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Southern Accents


Mith242

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I can see our accents in America becoming much like those of the British. If you are unfamiliar, they are weird with their accents. They can be placed to specific regions with ease (to them) and sometimes to cities. They also define a certain class of people. The upper class is more in tune with "the Queen's English." They ahve just had about 1000 more years to evolve theirs :)

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I'm from Greensboro. I don't have a heavy accent at all, although I can make it heavier when I want. Of course, I could understand those words right away (well, most of them) simply because I've been around a lot of different accents. Its funny that you mention the accent becoming more like the British. I go to American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Hollywood (Just recently graduated from UNC Chapel Hill). We have to learn "Standard American" (the neutral, most clear American accent) as well as other accents. When we were learning our English accent I learned something interesting. We had to watch a video where a British man (can't remember his name) was teaching the rest of the students in the Royal British Academy (which included Sir Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart to name a few) about "old english". When he recited Shakespeare in "old english" the british students on the video looked a bit puzzled. I was confused because I could understand exactly what he was saying, as well as a couple of other students who happened to be from the south. The man went on to tell the students that the closest thing to "old english" still around was the "American Southern accent". My voice and speech teacher who studied at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (and happens to be from Alexandria,VA) confirmed what he said. She also told us that fact was the basis for the southern accent that Scarlett O'Hara/Hollywood made famous. My fellow southerners and I were "grinning from ear to ear." And of course, since the civil war destroyed or severely crippled most of the South's southern institutions (education being one of them), people everywhere else automatically associated the accent with being uneducated....but i'm sure you guys knew that. :-)

Being from Greensboro and attending UNC-CH, I had the privilege of experiencing so many different Southern accents, since so many people were from all over NC. I don't know how it is for other states, but the region you're from in NC makes a huge difference. Of course in the big cities it's pretty neutral. But western NC's accent tends to be similar to TN, since its a little more secluded from the rest of NC. I don't know about the central region. I'm from there so I see it as "normal" so I can't really comment. But i have met people from VA or MD who tend to have the same type of accent as the central part. Eastern NC has a heavy Native American population, particularly Lumbee and Cherokee (i'm actually part Cherokee). Even these different tribes have different Southern accents. Two Lumbee girls were in my one of my classes at UNC. They asked me to tell me what the Russian professor was saying...but I didn't know that because I genuinely COULD NOT understand them. I had to ask someone else to help them. Overall, that map that I saw in earlier parts of this thread looked about right.

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where i'm from everyone outside of the city has really bad accents, of course some people in the city do too. i don't know if you would call an okie accent southern, because all ihave heard people who visit here say that we just talk "hick". it's not too bad here, go to texas and it gets worse.

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"Girls used to say, y'all talk funny, y'all from the islands?

And I'd Laughed and they just keep smiling

No, I'm from Atlanta baby

He from Savannah, maybe"

Andre 3000 (Outkast) - A life in the day... - The Love Below

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Mannnnnnn...........everytime I here that song I feel like throwing the CD out of the window.

He knows GOOD and WELL thats Charleston's claim to faim. Atlanta people sound disgustingly country, they dont sound anything like no islands, and even though Savannians are Geechee, they dont sound like theyre from the islands either.

Everybody knows thats what people say to us from Charleston. That line got me the first time I heard it.

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West Tennessee has more of the traditional Southern Drawl, Middle Tennessee's dialect sounds a lot like Kentucky's, and East Tennessee has something else (I don't know what to call it). I've heard they use words like "you-uns" in place of y'all. I don't know if that's true, though. But, of course, when you enter the cities it's a mixed bag. Most native Nashvillians don't have the kind of accent you find here in Dickson. This is probably due to the many varieties of accents there. Myself? I think I can turn mine off and on at will. My normal speech is obviously southern, but not too much so. But when I turn it off I still try to use southern words like y'all and fix (as a verb). When I want to, though, I can speak so southern you'd think I was raised down in some remote holler.

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Every region has accents.

I used to teach in New Orleans--where the local accent is like a Brooklyn accent--and the kids would insist they had none.

I now teach in Minnesota, and it's the same story, though I tell the students that the way they speak is identifiable as an upper Midwest accent.

It seems the only people who will acknowledge that they have accents are southerners and New Englanders.

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Hi !!!

Having grown up in South Florida, where there really isn't an accent at all, I can REALLY hear people's accents. I have to say that of all the Souther places I've been to my favorite accent is that of the Nashville/Williamson County area of Tennessee. The accent is very light, refined, and almost musical... It is not as heavy and hard to understand as the accent of other states (which I will not name, so as not to offend anyone)

Paula

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Hi !!!

Having grown up in South Florida, where there really isn't an accent at all, I can REALLY hear people's accents.  I have to say that of all the Souther places I've been to my favorite accent is that of the Nashville/Williamson County area of Tennessee.  The accent is very light, refined, and almost musical...  It is not as heavy and hard to understand as the accent of other states (which I will not name, so as not to offend anyone)

Paula

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Sure you have an accent in South Florida...it's the same as Long Island, only with some Spanglish thrown in for color.

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West Tennessee has more of the traditional Southern Drawl, Middle Tennessee's dialect sounds a lot like Kentucky's, and East Tennessee has something else (I don't know what to call it).

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I've always noticed that people in Nashville speak much faster than people in Memphis, and have accents similar to my wife's, who's from Kentucky.

