Southern Accents are in the decline

[DreAming in DigITal]

By JEFFREY COLLINS and KRISTEN WYATT, Associated Press Writers

11 minutes ago

COLUMBIA, S.C. - "Y'all" isn't welcome in Erica Tobolski's class in voice and diction at the University of South Carolina. And forget about "fixin'," as in getting ready to do something, or "pin" when talking about the writing instrument.

Tobolski's class is all about getting rid of accents, mostly Southern ones in the heart of the former Confederacy, and replacing them with Standard American Dialect, the uninflected tone of TV news anchors that oozes authority and refinement.

"We sort of avoid talking about class in this country, but clearly class is indicated by how we speak," she said.

"Many come to see me because they want to sound less country," she said. "They say, 'I don't want to lose my accent completely, but I want to be able to minimize it or modify it.'"

That was the case for sophomore Ali Huffstetler, who said she "luuuvs" the slow-paced softness of her upstate South Carolina magnolia mouth but wants to be able to turn it on and off depending on her audience.

"I went to New Hampshire to visit one of my best friends and all they kept saying was, 'Will you please talk, can you just talk for me?'" Huffstetler said. "I felt like a little puppet show."

Across the fast-growing South, accents are under assault, and not just from the modern-day Henry Higginses of academia. There's the flood of transplants from other regions, notions of Southern upward mobility that require dropping the drawl, and stereotypes that "y'alls" and "suhs" signal low status or lack of intelligence.

But is the Southern accent really disappearing?

That depends what accent you mean. The South, because of its rural, isolated past, boasts a diversity of dialects, from Appalachian twangs in several states to Elizabethan lilts in Virginia to Cajun accents in Louisiana to African-influenced Gullah accents on the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina.

One accent that has been all but wiped out is the slow juleps-in-the-moonlight drawl favored by Hollywood portrayals of the South. To find that so-called plantation accent in most parts of the region nowadays requires a trip to the video store.

"The Rhett-and-Scarlett accent, that is disappearing, no doubt about it," said Bill Kretzschmar, a linguist at the University of Georgia and editor of the American Linguistic Atlas, which tracks speech patterns.

"Blame it on the boll weevil," he said, referring to the cotton pest. "That accent from plantation areas, which was never the whole South, has been in decline for a long time. The economic basis of that culture started going away at the turn of the last century," when the bugs nearly wiped out the South's cotton economy.

Even as the stereotypical Southern accent gets rarer, other speech patterns take its place, and they're not any less Southern. The Upland South accent, a faster-paced dialect native to the Appalachian mountains, is said to be spreading just as fast as the plantation drawl disappears.

"The one constant about language is, it's always changing," Kretzschmar said. "The Southern accent is not going anywhere. But you have all kinds of mixtures and changes."

For a long-term study on whether the Southern accent is disappearing, University of Georgia linguists went to Roswell, Ga., an Atlanta suburb that is just the kind of transient place that leads to the death of indigenous dialects. It's packed with strip malls and subdivisions with no cotton patches or peach trees in sight.

"I don't hear it," 21-year-old Roswell native Amanda Locher said of the accent. She's never lived outside the South, but even Northern newcomers question her Southernness. "People tell me I sound like I'm from up North. To hear a true Southern accent, you'd have to go deeper south than here."

Adam Mach, a 25-year-old tire shop worker who moved to the Atlanta suburbs from Lafayette, La., has got a noticeable Louisiana lilt. But he said his accent seldom makes conversation because the area is such a melting pot of newcomers.

"Everybody I meet's not from here," he shrugged.

North Carolina State University linguist Walt Wolfram said it's a misconception among Southerners that Yankee newcomers are stamping out traditional speech. More likely, he said, is that newcomers pick up local speech patterns.

"When people move here and don't think they've changed at all, they go home and people say, 'Wow. You've turned Southern.' They pick up enough to be identified as Southern. So it's still there, still strongly identified with the South," Wolfram said.

But that doesn't mean that population change in the South isn't chipping away at old-timey dialects, especially in cities. Wolfram said the "dearest feature" of the Southern accent ? the vowel shift where one-syllable words like "air" come out in two syllables, "ay-ah" ? is certainly vanishing. Other aspects ? such as double-modal constructions like "might could" ? are still pervasive.

Kretzschmar, who has recorded Roswell speakers for three years, said his suburban Atlanta studies have backed up his suspicion that the Southern accent is morphing along with the urbanizing South.

