Posted on 04/30/2002 7:12:45 PM PDT by foreverfree
The Southern Accent: We're Losing It
By Rob Marus
The Moose Is Loose
Have you ever noticed that people in our generation seem to be losing their Southern accents? "Hold on," most of y'all are now thinking, "I haven't noticed any lack of Delta drawls or backwoods twangs here at Rhodes."
But stop for a second and listen very closely to the inflections of your peers. Now compare their accents with, say, your father's (or, if you're from the North, your roommate's father's). See the difference? And his accent is even a little milder than your grandmother's, isn't it? She probably still drops her "R"s.
Linguists tell us that, more rapidly than ever before, English-speaking Americans are losing their distinctive regional accents and dialects.
You're much less likely today to find an Atlantan using the word "supper" in reference to the evening meal than you were 30 years ago. By the same token, you're less likely to find a Bostonian pronouncing the word "can't" like a Kennedy would.
But this phenomenon is most widespread and insidious in the South, the linguists and sociologists tell us, and particularly on college campuses. Each generation has gotten a little bit farther away from the previous generations' adherence to a Southern accent; in the 60's people stopped dropping their "R"s (a la Scarlett O'Hara); in the 70's, they stopped using "that-a-way" and "over yonder" as directional aids; in the 80's they stopped saying "fixin' to" and replaced it with "about to."
And now, here we are in the 90's, and our generation in particular is dropping the last vestiges of our accents-a lot of us won't even drawl out our long "I"s or use "y'all" anymore.
But why are we doing this? What's the point? People used to relish, even nurture their Southern accents. Why has our generation chosen to do the very opposite - eradicate the very last vestiges of it? I'll tell you the main reason: classic Yankee imperialism.
Hollywood, Wall Street, and Madison Avenue have pelted us, in this "Information Age" (which, if you ask me, is a misnomer that could be more accurately replaced with "Misinformation Age"), with a barrage of images and sound bytes that not only set up a nondescript, sterilized accent as the normative pattern of American speech (think about the way most TV journalists talk), but also create stereotypes that completely disdain Southern accents as purely the domain of hillbillys, rednecks, and racists.
Think about it; recall what you've watched on television or in the movies in the past week. Almost invariably the character with the thickest Southern accent in any movie, television show is one of two things. In drama, he (rarely are women portrayed in these roles) is the "bad guy": the KKK leader, the escaped convict, the philandering preacher, the corrupt government agent trying to cover up a UFO landing. In comedy, he (once again, women are rarely presented in these roles) is invariably the ignorant yokel: the trailer-park trash, the bumbling small-town sherriff, the provincial good-ol'-boy politician.
If a woman is ever portrayed with a Southern accent, she is either the passive, abused, blue-collar wife or the manipulative Southern belle. And, for the most part (with the major exceptions of shows set in New York City), that sterilized TV-news-anchorperson non-accent is the standard pattern of speaking for the "serious" characters and "good" characters that Hollywood gives us.
But in English there is no such thing as a "non-accent." The pattern of speech that Hollywood has set up as normative is no more than a Midwestern dialect. Any Englishman or Englishwoman would not hesitate to say that Tom Brokaw and Diane Sawyer have definite accents.
To be any sort of famous actor or actress the first thing you must do is learn how to sound like someone from Iowa. Nowadays, if you maintain your Southern accent, you're not very likely to find a job in Hollywood. You'll probably be surprised to know that Andie MacDowell, Julia Roberts, Matthew McConaughey, Kim Basinger, and even the guy who plays the mailman on Seinfeld are all native Southerners. To be a TV journalist you have to do the same thing (unless you're a complete bad-ass, like Bill Moyers).
Therefore, it's understandable that we, as open-minded, free-thinking young people who are trying to be urbane, sophisticated, and worldly-wise, should have difficulty accepting our inherited accents as something we shouldn't hide. After all, our generation is the one most shaped by the Northern media.
You see it all the time at Rhodes; think about all the people who come here from a small town and then begin to lose their drawl over the months beause they hang out with accentless folks from places like Dallas and Atlanta (two cities absolutely overrun by Northern immigrants in recent years).