If you've ever looked a linguistic map, the southwestern corner of Tennessee is the only part of the state that's classified as having some lowland southern accent. The rest of the state is classified as upland south--like north Alabama, north Georgia, Kentucky, western North Carolina, etc.

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The original South Florida accent is NOT A NEW YORK ACCENT!!!! Not even close!!!! It is the same kind of accent you hear on tv... more Chicago, LA, etc... the "non-existent" accent.

If there are some people who speak with a spanish or portuguese, or french, or whatever foreign accent, it is only because we are the "gateway to America". We have ALOT of people from ALL over the world who live here and they obviously have an accent. But that is NOT the South Florida Accent. If you go to Northern Florida they have a very strong, southern accent... but not so in South Florida.

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The original South Florida accent is NOT A NEW YORK ACCENT!!!!  Not even close!!!!  It is the same kind of accent you hear on tv... more Chicago, LA, etc... the "non-existent" accent.

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The way TV figures speak is with a news accent, not a neutral one. Everyone has one, but Chicago's accent is not that type of accent. Chicagoans have a very strong yankee accent.

While we're talking about Chicago, I know some people who just went there and almost everyone they talked to couldn't get over their Arkansas accents. Every time they said something people just couldn't get over it, even though they aren't that strong by Arkansas standards.

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The way TV figures speak is with a news accent, not a neutral one. Everyone has one, but Chicago's accent is not that type of accent. Chicagoans have a very strong yankee accent.

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I agree with you there. Chicago accents are one of the most identifiable around.

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The original South Florida accent is NOT A NEW YORK ACCENT!!!!  Not even close!!!! 

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I would bet that the "original" South Florida accent was very southern, i.e., before you had tons of people from outside the area move there after the 2nd WW.

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I would bet that the "original" South Florida accent was very southern, i.e., before you had tons of people from outside the area move there after the 2nd WW.

The original South FL accent was very Southern. That's why you hear of old people calling Miami, "Miam-a", for example. The worst thing that ever happened to South FL was the invention on air conditioning and mosquito control. :D

People in Key West, FL (where the Confederate Secretary Of The Navy was from, by the way) even had an old school VA or MD accent.

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Latecomer to this thread.

On the Yankee or Dixie test, I tested out "94% (Dixie). Is General Lee your father?" Warms my heart.

Probably what explains it is the fact that, having lived in S.C. (Greenville native), GA, AL (currently), MS, and TENN (married a Memphis girl), I must have an eclectic southern accent. I can adopt news-anchorese if I need to, but I can't completely bury my accent.

Thank God the years I spent in MD didn't ruin me. It grieves me, though, that my three boys (10, 8, 5) have no noticeable southern accents. They even say "guys." :cry: I thought I'd gotten them out of there in time. I'm working with them, though. :thumbsup:

The best southern accent I've ever heard was my late uncle's. Born in Marion, SC, traveled the world in the Navy around the end of WW2, grad work in Chapel Hill and the last 45 years of his life in Lexington, VA. All this combined to make an incredibly elegant manner of speech. My wife marveled at it when she first heard it. To my recollection, however, he never said "y'all." It was always "you all" ("you-awl"). Come to think of it, I don't think my mother (his sister) says y'all either. Both she and my father (from Sumter, SC) tend to say "you awl."

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The original South Florida accent is NOT A NEW YORK ACCENT!!!!  Not even close!!!!  It is the same kind of accent you hear on tv... more Chicago, LA, etc... the "non-existent" accent.

If there are some people who speak with a spanish or portuguese, or french, or whatever foreign accent, it is only because we are the "gateway to America".  We have ALOT of people from ALL over the world who live here and they obviously have an accent.  But that is NOT the South Florida Accent.  If you go to Northern Florida they have a very strong, southern accent... but not so in South Florida.

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Being a native of New Jersey I will agree with you wholeheartedly. Somehow there is a perception out there that anyone from the NYC metro region must have an accent like the Sopranos! That is such a stereotype and Miami's accent was never southern to begin with as the area was originally settled and populated by northerners.....southerners came afterwards.

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I agree. Most of the people I know who have lived here all there lives, and whose parents lived here, etc... do NOT have a Souther Accent. You only start hearing it when you get to Mid and Northern Florida.

Like I said before, to me the most beautiful souther accent is in the Nashville/Franklin area. It is very light, very gentle...

The northern florida accent is way too heavy for my tastes... And again, South Florida DOES NOT have an accent!!! It is a very generic sounding english.

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I used to work(in Atlanta) with a lady from Michigan who always commented on my north Georgia accent. I told her since we were in Atlanta, she was the one with the accent. If I traveled to Lansing, then I would surely have an accent.

No that the population is much more mobile, accent boundaries are blurred in places. Even though both sides of my family have lived in this part of Georgia for a hundred years, they both originally came from different parts of the South.

One side came from Tybee Island; the other side came from Eastern NC. This, in combination with the Southern Appalachian influences created my accent.

I did like my grandfather's accent---somewhere between Andy Griffith and Jerry Clower....lots of stuff like, "There was a big 'ol black cloud a-commin. Then it commenced tah rainin' sa much, the dawg came scratching to come inside awhile. I hope that didn't bother youwall."

Today, I find myself lapsing into some of this speech just for effect...

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  • 5 months later...

Okay I have an odd question and figured this old topic was the best place to put it. How is the word 'pecan' pronounced in your area? From what I can tell areas of the south west of the Mississippi River pronounce it as p'kahn. But I believe that as you go more southeast it's eventually pronounced as pee-can. So which is it in your area of the south?

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