" instead of where are you? (It's also a form of asking how are you) This is also a very thick sort of Jersey type accent with southern tones beneath it. This is because it was a port for immigrants and they tend to have similar type accents in some ways.

The YAT dialect seem to be most popular in in 9th ward in New Orleans as well as the other cities south of New Orleans in the St. Bernard Parish.

Many misconceptions about LA is that they have the same southern accent as other places but it is simply not true. There may be some (as some move from the North or other various variables) but most people who are from mid-south LA would either have the Cajan accent or the YAT. I know for me it redefines the way I view the way my characters talk and it may or may not for you. Either way, I thought that this was interesting and really wanted to share it with all of you.

And now here is my youtube video...where an actual local can explain it far better than I can!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeR7Ljv_tPc&sns=em

Hope this is both informative and interesting for ya'll.