southern accent

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The people in the south have country accents because they started to talk a lot slower (or thought they had to) during the slavery years for their black slaves to understand. This started to be picked up by everybody in the community and continues to this day. This is not a joke by the way. Think about it.

I thought certain parts of southern accents preserved elements of various British accents that were not kept as standard in Britain but did continue in the south.

I don't know, though.

(A lot of my family is from the south. My father speaks with a mixed southern/Californian accent.)

I'm from the south and I speak with a mild southern accent myself. I say my "I's" like most southern people do but other than that I speak normally or what non-southerners call normal anyway.

I'm originally from the south (Houston, TX) but I never picked up a southern accent. Everyone here in Indiana seems to say that I sound like I'm from California instead. I guess it's from watching all those TV shows and movies made in California...

Yeah, just growing up in the south isn't enough to give you a southern accent. I guess it just happens to some and not others. It happened to me. But I don't have such a bad accent that I sound ignorant.

Thinking about it, none of my family in Houston had a southern accent. And now, whenever I visit and I talk to random people, I can never believe how thick their accents are! Indiana has it's fair share of southern accents as well, but I think that's because of people moving here from Kentucky and similar places.

Last edited by Lightning88 on 07 Apr 2008, 1:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ironoically, our Asperger Syndrome's proper robotic attention to things mutes the potential for a southern accent if you do live in the south.

Not entirely. I have a mild accent but I have thought that if I didn't have AS it would be much worse. I can speak without the accent if I want to though. In fact, mine has been dying off over the last few years



There's not that many people where I live that have thick accents anymore. Maybe they're moving to where you live.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.... Now linguistics IS something I know a good bit about.

Southerners 'sound like' they speak slowly because they stretch their vowels and occasionally drop consonants while talking. Why? Because in the early days when America was settled, a lot of French made their homes in this area (southeastern U.S. and also in the 'deep southern' states like Louisiana and Mississippi especially). When English has been infused by French inflection and then 'mutates' over a period of 150+ years, you get the Southern drawl you hear today. Where the French influence is still more predominant is in the 'Cajun' speech found in LA, MS and AL. They slur their vowels together when not speaking in Cajun French.

And, FYI, only the RICH, land-owning southerners owned slaves. The other 75% of Southerners couldn't afford them and worked as sharecroppers or indentured servants themselves.

lol Funny thing is, people here are moving to North and South Carolina! I know of at least three families that have in the last year.

It's really simple. Compare the US to other countries size-wise. It's a lot bigger than European countries, for example. Therefore, more variations in speach.
People in different areas will have different speach patterns and accents. Look at the differences between US English, England English, and Australian English. Same language, but very different. Between states, it's not as drastic, but same principal.
"Southern accent" is too vague, people can tell the difference between (for example) Georgia, Texas, and California.
And why do we never hear about Northern accents? They sound pretty strange to me, and are quite varried as well.

It's just a regional thing, nothing more.

Hmmm, curious as to why they would be coming here. We're in the worst drought we've ever been in. We have been getting a lot of rain lately though. Our yards are finally coming back from the dead.

Yeah, we had that same problem all of last summer! It only rained three times at the most! But everyone I talked to that moved there said it was because of job transfers or to be closer to family. Guess there's a lot of good jobs in your area.

Actually, the main thing that's causing the typical Southern Drawl to die out is Television, internet and radio. The poster who mentioned the mass migration of people to the Carolinas is right as well. It's one of the fastest-growing areas in the country right now because property values are reasonable and more or less holding firm in an economy where housing prices everywhere else are dropping like crazy. A Californian can sell his small 3 bedroom house with a 16th of an acre for $300,000 out there, then come out here and buy 200 acres with a house on it for the same amount.

With the influx of so many Californians and northeasterners as well as hispanics, the younger generation of kids born here are not speaking with Southern accents as much as they used to. In forty or fifty years, it may disappear altogether.

There are actually, I believe IBM was supposed to be building a facility around here.

The thing about 'making you sound ignorant' is just an ugly stereotype. Parts of my family is among those who 'sound ignorant' and I really object to that assumption based on who I know they are, versus who others might stereotype them to be. It's sort of like assuming because someone's autistic then they won't be good at anything.