Is the Southern Accent Disappearing? | Otherwords
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- Опубликовано: 20 мар 2024
- Linguists studying the Southern American Dialect reckon that it ain't what it used to be, y'all. I do declayuh!
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sources:
mrenwick.franklinresearch.uga...
www.cambridge.org/core/journa...
www.npr.org/2023/09/17/120002...
www.axios.com/local/atlanta/2...
new.nsf.gov/news/southern-com...
www.axios.com/local/atlanta/2...
www.freep.com/story/news/loca...
www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/b...
www.npr.org/2023/06/18/118294...
www.cambridge.org/core/journa...
www.researchgate.net/publicat...
depts.washington.edu/moving1/...
Oops! While the bus stop scene takes place in Georgia, the character Forrest Gump is from Alabama. But ACTUALLY 🤓 Tom Hanks patterned his accent after young Forrest portrayer Michael Conner Humphreys, who hails from Mississippi.
I was just about to say...
GREENBOW ALLA BAMA!
Well not if women like Reese Witherspoon, Lainey Wilson, & Kacey Musgraves have anything to do with it. 😊
ruclips.net/video/-F6Tq2nTuMc/видео.htmlsi=PiKowiEXaRT1R0gL@@rebekahcastro5430
My grandmother is from Texas but her accent is more Virginian.
Forrest Gump was neither set nor filmed in Georgia except for the bus stop scenes. The character is from Alabama.
Greenbow, Alabama
yep. He's only there to visit Jenny too.
In an interview, Tom hanks said he copied the child actor’s accent for grown-up Forrest, who told him he talks like his daddy does. Michael Conner Humphreys is from Independence, Mississippi so he has a southern accent.
And that specific accent was developed by Hanks imitating the speech patterns of the child actor playing young Forrest, who was from Mississippi.
@@KristenRowenPliske a Southern accent but not a Georgia accent. There isn't just one Southern accent. Our accents vary significantly by state and even county. Plus the character also had delayed speech due to his disability, which isn't related to regional accents at all.
As a native Georgian born on the cusp of Gen-X and Millenial and growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta, I always get a kick out of non-southerners trying to imitate our southern drawl. I am really glad that "y'all" has caught on in other areas of the country. "Y'all" is the best word.
It really is the best word. I'm a Texan working with a bunch of New Yorkers, influencing them every day lol
English is my second language, and I like "y'all" because it's the closest thing English has to a plural "you". "Ye" is unfortunately too old fashion.
@@junjunjamore7735Isn't it funny how that happens? Everything old is new again, eventually. Not that I'm complaining too much... English is already plenty hard enough without having to deal with stuffy honorifics or grammatical gender
It's honestly quite jarring to me. I live on the west coast and hearing people incorporate and use it, is so strange because there's no perceived accent. It just comes out flat.
The same with the word "cheers." Growing up, we only heard these words from people or characters who did have the accompanying accent.
Southerners have perfected the contraction like "y'all'd'nt've" is a full sentence.
i’m from florida and essentially use the southern vowel shift as a defense mechanism for when older southern people get upset at me at my customer service job
I use it when I don't want to offend by sounding too educated.
Try it in New York City. It works a treat.
@@TheSuzberryLos Angels too!
Florida is in the southern part of the country but it's hardly Southern.
That is hilarious
During the transition, the younger generations code switch depending who they are talking with. Friends? Leveled accent. Older family? The drawl creeps back in.
Completely agree! I only talk in a drawl around older people
Please… keep this accent. It’s so awesome.
It's an unconscious response at this point: I add about one "a" syllable for every relative over fifty to my "Hey!"
Yup. Im only southern with people who have a stronger accent than me. Anyone else just gets the leveled accent.
🤣@@B2WM
Lifelong Alabama resident, can promise you that the accent is still here. I do like that someone is studying the fact that “southern” is not one accent though. Savannah southern is a whole lot different than Ashford is different than Jackson.
This is also a very different thing from Asheville NC. I still think Southern is that accent that exists in the WVA/VA/TN mountain region.
@@grif0716 I feel like Southern gets more that way as you move South. The WVA/VA/TN mountain accent is Southern but also Mountain and like the lady says its all in the vowel mix. The Walton's series was based on both but in the Christmas pilot that sold the show Mama Walton has a(n attempt at a) Southern accent but not Mountain.
Walton's Christmas Special:
ruclips.net/video/umEEnFtmV0I/видео.html
As for Southern, the Mason-Dixon line moves south every year..., currently somewhere in ever-expanding NOVA Northern Virginia where the majority doesn't really have a Southern accent, but the rest of Virginia mostly does.
I'd say the biggest change in the south is the loss of non-rhotic dialects. Almost no one talks like Jimmy Carter any more. As for Austin, a lot of people moving there adopt the Hill Country twang, even Californians. I'm glad to say the Houston chop is still alive thanks to it still surviving in the local AAVE. But all big cities in the south are almost alike. Charlotte is rounder than Houston. Birmingham and Atlanta are in between.
@@skipperson4077 The Waltons: Anyone remember when George HW said, "I want the American family to be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons"? Everyone pointed out that Homer has a good paying tech job that supports a family of five. The Waltons were mostly unemployed and their farm didn't earn enough to get ahead.
Even forty years ago the Savannah and Charleston accents were more completely a Tidewater accent, but it has been changed and dilated - largely by college students and new residents.
As a southern black female from central NC, the accent is pretty thick, but not quite Appalachia thick. I dropped my accent a long time ago, mainly because of a stereotype. It was a mixture of aave and southern dialect. When I joined the military 20 years ago, nobody knew I was from the south. It only comes out when I am upset.
Having spent over twenty years in the Air Force I found that southern accents influenced my own accent to a certain extent. But I would also say that most southern accents weren't very thick either. It would seem to be another cultural mixing point.
Why yous dropping ur accents cuz of stereotypes like just ignore them
@@United-Nationsit’s hard to get by in some circles with a southern accent, people act like we’re stupid, ignorant, etc. so you might not get chosen in a class, not hired for a job, and people might not respect you as much
@@logand488Damn that ain't right. There are plenty of intelligent people with southern accents who are engineers, coders, developers etc.
