Accent

Kishinev, Moldova, U.S.S.R. ETO NASHA ZEMLYA. ''It's our land.'' It is a Russian phrase I have heard spoken with an Estonian accent, a Lithuanian accent, a Latvian accent, an Armenian accent, an Azerbaijani accent, a Georgian accent, an Uzbek accent, a Kirghiz accent, an Abkhazian accent, a Chuvash accent, an Ingush accent, a Nenets accent.And now I am hearing it with a Moldovan accent, standing in a crowd of excited Moldovans who keep interrupting one another, turning up the volume in an attempt to make the dull-witted foreigner understand their passion.

Some scientists say the Monday blahs may be rooted in the human biological clock. Is Monday morning a difficult time for you? Are you less productive on Mondays than on other days of the week?To register your opinion, call SUNDIAL at 783-1800 (or 286-7736 in Anne Arundel County) today through midnight. It's a free call. After you hear the greeting, you'll be asked to punch in a four-digit code on your touch-tone phone. Punch 4600 and you'll be connected with ''It's Your Call,'' The Evening Sun's phone survey on topical issues.

HER ROYAL Highness Queen Elizabeth II will attend the May 15 game between the Orioles and the Oakland A's at Memorial Stadium. To assist the queen, Accent, your full-service features department, will publish on the day of the game The Royals' Illustrated Guide to Observing Baseball. But to do so, we need your help in briefly explaining some of the subtleties of the game to the queen.For instance:Why do players scratch themselves in public.Why do players chew tobacco and spit on their spikes?

The handsomely staged production of “South Pacific” at the Hippodrome Theatre is a welcome reminder that Rodgers and Hammerstein understood the dynamics of musical theater as well as anybody. Familiar songs roll out, one after another, in a score that includes “Some Enchanted Evening,” “There is Nothin'  Like a Dame,” “I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” and “Bali Ha'i.”  Not bad at all. This revival does an especially effective job of reinforcing this 1949 musical's thematic emphasis on the racial attitudes that still characterized American society.

THE NEW film "JFK" doesn't buy the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing John F. Kennedy. The film contends that Oswald never fired a shot.What do you think? Did Oswald act alone, or was there a conspiracy to kill the president?To register your opinion, call SUNDIAL at 783-1800 (or 268-7736 in Anne Arundel County). It's a free call. After you hear the greeting, you'll be asked to punch in a four-digit code on your touch-tone phone. Punch 4600 and you'll be connected with "It's Your Call," The Evening Sun's phone survey on topical issues.

If the Natty Boh guy could talk, would he sound like you? Do you imagine your accent sounding just like the Utz Girl's? If so, you could be the one a Baltimore ad agency is trying to find. MGH has launched a casting call to find "The Voice of Baltimore. " They don't want a baritone radio star. They don't want actors. They don't want someone who can say "Timonium" with just the right "O" for a party punchline. They want a homegrown product of the 410, a man or a woman, young or old, with a real, bonafide Baltimore accent, -- thick, dirty and true.

I'm pleased to tell you that work has begun on “Grammarnoir 4: Final Edition.” As previously, it will appear on this blog in a series of weekly installments, beginning in February and concluding on March 4, National Grammar Day. Today, for you, a little taste, a paragraph from Part 1, “A belle in the night”: “This is quite satisfactory,” she said, adjusting her skirt to allow me to admire the line of her thigh. Her vocabulary was Downton Abbey , but her accent was Keeping Up With the Kardashians . Her clothes said Saks, but her eyes said floozy.

I always enjoy writing short essays on the use of color, even though they may be hard to visualize when the accompanying photos are in black and white. We'll have an easier time of it with this column, however, since I've chosen to write about one ofmy favorite color schemes: black and white with a one-color accent.Black and white, with an accent of either yellow or red, could be seen in many high-style interiors of the 1950s and 1960s. This was partly a reaction against contemporary design trends and the more cloying period looks at that time.

Talk about books! Two terrific educational, enlightening and entertaining examples that'll keep you busy for hours on end and that'll turn a knucklehead into a know-it- ll are "How to Speak Furniture With an Antique American Accent -- Buying, Selling and Appraisal Tips Plus Price Guides," by Jeanne Siegel, and "How to Speak Furniture With an Antique Victorian Accent -- Buying, Selling and Appraisal Tips Plus Price Guides," by the same author and appraiser.They...

The storm now afflicting New York and New Jersey and nearby states is either a northeaster  or a nor'easter. Northeaster  is the older term, its first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary  dating from 1753. Nor'easter  blew in from the sea much later, first cited in a translation of Aristophanes' Knights  by B.D. Walsh in 1837.  Nor'easter , from the citations in the OED , appears to have been strongly dialectical, as in A.R. Ammons's Glare : "Well, it's Easter morning right now, with a nor'easter, out-of-whack, whipper-jawed, eight-inch dump load of snow on the ground.