Give me enough beer, and my 'twang' surfaces. ;)
/johnny
The Texas drawl, accent thing is greatly exaggerated.
I don’t talk like that and know few- if any, who do.
Uh ... no. Obviously this author hasn’t spoken with any of my family.
Yes, I have “lost” some of my natural born Texan dialect ... mostly from working with folks from all parts of the world and other accents rubbing off on me ... but believe me, the “twang” is alive and well in the rest of my family.
Same is true of the New Yawk accent (also known as a Brooklyn Accent).
Someday fairly soon, you’ll have to watch Kojak if you want to hear it.
It’s alive and well here in North Louisiana. I’ll die with that accent, and I’m damn proud of it!
Which Texas accent? Does the writer not know that there are several regional accents in the state?
In southern Texas, several decades ago, it was the drawl: very slow, low-toned speech—not nasal, and more the opposite of a twang. I had it for a long time.
Many from the Midwest moved into northern Texas, mostly—Dallas area, Houston and the like, for jobs during some years. That’s where the twang came from.
Well, I am scarcely aware of mine until I travel to other regions. Then, I notice people delight in it. Or maybe they are mocking. Nah! Anyway, of course in the major Texas cities we do have a goodly amount of Yankees and such (not that there is anything wrong with that) who have relocated to our fair burghs. Seems like most everyone is from somewhere else anymore. We really only see the truly thick accents among urban lowers, though still widely dispersed accrost, as it were, the hinterlands. As for the Hollywood caricature— Shirley nobody buys into their exaggerated depiction.
Get out in the country. The accent is thick and it’s not going anywhere.
American Accent
Why do I sing in an American accent
When I only want to be myself?
Why are my words tainted with a Hollywood burr
When I’m only just a boy
From a town ten miles away from Glasgow
When I was a kid, I had three parents
One of them lived behind a screen in the living room
Taught me more than the teachers at the school
Mostly it spoke to me in an American accent
At such an impressionable age I thought that it was cool.
And in the holidays on rainy days.
We’d get on a train and ride into town
To see a Disney film
And the queue seemed half a mile long
All the animals spoke in an American accent
From the king of the swingers to the wolf
As it blew the house down
That’s why I sing in an American accent
When I only want to be myself
That’s why my words are tainted with a Hollywood burr
When I’m only just a boy
From a town ten miles away from Glasgow.
I live in a suburb of Dallas. Been here all my life. My Texan Twang is alive and well. My family is all in East Texas. Go there and the Texas Twang is very alive!
Southern has many sub accents and they can be interchangeable. DeForest (Bones) Kelley was from Georgia but sounded as Texan as any native—he got to play in a lot of Westerns because of it (in one Star Trek episode, where some alien spores removed every ones inhibitions, he let his Georgia drawl fly).
Its much more than a twang, its a way of expressing yourself that is hard to imitate. The twang you can imitate, the rest of it is bred in the bones.
Austin and Dallas have a higher percentage of those with accents.
It will never go away.
Anything Fort Worth and west, and south excluding Austin has and will always have a country drawl, and believe me they only exaggerate it when making fun of themselves.
Anyone else who does is trying to act Texan.
One of the things we noticed when we moved to Texas is how they pronounce vowels. Farm sounds like form, and vice versa. Oil sounds like all.
I have the neutral accent that TV has forced on us all.
If I visit my relatives in Louisianna then I will have a thick drawl for about 5 or 6 weeks, before it goes away again.
TV and movies have destroyed our regional accents.
We are all the same now.
I grew up in Dallas, but have lived in California since the mid-80s. Some people notice my accent still.
My accent will come right back after going to Texas. It’s always strong when I’ve been drinking.
I still always say “I’m fixin to “ do things and drop my end g’s.
This is the other thing that I noticed about a difference between Texas and California.
When my kids were little in California and doing homophones, they were told that the following were not homophones:
tin, ten
pin, pen
ben, bin
mint, meant
In Texas, they are homophones. You say pin and pen the same way.