@@stevenachila6058 i couldn’t agree more!! i have a thick nash county NC accent lol but i’m finishing my degree in Japanese and anthropology!!! first in my family 😄 and im moving to japan to teach english in August, maybe my students will come out of class with southern accents lol
Born and raised in rural Tennessee here. The accents vary fairly drastically from county to county. I was actively told to lose my accent in college if I wanted to be taken seriously. I sound nothing now like I did when I was 12. It only comes out if I’m surrounded by older family members or if I’m very tired.
Same. I'm originally from Lewis County, which has a mix of both Appalachian and Deep South accents. One of my biggest tells is with contracted "s" verbs. I tend to pronounce "isn't" and "wasn't" closer to "idn't" and "wudn't", and I've never been able to get rid of that.
booo… Why change your accent for others?
Same with me when I was stationed in California when I joined the Marine Corps in the 80s after being born and raised in rural Louisiana.
Like you, it only comes out when I’m fatigued.
@@IsaacMyers1 Path of least resistance. For the vast majority of people one encounters in life, the first impression will be the only one that's remembered.
And some of these people sign my checks. To this day, I meet with managers who believe totally incorrect things about me, and I know it's because they stored an inaccurate memory of me. It's frustrating, but just how people are.
Same thing happened for me.
Lifelong Southerner here- I do know cases where the loss of accent is intentional. While a lot of people think the accent is charming, I’ve also encountered people who think we’re genuinely uneducated or “less than” because of our accents. As a result, I know people who have genuinely worked on ridding themselves of their accent.
It’s just code switching which we all do. Southern accents and culture can’t just be studied. It’s a lived experience. And I disagree with the conclusions of the research and don’t believe it was extensive enough to come to those ends.
We intentionally got rid of our accents as quicky as possible after moving, due to pervasive anti-southern sentiment in the northeast. People kept assuming we were hateful and bigoted in every possible way, before they had even spoken to us, and they felt compelled to act on those assumptions.
George Lindsey AKA Goober once joked that he had wasted his money taking lessons to lose his Alabama accent so as not to be typecast-- once he played Goober, nobody wanted to hear him speaking with a less-Southern accent. Somehow the thought of Goober offstage (or on) sounding like Stephen Colbert (a native South Carolinian without the classic accent) doesn't quite sit well with me.
You know what's crazy is I feel the Southern accent is less negatively stereotyped now than it was 20 years ago, but that's just my experience.
My aunt did that very intentionally when she grew up. She was just a kid when she made that decision and now she can’t even do a southern accent.
I remember as a canadian, I made friends with a Texan and we were both confused why the other "didn't" have an accent
So I guess the Texan thought were going to sound like a hoser from Medicine Hat & you thought the Texan was going to sound like a cowboy from Midland?
Eh?
Whut?
Eh?
Whut?
Eh?
Whut?
As a millennial who was born in TN and has lived in various Southern states, movies and other media featuring some flavor of Southern accent, especially set around the 1960s and prior, almost always sound off to me. There are a few exceptions where the accent sounds right to me (Rick's accent in The Walking Dead, for example, but since I'm not from GA, I can't say if it's really accurate), but mostly it's actual people on the street or family members, not actors, whose accents I think of when it comes to the Southern drawl. My own accent has always been the overall least Southern in my family, but I've noticed that my Southernness is significantly increased when I live in a Southern state and was significantly decreased while I lived up in CT for a few years; it wasn't a conscious adaptation, it just happened.
When I was staying in Taiwan I made friends with a fellow Southerner. We both talked in general American dialect but I noticed when he was on the phone with his family he'd get very southern, sounded like a different person. We talked after that and I slipped into my Southern Applachian and he into his Tennessean Southern. It became our way to talk to each other so no one else understood us.
I'm also from TN (mid-TN), and I ended up intentionally shedding my accent when I moved outside the state. I notice, though, that whenever I talk to family on the phone who still live there, my speech is affected for about 2 or 3 days after. It's amazing how much your surroundings can alter your accent.
Linguists have found that people tend to unconsciously mimic accents from the communities around them. So, accent adoption is usually not planned but happens for many folks anyway.
@@Tripps2564 It also depends upon the circle of people around you. If your work and/or social circle mostly includes people who are transplants, then you are less likely to be "affected" by the native local population.
Sling Blade is one of the most accurate pieces of media when it comes to Southern accents, because the cast is largely Southerners. Lucas Black even made a point of not losing his accent throughout his career.
I've been code switching so long no one can place where I am from and it's kind of hilarious. Love this video!
Anti-Southern bigotry also played a role on an institutional level. Media industries, and others especially at management levels, suppressed regional accents and mannerisms, sometimes even in local outlets, and promoted “neutral” accents.
Yeah, Southern accents always seem to be pegged to stupid, hick characters
I feel like part of it is also the ruralbus (like weebus or westernbus), where someone who idealizes a misunderstanding of small town or rural life and is also somewhat evil will move to a southern city and do things like drive an oversized car, be unwelcoming because of something inalterable and inoffensive like race/gender/sexuality/etc, be xenophobic, etc, giving southerners a bad rap.
My parents both immigrated from outside of Texas, my mom from Louisiana and my dad from rural NY near the lakes. My mom is constantly going on about how “immigrants are illegally forcing their way in and killing people,” “fentanyl is here and really bad because of Mexican cartels,” and “the city is too cramped [we live in a city that has grass fields everywhere], oh no! A empty lot was replaced with buildings.” I feel like people who immigrated to Texas for those kinds of reasons are also the ones saying things like “don’t California my Texas,” even though such immigration was inevitable from somewhere eventually and the rise of housing price is more a result of Texas underpreparing rather than over immigration.
(I’m from Texas for context btw, and I understand that immigration tends to be beneficial, the drug crisis is largely a result of a failure to properly distribute drug types like pain relief through official channels, the amount of overcrowding is based on amount of usable building spaces (in buildings) vs population (usually there’s just not enough buildings when spaces get overcrowded), and people immigrate illegally due to a lack of immigration resources which make it take longer than viable (investment in walls or whatever would be better spent enabling people to register legally instead of trying to install deterrents). I know a lot of other people from Texas who also understand those things, including those in rural areas. The crazy (bad) kind of person really ruins the reputation of southerners (plus the GOP/Republicans having gerrymandered control misrepresents what people actually want)
@@kawaiidere1023 I've never heard the term "ruralbus" before, but man does it fit...