So don't conform, dammit! Don't let the Northern establishment grind you beneath its heel; stand up to the attacks of Yankee capitalism and commercialism upon who you are as a person. Just because you speak differently than the mass-media norm does not mean that you are inherently inferior. If the South would just give up its inferiority complex, I think we could come a long way in solving some of our social problems.
Young Southerners, take the first step towards respecting yourselves as a people and don't assume that your accent means you are a redneck. And do it now, before it's too late. God forbid we end up a nation of people who all sound like Roseanne Barr.
Very true! The blue collar population of NO, which has spilled over into St. Bernard and Jefferson Parishes, tends to have an accent similar to that of old Brooklyn. Let's not forget that, like Brooklyn, New Orleans had a large influx of Irish and Italian immigrants at the turn of the last century, which influenced the accent.
Funny thing about Brooklyn and NY in general, is that people who grew up blocks from each other have slightly different accents, partly dependent on what ethnic group you were in. An Italian American from Brooklyn and a Jewish American raised in the same borough have slightly different accents if you know what to listen for.
To be totally honest with you, I've never, ever liked the southern accent. Sounds almost like a total mangling of the language.
Listen to someone with a southern accent say "ice." Why does it take 3 seconds to say with an elongated "iiiice?" Same goes for "rice."
When I speak to a white person here in Texas who has a pronounced southern drawl, it sounds as if he or she is singing the language. When I listen to a black southern person talk, it's a total puree of the language!
For instance, why is an "R" sound inserted into the word "wash?" It ain't "warsh," it's "wash!" Now look at the word "usher." Again, why is an "R" sound inserted here? It ain't "ursher." But that's how it's pronounced down here.
My wife, who is from Paris, TX, laughs when I talk about this. I told her that she and her family (all from TX) just can not talk to save their lives. She disagreed, so, I tried a little experiment. I asked her to say the alphabet slowly. I waited for her to get to the letter "Q." And lo and behold! There it was! When she got to "Q," I stopped her. I asked her then if "koo" was a letter. That's how she said it. So, she said the alphabet again. When she got to the letter "Q," she had to slow down to pronounce it right!
Down here, the word "wear" or "were" is pronounced "wur." "Here" is pronounced "hur."
I don't know which is worse, a southern accent or a New York accent overflowing with slang.
I was born and raised in the Florida panhandle (folks been there since 1700) and never thought we had much of an accent.
I spent 6 years in Western Kansas and had people constantly ask if I were from Texas due to my accent. After being there for a year or so, we took a trip back to Florida. Stopped in Louisianna and gassed up the car. A black headed cajun woman came out and began to fill the tank. As we stood there chatting, I had the strangest feeling of deja-vu. I know we had never met yet something clicked in my memory. Later I realized that it was being back in the South.
Although a Cajun from Lousianna and a Cracker from Florida have different cultures, they were in fact much closer than one might suspect.
Richards can bite my asterisk. I'm sure she hates it that her intended insult was turned around on her.
I hope that doesn't disqualify me from the Southern threads!
LOL!! Well tell you what son. Plenty of roads going north. I'll even help you pack if you don't like it down heah. One thing I don't like is all these Chicago pizza style restaurants and sub shops opening up around here to cater to y'all. What's wrong with a square sanmmich with some ham, cheese and a little mayonnaise(and no Helman's is not mayo, it's goopy salad dressing. Duke's, now Duke's is mayonnaise)
We didn't ask y'all to come and stay. If you don't like the way we talk, too bad. Move. We all understand each other down here. It's y'all we don't understand. I'm Southern, North Carolinian, and proud of it.
Down at the beach, the people all sound like the 'good ol' boy' onscreen politicians the article referred to. It almost sounds overdone a la Foghorn Leghorn, only they talk quick enough you know it's natural.
I haven't spent much time in the towns out west (only been hiking and camping with other Beltway-types), but when I meet someone from there I usually think they're from Kentucky or Tennessee at first listen.
I'm doing my best up here in MA! When folks ask me why I still have my accent after having lived up North for the last 22 years, I tell them I'm just ornery! Why should I have to adapt my speech patterns to satisfy somebody else? Actually, my family in MA tells me I DON'T have much of an accent anymore, which is funny, since folks up here ask me everyday "Where are YOU from?"
Arrgh! Make that my family in MS!
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