New Orleans Accent?

I've always been interested in linguistics and dialects, and have been researching the New Orleans accent on my own for a while. The video we watched in class on Monday only piqued my interest more and made me consider what I would define a "New Orleans accent".

When I think of a New Orleans accent, I think of my great grandmother. She has a sort of Yat accent, but it's mixed with an old Algiers Point accent, which is kind of similar. She also speaks in a certain dialect and her syntax includes the frequent use of double and even triple negatives, and her pronunciation is definitely old-fashioned with words like "zink" (sink) and "erl" (oil). She, and my grandmother, also know a lot of French phrases.

Unfortunately for me, my parents grew up in Gretna, the most boring suburb of New Orleans (I can say this because I used to live there). It's a nice little place, but it just doesn't have the character of New Orleans. Due to this, my parents didn't have the same accent or style of speaking, and as a result, I didn't grow up speaking that way either. Additionally, I went to Catholic school until eighth grade where it was frowned upon to speak in any sort of dialect other than traditional, proper speech.

It wasn't until I went to public high school that I met people that sounded like New Orleanians and sounded like my great grandma and grandma. As a result, I started adopting their accent and way of speech more and more. Now when I'm around my grandma and great grandma, I speak like them and I can hear myself going into that weird Yat/Algiers Point dialect. However, when I'm with my friends, I have a different accent that I can't really explain. It sounds more like the one that the video called "African American" (which I don't think is really an accurate way to describe it; I know a lot of Caucasians, Hispanics, and even Asians who have that accent), but it's weirdly mixed with Algiers Point accent. When I started talking to my out-of-state friends at Loyola in this accent, they said it was really weird. And even when I use this accent, or my great grandmother's accent, with my mother, she think it's really weird as well and tells me to "speak properly". However, I think accents and dialects are such an important part of culture, especially in New Orleans. I want to maintain that linguistic tradition and keep it alive and preserve it for future generations.