@@kawaiidere1023
I mean, regardless of whether they come in legally or illegally large numbers of new residence, will necessarily drastically increase the need for housing, Texas is getting this from both ends because of people migrating from other states, and illegal migrants from South America, it is worth noting though that zoning laws in Texas are typically much Less restrictive than those in say California or New York.
You are correct that immigration is generally good in an economic sense, but not universally so, countries like Canada, for instance, are now going through what is called an immigration trap, where they can’t afford to reduce the flow of new residence, but because of housing costs and lower productivity, they can also not afford to keep increasing migration levels to evermore historic highs.
Mass migration is also not good for wages in fields that migrant laborers typically go into, because usually migrants are willing to work for less pay and benefits than native born residence, and due to the language barrier often times lack the ability to organize or push for increased labor rights.
America historically compared to other nations has had a very liberal immigration policy, heck even Republicans 20 years ago, were supporting widespread amnesty, but the reason why this attitude has soured is both because the scale of migration, legal and illegal, has increased by an order of magnitude, and the fact that is no longer necessarily in the best interest of much of the nation.
When we had vast largely unsettled tracks of land in the central and western parts of the country, and when huge pools of unskilled labor were required for manufacturing and the like, large scale migration was much more desirable, now the only ones it really benefits are property and business owners who can keep housing costs high and labor costs low Through subsidizing the labor pool.
The argument is also often made that western countries need to subsidize are populations through mass migration, to avoid the consequences of declining birth rates, but one should be able to intuitively reject this argument, because of its temporary nature, and hopefully come to the conclusion that, addressing the problem of falling fertility rates in the long run Requires actual cultural and economic reforms, particularly on the local level, but I digress.
Here in the UK following US pop culture, US politics, US sports, movies & trends etc. We seem to hear the 'Southern Drawl' less often from celebrities like Matthew McConaughey & Lainey Wilson. We hear more east coast & west coast accents from celebrities like Taylor Swift & Jenna Ortega. Anyone know why that would be ? Just curious. 🤔🇬🇧🇺🇸
“I do declare” IMMEDIATELY makes me think of Michael Scott
There's been a murder in Savannah!
It makes me think of Foghorn Leghorn. "I do declare, that boy has gotten too big for his britches." 🐔
I think about Blair St Claire
@@popito8366 lol so true
Like molasses fallin' outta your mouth
As a Virginian all I can say is bless y'alls hearts for studyin the southern accent but I can tell y'all that it's alive and well and still delicious to the ears...to mine anyways! And there are different accents in Virginia too! Always fascinating videos. As an ESL teacher now living in Brasil, I often share these with my students who really enjoy learning about why English is the kooky way it is! As someone else mentioned, my accent tends to ramp up when I'm in Va, but I keep it pretty neutral when I am teaching or speaking with foreigners. Thanks for the great video Dr!
Oh you’re living in Brazil? Nice
I am Brazilian. In Brazil we have a similar thing when it comes to accents.
Northeast Brazil has a very interesting accent that retained the original Portuguese colonizers and Afro-indigenous influences. Our accent is associated with poverty and lack of education. Not to mention that our people in this region is mostly people of color.
But the Southeast Brazilian accent is the standard speech because São Paulo is the more affluent city in the country. They make fun of the northeast accent and just by our accent they judge us.
Reminded when I said Bless your little heart to a young woman I was in the process of making amends with but instead of opening up further she slammed the conversation to an end as she took it as derogatory and hasn’t spoken to me since. Wtf did I do wrong?
@@rachelmichaels2108they may have found it patronizing
@@rachelmichaels2108”bless your heart” or little heart, can sound very sarcastic and it’s usually used that way most of the time
@@sweetcozyloveNot where I’m from growing up in the Midwest. I thought it was a term of endearment not the damn opposite. Stupid language differences!
My parents were from the south. I noticed that it wasn’t only the drawl, it was also the colloquialisms that represented the accent
True, my granny used terms like "carried" meaning to take someone somewhere, not literally give them a piggyback ride. She also used terms like over yonder, icebox, commode, and britches (I still say britches til this day because of her), "whatca know no good" when she wanted to hear the latest gossip😆) I say more than one way to skin a cat because of my mama. Cattycorner etc. I remember when folks called it a coke machine instead of a drink machine and the drive thru lady asked what kind of coke would you like (this was still Atlanta in the 90s)...It's a beautiful language all by itself.
@@BabytalkATL4I’m a bit younger but the “what kind of coke do you want” reminded me of my early 2000s childhood. haven’t heard that in forever
"Call me darlin' again and you'll be saying that drawl in sign language."
-Bobbi Draper, The Expanse
Always safer to just not call people "names" (or epithets, maybe?) like that, so I never do.
@@MatthewTheWanderer That's just another cultural aspect of language, like how people in the South say "sir" or "ma'am" way more than people in the North. To one group it's a sign of respect, to another it can sound patronizing or unnatural.
Best sci fi ever.
It was especially funny because the guy saying it was Martian.
@@StephBer1 Southern/Texan accents for the Martians is canon to the books. Texas was one of the places that set up early large scale colonization on Mars, so the accent carried over.
That scene of Forest Gump may have taken place in Georgia, but he was from Greenbaugh, ALABAMA!
And the kid who played young Forest, whom Tom Hanks is imitating, was from Missouri iirc.
I lived in Texas from age 11 till I was almost 17 and when I moved to Michigan I was very conscious about the fact that I said "Y'all" and no one else did. 20 years later and I love that Y'all seems so normal all around the country.
If you say Y'all in NJ you're gonna end up in a landfill.
@@TheMrPeteChannel Well, I have said "y'all" in New Jersey and I'm still here so....
@@TheMrPeteChannelI have seen RUclipsrs from NJ and NY saying y’all all the time.
