Residents of Burlington, Vermont were imitating Bernie Sanders long before Larry David spoofed the Vermont senator on Saturday Night Live. In fact, The New York Times reports that just about anyone who has lived in Burlington — the town where Sanders was mayor in the '80s — has a rendition of the socialist senator's signature Brooklyn accent and his shtick on "billion-AY-ahs" and the "vanishing middle class."
"As they share their stories, the tone of their voices sometimes drops an octave or two, the occasional 'billionaire' becomes a 'billion-AY-ah,' the consonants punctuated by a slightly harsher cluck, and the leafy pedestrian Church Street starts to sound a little more like Flatbush Avenue.Indeed, Mr. Sanders' thick Brooklyn accent, developed as a child growing up in the Flatbush neighborhood and oddly never dissipating despite living for decades in Vermont, is able to be replicated, to varying degrees of accuracy, by most who have called Burlington home for a number of years." [The New York Times]
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