"It's not really disappearing, but the circumstances of living make it different," he said. "People don't have connections with their neighbors to maintain their way of speech.

"The circumstances of how people get together and talk in the cities have changed; they're not constantly talking to people who talk just like them. But in the South outside the cities, you have a lot of similarities."

Georgia-bred humorist Roy Blount Jr. understands that people with strong Southern accents are often perceived as "slow and dimwitted." But he thinks it's "sort of a shame" that people should feel the need to soften or even lose their accents.

"My father, who was a surely intelligent man, would say `cain't'. He wouldn't say `can't.' And, `There ain't no way, just there ain't no way.' You don't want to say, `There isn't any way.' That just spoils the whole thing," Blount said.

"I just think that there's a certain eloquence in Southern vernacular that I wouldn't want to lose touch with ... you ought to sound like where you come from."

But never fear. There are still plenty of professions that thrive on a good Southern twang ? from preachers to football coaches to a certain breed of courtroom litigators.

And South Carolina's Tobolski, an Indiana native who came south eight years ago, can help there, too. As a private coach she has even taught a politician she wouldn't name how to ratchet up his Southern accent to make him appear more folksy before certain crowds ? a technique she calls "code switching."

"He didn't want to lose his dialect entirely. He just wanted to be able to adapt."

"I don't think that any regional accent is going to be eliminated," she said. "There's still people who want to hang on to how they sound. That's who they are. That's their identity. And that goes from New Jersey to Minnesota to Wyoming to Georgia."

[MonkeyClaw Veteran]

OH THANK GOD!!!! I really can't stand southern accents, it just gets under my skin and unfortunately I live in an area where if you don't have one, you are very very very different.

[Starcom826]

Er, what is the "standard American dialect?"

[John S. Veteran]

The author of the article has apparently never traveled to NE Tennessee or SW Virginia. The accents are alive and well here regardless of the level of education or class.

[YBG]

Er, what is the "standard American dialect?"

586845796[/snapback]

I wondered this myself...

People should stop being so damn judgemental about "how you sound when you talk". Seriously, if people want to decide that you're an idiot because of your dialect then that's their problem. I get this all the time for sounding like a "white boy" even though I'm black.

So I mean, just tell people to suck a nut and move on, that's what I do.

[Galley]

I grew up in North Dakota, and I'm now proud to say that I use words like y'all, and phrases like "do what?", "fixin' to" and "I haven't got but 50 cents to my name". I put my groceries in a "buggy".

Long live the South! :punk:

[b3n]

lol

some accents are just iritating to me

like northern england and southern america and sumtimes australians :p

btw i dont reflect someones inteligence in the way the speak

[vincent]

OH THANK GOD!!!!  I really can't stand southern accents, it just gets under my skin and unfortunately I live in an area where if you don't have one, you are very very very different.

586845741[/snapback]

So you don't like based soley on their accent? :rolleyes:

Give me a break...

[n3wt]

I hope this isn't true, accents add flavour to communication, and I quite enjoy them.

[Joel]

Er, what is the "standard American dialect?"

586845796[/snapback]

I wondered this myself...

People should stop being so damn judgemental about "how you sound when you talk". Seriously, if people want to decide that you're an idiot because of your dialect then that's their problem. I get this all the time for sounding like a "white boy" even though I'm black.

So I mean, just tell people to suck a nut and move on, that's what I do.

586845961[/snapback]

replacing them with Standard American Dialect, the uninflected tone of TV news anchors that oozes authority and refinement.

It says it right there.

[Laurë Veteran]

I wondered this myself...

People should stop being so damn judgemental about "how you sound when you talk". Seriously, if people want to decide that you're an idiot because of your dialect then that's their problem. I get this all the time for sounding like a "white boy" even though I'm black.

So I mean, just tell people to suck a nut and move on, that's what I do.

586845961[/snapback]

People are like that in the UK as well, we have names and stereotypes for different dialects and accents.

Birmingham and Irish accents get you labelled as stupid while having a Liverpool accent is likely to get you labelled a thief!

For some reason alot of voiceovers have Scottish/Northern accents at the moment which is really annoying. I expect the Queen's English to be used in national media!

[Axon]

Very, very true. It seems we always pin stereotypes to any form of distinction.