@@TheMrPeteChannelIf you're black you'll hear it a lot tbh, same in NY
Fascinating video. My family transplanted to Texas in 2000 when I was eight years old, and I DREADED getting a Texas accent because I did indeed think of the South as bigoted and uneducated. Younger me would be mortified to know that I now purposely use the word "y'all". Ironically, I discovered how darned useful "y'all" is when I started teaching Latin. And in teaching and tutoring, I finally accepted that my own animosity towards southern accents was its own form of bigotry. Which is good, because now having lived in Texas since childhood, I proooobably have at least a bit of a Texas accent at this point.
You can try using youse as a substitute for y'all, but I think very few people would understand it.
As a southern guy I change my accent depending on who I’m speaking with. If I’m speaking with a nonsouthern person I speak more neutrally. But the drawl comes out when speaking with my own people.
I love, love, love those southern accents, and I've never thought of the speakers as less educated, although I know some do. That's sad. Be proud of your accents and manners of speaking, people: that's what makes society varied and interesting. And cheers from British Columbia, Canada!
It does though. I try my absolute hardest to not have a southern accent because I am ridiculed if someone picks up on it, and I do not associate with the stereotypes what so ever. I am not poorly educated, I am not racist, and I don't subscribe to the political right, so I avoid being falsely judged as such as much as possible. It sucks when you aren't accepted by your own people for your views nor by everyone else because of how you speak.
@@rich1051414 noo, don't lose your accent! i really believe that the southern accent is one of the most charming and cute accents in english. those who hear your accent and immediately stereotype you as a racist, a bigot or some second amendment-loving freak are the true bigots... because how are they gonna make such unfair generalizations and assumptions about you just from the manner in which you speak. :(
@@rich1051414 I got taught out of much of my southern accent like many of my generation who performed well academically, so that we weren't presumed to be uneducated and hinder our academic or professional progress. I hate that for a couple of reasons: It reinforced the negative stereotypes against southerners. It also reinforces the stereotype of a proper "educated" speech which continues a tradition that minority accents are also "uneducated." I've consciously tried to add it back.
There are a range of social-economic classes in all regions of America and, for that matter, in every nation in the world. There are refined, upper class Southern accents.
@@christophergraves6725pretty much
I click like before Dr. B even starts speaking. I know that I'm about to learn something interesting. She's a delight as a presenter, and her ability to imitate accents, is wonderful.
She did better than anyone in the movies does. Not perfect, but better.
As someone from South Louisiana, the southern accent is still very much a thing and is not going away anytime soon.
A lot of southerners never sounded like those stereotypical southern belles/gentleman and in the south, there's always been multiple accents.
Within Louisiana alone, we have multiple. The more north you go, the more you get a more standard, hill billyish accent. The more rural you go, the more cajun you get. In New Orleans, even though it still has features of a southern accent, we tend to sound less "southern" and closer to a New York type accent (although movies either constantly potray with a stereotypical southern accent or everyone is Cajun apparently)
Half of what people call a Cajun accent is just a white Creole accent since whites from around the Bayou Teche sound much more differently than those from rural Lafayette parish
That’s not all NOLA people sound similar to New Yorkers. Some sound more Caribbean. I knew a lady who for years I thought was Haitian only to find out she was from NOLA. The way people say “baby” and “water”is usually a dead giveaway they are from there.
exactly! people prop up the southern aristocratic accent they see in old movies but that only represented the 1% of the south essentially.
@@lilacfields Nevertheless, I did hear softer southern accents more often back in the 70s. Now everything portrayed on TV as southern is a nasal twang.
I’m curious as to your thoughts on the Cajun accents (family of Dennis Quaid’s character) used in the movie The Big Easy? Were they specific to a particular area? I thought they were some of the most melodic, heart-warming accents I’ve ever heard.
As a Canadian I went on a military exercise to Georgia. I was only a few days and our whole unit had adopted "y'all" into our vocabulary. It was to useful to leave on the table
Did y'all learn the distinction between "y'all" and "all y'all"? 😂
Yes, it's a thing.
You - singular second person, can be extended to 2-3 people.
Y'all - plural second person, limited to a group you are addressing as indidividuals, albeit grouped together. Can be used for as few as two people, and extended any group for which individual responses would be practical in the situation.
All y'all - a *collective* plural second person, used to refer to a group *as a monolithic group*. Often used as an emphasized enhancer.
My Grandpa was from Alabama, my Grandma was from Queens. My mom heard some very distinct, and different, American accents growing up!
I’m Texan. Wife is Brooklyn.
I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee
@@Mortabluntthat’s called the inverted Carter
I'm in my late 30s and I dropped my southern accent when I was a teen because I got made fun of it all the time. That is why it is gone. Ya'll bullied it out of us.
I'm european, and I always thought that the southern accents are the coolest and most charming accents in the US. It's a real shame that young southerners are feeling the pressure to give it up.
Can you imagine a young, college educated woman, TV host, academic, actress, Miss USA talking like a Redneck, Hillbilly or New York construction worker, or even some Valley Girl?
Most people tend to think that we're uneducated or bigoted when they hear us talking.
@@austinweaver5649 considering the history and ongoing current events I’d say it’s a warranted stereotype. In his I have a dream speech MLK specifically singled out Alabama and Mississippi as racist states. That was sixty years ago and not much has changed.
And southern universities are known for their sports teams, not their academics. Roll Tide
@@user-xq7hg1ec9o it's still a stereotype. That's the problem, you can't tell just by our accent without actually knowing us
@@austinweaver5649 True. Naturally we all stereotype and generalize but it’s up to us to use our God given consciousness to allow people to prove themselves as an individual. We all have autonomy.
I purposely tried dropping my Southern accent during my middle/high school to the point that some people thought I wasn't from around there. Then I moved up North and everyone said I sounded like I was from Texas, so I just accepted I had an accent. After living here for a few years it's definitely become muddled but still pops up in certain words and phrases.
You definitely should try getting it back. I always hated when people, for one reason or another usually bullying, force away their accents. It's pretty stupid that we give accents bigoted meanings, like just because you have a Cali accent that means you're gay? Southern accent that means you're uneducated? Etc.
