I have been watching the Little League World Series playoffs, and when the team from Tennessee played, each player looked into the camera and stated his name, position and favorite pro baseball player.
Not one kid from the Tennessee team had a Tennessee accent, or any kind of Southern sounding accent.
“Not one kid from the Tennessee team had a Tennessee accent, or any kind of Southern sounding accent.”
The South has been invaded by cocka-roaches from around the planet, they love moving to Nashville and ‘discovering’ it. I thank God for the wise and compassionate New Yorkers who lifted us up from Cracker barbarity. I even read an article about this Yankee lady ‘discovering’ Primm Springs in Hickman Cty. (where my people have been living since the late 1700’s) and I never knew the rustic charm before that moment.
It’s a changing world ain’t it.
I noticed the loss of regional accent when the children participating in a special Mass in my parish, whose parents have strong local accents, spoke with no accent at all. Also in 2000 when GWB went to a ‘townhall’ appearance at a Texas high school, the students did not have Texas twangs. That was my first recognition that it is happening everywhere.
I have 2 daughters-in-law from TN. Folks from Tennessee don’t consider themselves “Southern”, at least that’s what their parents told us at the wedding rehearsals. But, some of them do have a “twang”.
Where I live 60 years ago the speech was classic Southron which is soul melting when
in a soft feminine voice. That accent is almost entirely gone now and speech is almost all some sort of Midwest Standard. You have to go out a bit from Birmingham now to hear it.