Every time I've been to the southern US I've met intelligent, refined and polite Americans, and I've also met ######, rude, and slovenly. It's no different than anywhere else in the world.

It's a shame to see the accents are in the decline.

-Ax

[NTUsEr Veteran]

Please, i walk in Boston and see little kids not pronoucning R's. I think its sad to see these soutern accents go, always liked talking to a southern bell :-D

[n3wt]

I don't think accents go away, they just change, and with a language like english, where there is no standard pronunciation speech patterns are always going to shift all over the place. I recently read somewhere that Canadian vowels are shifting away from American in something called the "Canadian Shift" which is the exact opposite of what one would expect to happen with all the American media we watch.

[ZonoBurk]

Um excuse me, the southern accent is well and kickin here in Mississippi. :p

You can't help how you talk, it is where you were raised. :crazy:

[FearMeAll]

I've lived in Georgia almost my whole life and yes when I was a kid I spoke like a hick, you can't help it. My sister did too. But when we hit highschool we both trained ourselves to let it go and to this day people do not think we were born here, (which we were not). I personally dislike speaking in a southern dialect.

Now I'm fighting another dialect that is worst than the first. I have since college partnered in my Dad's family business in commercial roofing he's been running for 20 years. It's incredibly hard work but I'm payed a fortune because our production has jumped 3 fold since I came in, but all that time in work I have been with my coworkers more than with anybody else. And let me tell you, you get the roughest crowd to do commercial roofing. These guys I'm in charge of speak in a tounge several times worse than ebonics, and that is all I hear from sun up to sun down every day. I am being dead honest here it took me 2 months before I even began to understand what the hell they were saying to me. I used to just nod. They have my respect in that they work harder than ANYBODY else I have ever seen (we've had these same guys for 20 years), but they are still crackheads that waste their entire check the night they get it. I sometimes catch myself or friends catch me saying something "ebonically" and I can't help it.

Personally, and I know this would be a politically correct nightmare, this ebonic crap should be knocked out first because it's more ignorant to me and then the southern accent (which I also do not like at all).

It all depends on who you are around everyday because dialect will always rub off on you.

[704]

This is sad. I love southern accents.

[Hitman2000]

Hey southern accents are like the one DR PHIL has?? Like how they get rid of a word at the end and kind of dragg the word?? LOL I have no problem with that accent its kinda funny listening to it thats all.

[704]

Hey southern accents are like the one DR PHIL has?? Like how they get rid of a word at the end and kind of dragg the word?? LOL I have no problem with that accent its kinda funny listening to it thats all.

586857179[/snapback]

Yeah him and George Bush.

[ZonoBurk]

Hey southern accents are like the one DR PHIL has?? Like how they get rid of a word at the end and kind of dragg the word?? LOL I have no problem with that accent its kinda funny listening to it thats all.

586857179[/snapback]

Umm err, that's one kind of the southern accent. Mine's not like that. :no:

[j.nudd]

Wow, an accent... that is the most rare thing I've ever heard of! We must get rid of it because it's the DEVIL! I hate to see what this professor thinks of British people, their accent is different. This prof must not be into diversity.

Note: I am by no means making fun of British persons, but I am simply making a point. I apologize for any offense taken.

[TaiCrunch]

I have a mix of a bunch of different accents, southern being one of them, and I don't really see what the problem is. I mean, I don't have the "y'all" thing, but I do run words together, like "dijya" and for me, that just makes it easier to talk. Accents have nothing to do with class, unless you're like one of those filthy rich New York people that talk like you have a lump in your throat.

[MonkeyClaw Veteran]

Yeah him and George Bush.

586857187[/snapback]

Not sure about Bush, the verdict is still out on whether or not that is considered English :p Sorry, couldn't resist.

Its funny though, I was born in North Carolina, lived here all my life and never once spoke with a southern accent. There are people at school that ask me every day, where are you from? Are you from Canada? Damn yankee, comin' down hur invadin' us confederates states. (to paraphrase long unintelligible rant) Every day someone will ask this, its just a matter of time. Sometimes I play along, say I'm from a different state or country, most will believe me. But when I say that I was born in the same place as them, it's like their heads explode, or a circuit shorts out. They don't understand and quite frankly, I don't either, but I'm grateful, lol. My only guess is that my parents grew up in Washington DC so I get the neutral or slightly northern accent from them. But in almost 18 years, I haven't developed anything in the least southern.