I'm from Mississippi, I'm 23, and ever since I moved from MS to GA then CA, I stopped using the accent. Mostly because I was made fun of lol. But I've been bringing it back... Feels comfortable.
I feel that. I spent time in Virginia Beach, greater Baltimore, Seoul, and Denver. I also shed my accent, but it's easier when no one around you speaks it. Every time I talk with family back home, though, it comes back strong for a couple of days after.
There’s nothing prettier than a Mississippi accent! After working in Mississippi for six years, I’m proud to say that I have picked up a lot of it blended with my native Texas accent
Don’t ever hold back your accent. As a Midwesterner, hearing accents of any kind is a breath of fresh air. I love complimenting people on their accent and letting them know how wonderful it is…..to that point I do have a switch that lets me go back and forth from proper to my native accent.
@@Jibberish18 I can't speak for other folks in this thread, but for me at least it's a little too late. Now, whenever I try to do a southern accent out of the blue, it sounds like an imitation. I have to constantly be around southern-accented people for it to stick again.
For the most part, I now sound like a generic American. It was a complete change.
@@warpdrivefueledbyinsomnia8165
Been told that I can begin to sound like an old 1920’s gangster when I speak comfortably and loose for long enough.
On the subject of Generic American, we Americans don’t realize it but we all have an accent. Even the “generic” ones. This is how you know most of the time if an actor is English. They all mimic American English by sounding completely bland and whitewashed. Listen to Cumberpatch in all of his movies. Australians somehow do a really good job though.
My dad was born in Augusta, Georgia but his parents are chinese. So he grew up with a very subtle accent. But since I'm third generation, my accent is a little stronger and more Atlanta.
I worked with a man named Hau, a Vietnamese guy who spent many years in the American south. It was a very distinctive accent
I think we kind of brushed over the effect that prejudice has, not only on Southern Accents but on most regional accents.
It’s funny to use Gone with the Wind as an example of a Georgia accent because Vivienne Leigh was British and was trying to affect a “southern” accent via the mid-Atlantic speech patterns that many actors had at that time. And Clark Gable wasn’t even trying lol. Still, very interesting video. I love learning about and trying to figure out regional accents. This was very informative!
I came to the comments to find out if anyone pointed this out! The movie has always been used as an example of horrid and inaccurate accents! People were not paying as much attention to authenticity then.
Having a British accent could actually help because most Southern dialects retain features from British dialects that mid-Atlantic & modern “standard American English” dropped. See the situation with rhotic R, for example.
I can’t say how that played out for this specific actress, but I don’t see why her brain would think of it as going “through” mid-Atlantic, as opposed to “oh this is just another accent to learn”, because it’s not necessarily the case that mid-Atlantic would have been “closer” to her native speech patterns. Could have also been a directing decision to combine the two to make her sound more exotic. 🤷🏾
Viven Leigh's accent is quite good. A Southern accent is very similar to a Posh English accent including the Elizabethan lilt. The drawl is added by Southerners.
@@lorettabayley3650 No, they were very much interested in portraying Southern culture correctly. David O. Selznick hired two Southerners who were experts on accents and Southern manners-Will A. Price and Macon columnist Susan Myrick in order that the accents were authentic. Margaret Mitchell was pleased with the Southern accents of the various characters.
Wait, wasn't Clark Gable playing a Brit who became a blockade runner?
All y’all ! Thank you for the “correct” pluralization! 😅🤙
My family eliminated their accent to avoid the negative stereotypes (and I purposely did so to avoid being made fun of). It's so funny to see people defend AAVE (and rightfully so) while still having a negative view of southern accents. I live in a metro area with a lot of people from all over the states tho, so it may just be more obvious in my locale.
odd there was no mention of code switching. people, especially on public media, tone down their accent because of accent discrimination, so people *think* accents are disappearing when theyre just being hidden. and the more stigma the accent has, the stronger the effect, which is evident in the comments. theres clips of reporters you can watch of them talking one way and then switching to their normal accent after recording or making an error
It's just nice to see GT and Ugga getting along for a study.
As a millennial born in Louisiana and raised in Ohio, I get to translate the stronger Tennessee accents of friends, family, and coworkers for those who are younger or from the north. Nothin' like letting it really loose when you wanna express emotions, but I have the Midwest "customer service voice" to fall back on when someone needs to go on the intercom. Half of the older guys here might as well be saying Charlie Brown's teacher's lines when they try to get on the bullhorn.
From East TN, used to have a Southern Appalachian accent, but got treated like a total idiot in grad school because of it. I loved abroad for 5 years, now my accent is gone, and I have a non-descript American accent. It only comes out around my family or when I’m drunk. I still pronounce some words with it, for example, pen and pin are still the same to me. And I still pronounce my name with it. But, yeah, of course I changed my accent as soon as I could, having people treat me like white trash was no fun.
Every native Georgian knows the “switching to a deeper southern accent” phone call with your grandparents
The same thing is happening in Australia. The iconic Australian strine is not as prevalent as it once was, but it's still there, especially in Sydney or the Outback.
Was Vivien Leigh's antebellum "Georgia" accent really ever a thing? GWTW was a fabulous movie, and Ms. Leigh was a gorgeous woman. But let's not kid ourselves that Clark Gable (born in Ohio), or Lesley Howard (London, UK) spoke like real Southerners of that era.
Love this channel.
Can’t speak for “Georgia”, but the “mid-Atlantic” accent popularized by Katherine Hepburn was largely an artificial creation: It was taught in language schools as an indicator of elitism, but was also widely used in movies and radio broadcasts because the exaggerated pronunciation worked well in a recorded format and was easier for listeners to pick up at the other end.
That Scarlet O'Hare accent is called "Southern Proper" or a " Coastal Southern Accent" and it was spoken by mostly wealthy, coastal southerners in the 19th and 20th century. I still hear it occasionally in places like Charleston, Savannah, Wilmington or the Tidewater region of Virginia, spoken by some older people. Overall, it's not a common accent in the South and it has mostly died out. Unfortunately, Hollywood hasn't caught on, they seem to think that Southerners either sound like Boomhauer, Foghorn Leghorn, or Scarlet O'Hare.
@@user-tp8ut7cs6j That checks out. I recently took a historic walking tour of Charleston, and although our guide was born and raised in the city, his accent was minor and only noticeable if you were really paying attention. He didn’t seem particularly “senior”, so it makes sense that any remnants of the classical accent would be more common among older populations.
@@Hallows4 The remnants of it are definitely still around, even among some younger people. Charleston is known for being one of the few places where the accent is still heard often. I used to live in Wilmington, NC and you would hear the accent spoken on very rare occasions, often by local, older, "old money" types. It's distinguishable from other Southern accents because, like British English and Northeastern American dialects, it's non-rhotic, which means the R's aren't heavily pronounced. Wilmington, like most of NC's cities, has more transplants than locals now, there's more of a diversity in backgrounds and accents now, so that older Southern accent is disappearing fast. A really cool old Southern accent you should look into is "Hoi Toiders" (High Tiders), it's the accent spoken by some of the older locals of the Outerbanks. It's really fascinating to hear. It sounds like a mix between a Southern accent and a British Isles brogue. That accent is also disappearing quickly. I had a teacher once from Harker's Island, which she called "Hoiker's Oiland." She'd lost the brogue when she moved to the mainland and had to get rid of it in order to be understood. She would intentionally switch between a General American accent and a Hoi Toiders accent at will, in order to amuse people.
Your presentation was wonderful, thank you! I recognize the amount of work you put into this, and how difficult it must have been to perfect. You succeeded overwhelmingly. 👏
I live in an area of Virginia where many folks are first generation Virginians. Both my husband and I grew up in Pennsylvania. The general accent here tends to either be a Mid Atlantic accent,or a regional accent from the birthplace of the speaker. Since this isn't far from DC, the birthplace of a speaker could be almost anywhere, it is a fairly diverse area. To hear 'old Virginian,' you have to go outside the urbanized areas, for the most part. It is most definitely still an extant way of speaking.
I am from NC and spent 7 years in the Army, 3 of those years being in Germany, and when I got out and came home, my family said I didn't sound the same and to this day my accent is so different that I get asked all the time where I am from, to which I reply, "right here". :) great video!
I’d love to see an episode on language interference in EFL speakers! I could watch a whole sub-series of Otherwords just on the topic of dialects.
That would be so fun! I always apologize to my EFL students. I tell them that the fun part about learning a second language is getting to learn it in with an accent or a dialect!
@@1234fakerstreet I’m the same, exactly! Language interference is also a great way to reverse engineer a language for one’s own studies. Cheers to a fellow TEFL teacher!
I’ve been waiting for a video like this! So thorough
I moved to Atlanta as kid and made a very conscious effort to never develop a southern accent. It was for exactly the reason stated in the video. It was fairly common among kids my age, though I wasn't aware of it, and only a few of my friends from back there have a distinctive regional accent. I only started getting comfortable with "y'all" when I heard my aunt - lifelong resident of Westchester County - using it on the regular.
Funny enough though, my sisters have a very tactical approach to southern accents, deploying it in various situations to try and alter how people perceive them and smooth out social interactions.
I’ve lived in the South (Florida) my entire life, & had people think I was from the Midwest to even the UK. Apart from the extreme rural areas, Florida mostly has a cosmopolitan accent now. So many people that come here are from all over, that the accent is homogenizing into being nondescript
This, though sometimes the North FL southern drawl pops in if I'm not paying attention--even though I grew up in South FL.
Interesting. My experience in “cosmopolitan” (suburban nightmare) North Florida was not like that. It was very much like what was in the video. But I think we Millenials, who would tamp down the accent with our peers at school, often *thought* we didn’t have an accent. There’s a tendency to compare oneself or one’s family to the thickest drawl imaginable and then think, “of course I don’t sound like that, so I don’t speak with an accent”.
@@sasentaiko North Florida is much more a part of the Deep South than Central & South Florida (Everglades excluded), having a lot more transplants from all over, but especially the North (Yankees)
I grew up in FL... No one from FL sounds British lmao
@@BadgerCheese94 I know. But that’s what they thought they were hearing. What they were actually hearing was my gay accent, because I enunciate.
I was listening to this while working and got a good example of how we use visual information to inform what we hear. Since I wasn't watching the video directly, I heard "Southern Bowel Shift" and well, let's just say I am happy I wasn't taking a drink at that moment. lol
always love your outtakes! 😄
Thank you so much for this video, very informative!
I grew up in the suburbs in SW ATL maybe about 45 mins away from Alabama. Even back in the early 00s I almost never heard that stereotypical accent from Gone With the Wind or ppl like Flannery O'Connor. Maybe every once and while you hear it from an older person like my old track coach who's in his 90s. Also I think white folks accents are starting to merge with AAVE, especially Gen z and alpha. My whole family is from Philly so I didn't have much of a southern accent. I say "wourder" not "water" for example lol.
My wife is from the north of ATL, Duluth area, and yeah, she has none of that, nor did any her friends. Born in 85.
Shame about white people speaking aave...
It's affected Aristocratic Southern accent. You almost never hear it now a days, just "Country" accents.
The Southern has a drawl, where as the country one has a twang.
The problem isn't the evolution of the dialect and accent, but when it's mocked out of existence. I've seen too many people hide or change their accent to sound more like a TV accent. It makes me sad.
I spent a year in California, and when I got back to Kentucky, I heard a young kid say, "We fixin' to go to memaws house." I was so happy to hear it and knew I was home.
Would love to see an episode on joke making/comedy! Keep up the great work, I learn a ton every time!
We have a similar phenomenon here in Bavaria in the capital of Munich, where - on account of many people moving there from across the country - finding locals in Munich who speak with a typical Southern German accent (notable from the vowels and certain consonant sounds), much less proper Bavarian dialect with different grammar has become more difficult in recent decades because of dialect/accent levelling (although outside the big cities like Munich or Nuremberg, Bavarian and Franconian accents and dialects are very much alive). Thanks for the great video!
Actually, close to everyone in Munich speaks with a typical Southern German accent; despite accent levelling.
You seem to confuse accents with dialects. The traditional Bavarian dialect spoken in Munich - Münchnerisch - is essentially close to dead (the linguistic term for this status is moribund) and will have died out completely in a few years time.
Close to everyone speaking Bavarian in Munich is not originally from Munich, but from the countryside and thus not speaking the original Bavarian from Munich.
But that's different from the accent people speak here in Munich. We have retained all the characteristics of speech from High German such as using "das" instead of "dat" (Sankt Goar Linie) , "machen" instead of "maken" (Benrather Linie) as well as "Apfel" instead of "Appel" (Speyerer Linie) and so on.
We also say "sh" instead of "s" when problubcung words such as "Stein" (stone) and so on and so forth.
We also don't say auch [ˈhambʊɪ̯ç], but [ˈhambʊʁk], when talking about Hamburg etc. All in all, the Southern accent is omnipresent here, which certainly is helped by Standard German being strongly based on High German.
Well, there are several accents in Georgia. Very different in some cases. Coastal Georgia has its own accent. Georgia mountains, South rural, metro atlanta....all different.
I was born in SW Louisiana, my parents were born in SE Texas. When I was in the 2nd grade we moved up to Alaska permanently. I was teased heavily by my classmates for my accent, which wasn't as strong as my parents. I dropped that accent QUICK. Now when I tell people where I was born I get a lot of "huh, you don't sound it" responses.
Lol I recently just discovered Otherwords and I can't get enough of the little bloopers at the end xD Need a compilation!
Love this show! Wish it were weekly
a friend of mine grew up in Texas but went to secretarial school in NYC and she was told she had to lose the drawl if she wanted a job in NY. in britain there is a sense northerners are just lower unlike SSB in the south
What’s SSB?
For me it was somewhat due to code switching and being taught that speaking in an Appalachian dialect and Southern drawl was considered “uneducated” and for lack of a better phrase “made me sound like white trash”. For instance I remember when I was in elementary school I got told that the way I used past tense was incorrect. In Smoky Mountain English we often just add -ed to past tense words (ie catched, taked). I had said “my dog catched kennel cough from staying at the vet’s office” and my teacher made it a point to loudly say, “you mean your dog caught kennel cough”. I only really talk like that around family and some close friends, but it was drilled into me from a young age that my way of speaking wasn’t “proper” and I really think as educators we need to realize that English like every language will have different dialects.
I literally cannot get enough of these videos.
Another brilliant episode! Back of the net every time ❤
Young Raleigh resident here! I was born here to parents from the north, and in my experience young people in my area, myself included, have multiple accents. They have a natural one which is a mix of northern and southern, and the accent of their og language if it’s not english. Then they have a southern and northern accent they pull out when they talk to northern or southern people. We really only use our natural accents when we talk to other young people from our area because it is socially advantageous to seem as part of the group we are speaking with. It is pretty funny though because I’ll be talking with my indian friends and then southern teacher walks up and suddenly we’re all southern 😂.
hey hey!
I was thinking that as more people are moving to the South, there's a good chance that the accents they are from carry over to their new home. But they also pick up the accent of their new home state. As someone who lives in Texas, I still have that New Jersey accent being from there. But I picked up the Texan accent since I lived there.
I have had students from Texas who did not sound like Texas. And that was because their parents were from massachusetts
I have a cousin who married a man from New Jersey. After living in rural Georgia for 10 or 15 years, he's picked up a bit of a drawl. 😅
Great! There's nothin' at all wrong with the Texas accent AND ATTITUDE!! 🇨🇱
@@leslie4351 Thats a Chilean accent
fascinating explanation. the ending here is so important! cheers from the Linguistics Department at the University of Cologne!
What an interesting topic! Thanks for the informative and entertaining video.
I'm from rural Oklahoma. Plenty of various Southern Accents still exist here. We got people that sound like Boomhauer from King of the Hill, people that sound like Foghorn Leghorn, people that sound like Apple-latchin' hill folk, people that sound like traditional Southern belles and gentlemen, etc. Just all mixed up because their families all moved here less than 120 years ago and lived in isolated rural towns until recently.
Hello fellow okie and thank you so much for describing OK perfectly😂
I think of Foghorn Leghorn when I think of the Southern accent.
I say, I say, that is a magnanimous example of a southern accent
He had that southern gent thing going on😂
Foghorn Leghorn was voiced by a Californian doing his take on an exaggerated southern accent from the turn of the century. I think perhaps the model was copied by Hollywood and too many movies feature a Canadian speaking like a Californian speaking like a caricature of a late-1800's upper-class coastal southern gentleman to portray a lower-class character set in present-day Tennessee. That said, Foghorn Leghorn is pretty great.
@@JoMo4Sho You're talking about Mel Blanc. He had a talent for imitating accents since he was 10 years old. Anyway, a popular radio show at the time had a popular character called "Senator Claghorn" who was played by Kenny Delmar. Blanc originally did the voice for Forghorn to sound exactly like Yosemite Sam. But changed it to imitate the accent of Senator Claghorn. By the way, the actor playing Claghorn was born in Boston. But he was a vaudeville actor, so he traveled a lot as a kid. So he picked up the Southern accent during his travels.
Where is Bugs Bunny's accent from?
As an audiobook narrator, It's intriguing the feedback I get from different authors. I've recently narrated 3 different books set in the south, and each one wanted a different "level" of Southern accent. One in particular, for the audition I thought I was laying it on pretty thick, but after they had selected me asked if I could do a thick Texas accent, so dial it up I did. I love learning about the evolution of dialects. Thanks for this awesome video.
I always look forward to learning these little tidbits about language and history. Also totally crushing on Dr. Brozovsky. =D
I moved to Arkansas in 2000 when I was in middle school and I maintained a pretty standard American accent. BUT I have a tendency to shift my voice around other southerners. I draw out my vowels, drop letters, and shorten my words more. People say they can't tell the difference in southern dialects. I work with a Georgian, North Carolinian, and a Texas. We can tell each other apart, but don't know how to explain it to others that all three southern dialects are different.
I'm from Chicago but I go to college in Atlanta and I was expecting southern accents everywhere. boy was I wrong 😭😭 Almost everyone that IS from the south has their family from a northern state it's insane. I've only really came across a handful of southern accents in two years
My favorite was always the kids playing up the "southern country boy" thing to absurd degrees- like, "dude, you were born in Ann Arbor and live in a million dollar suburban mansion"
You'll hear it more if you go outside the cities.
@@quinnsoutar2196Like Kid Rock waving his Rebel flags when he's from Detroit.
Even forty-five years ago, Dad talked about all the cute local girls in the 101 classes in college... But by third semester, you heard a lot more indecipherable thick German accents from the profs if you just stuck around Tech. The engineering program was meant to draw talent from around the country, and didn't keep a lot of locals.
It was like that in my part of Louisiana too, where they mainly had normal accents from middle class backgrounds while the dudes actually from rural areas had actual southern accents@quinnsoutar2196
Thank you for the great stories❤❤❤❤❤❤
Love the outro clip. Anyone who has taken an intro linguistics course has had to do so much of that
My drawl was never super strong. 9 years of association with the Navy and that leveling happened to me. Former supervisor called it the Navy cosmopolitan accent as it was at that time happening to someone in her family.
I don’t think you can discount that there are social biases against strong accents, especially the Southern accent. I grew up in rural TN, and our teachers taught us that we’d have trouble finding jobs with a thick accent because we’d sound ignorant. I still meet people from the Midwest and Northeast who seriously say, “Oh you wear shoes, but you’re from the South!”. Language always changes and migration plays a part, but I know from my lived experience a lot of this is driven by social stigma. Everyone I know code switches depending on who we are around.
This was a fascinating video, thank you
You're very good at demonstrating those accents, Dr. B.!
I’m from California and did a year of college in Oklahoma in 2009-2010. I only met one guy my age with a thick southern accent, and everyone else’s accent seemed pretty subtle to me
I’m from Oklahoma and I think many people would have a Midlands dialect. You can see the range on the map here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_American_English?wprov=sfti1#St._Louis_corridor
Not all, of course, but even some of the vocabulary is more in-line with the Midwest in some cases (like how many Oklahomans call soda “pop,” for example).
While some consider it to be in “the South,” others would consider it more in line with the Midwest (and some would even say Southwest - but that may depend more on how one views the Southwest). Really, we’re at the intersection of various cultural regions of the U.S., and it’s difficult to put it entirely in one category. I think a decent compromise would be to call it a Great Plains state and lump it together with Kansas and maybe Nebraska or something.
I *love* the Southern accent!
Foghorn Leghorn had it right - "Thuh South - ahhh say thuh South - will RAHHHHHSE agay-un!"
I’m born & raised in TX & my accent has gotten more pronounced over time. I attribute this to a customer base predominantly in the S, SE, & states around TX. Drive my English/debate teacher mom crazy!
ALways good when one of my fave series on RUclips uploads.
I wonder if the Southern accent will retain its public perception as warm and nurturing with more northern migration?
There's also a lot of this impact on accents in military cities. People who grew up in Brunswick GA, where FLETC is, tend to have less distinct southern accents than those who grew up just outside the city.
The same thing also happens outside of GA. I grew up in the Tidewater area of VA and with so many military influences that area tends to have a more neutral, usually confused with Midwestern accent, but go just outside there and you remember that VA is very much a southern state.
My child has more twang in her typical speech patterns than I do since we moved to a rural part of VA when she was a toddler.
I am just hearing Adam Devine say, "I do declare...I will have a Mint Julep." 😆
When I was younger my family (from central MD) moved to Wake Forest NC and we lived there for a few years and we have since moved back to MD but my exposure to the NC drawl still haunts me to this day and pops up when I talk to anyone older
I live in suburban Tennessee where a lot of people have moved into my area, especially from California, Illinois, and even areas of India. I’m Gen Z, and I have a southern accent, though it is definitely diluted. It does come out when I get emotional though. It’s really interesting to learn about accents. Thanks for the video!
Living in Louisiana for a year as a native Californian accent grows since stationed in the swamps you tend to adapt to people around so i have a southern accent that appears when I'm exhausted or tired
"It's not so much we're losing southern American English as we're evolving it" This still sounds like we're losing it lol
I am 59 years old. Born and raised in Forsyth, GA and spent most of my adult life around Athens. I cherish my accent and have received many compliments on it over the years.
Excellent video as always
5:51 in méxico, something like this already happened since the 20th century thanks to mexican films and migration, nowadays it’s harder to tell people’s accent apart even if they are from different regions in the country
most younger mexicans speak a more “neutral” dialect that was mostly influenced by the spanish spoken in central méxico
I was struck by how she used as examples British Vivien Leigh and Californian Tom Hanks, actors who are not Southerners, as examples of Georgia accents. Overall, I enjoyed the presentation and found it it be true. I grew up in Southern Ohio where North meets South in a jumble of the two accents.
I really appreciate your accurate use of "all y'all"
I’ve grown up in a Texas suburb my whole life and I think I talk pretty formal (my parents are Indian so we talk diff from Southerners) but I’ve noticed my accent’s becoming more Southern!
As a Xennial who grew up in an exurb of Raleigh, NC, and whose family goes back generations in this state, I can confirm. Visiting extended family in nearby Franklin and Nash counties clearly indicated the differences in accents. And comparing my own accent to my brothers', where I was a constantly reading introvert referencing pronunciation guides in my always at hand dictionary while they tend to be more gregarious, indicated to me that it really is about the company you keep. I've also noticed that people will affect different accents depending on with whom they're speaking. Not quite code shifting, but something like it.
I'm in the same age group and from the same area as you. Luckily, the accent hasn't died with my family, and my friends my age still have it. But it definitely seems largely dead, or at least dying, among people native to Raleigh, and definitely Cary. I just read an article not long ago that Wake, Orange, and Durham counties all now have higher numbers of non-natives to natives, and that non-natives are now a whopping 49% of the state. If you cross over into Johnston county though, the accents become far more Southern on average.
Southern accent is not dying in Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina, North Carolina. Now Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Florida, yeah it’s changing.
why do you say that?
I have long found accents a fascinating subject. I'm the native Californian child of an Aussie and a Canadian, and I spent my first year of school in England, followed by second grade in Canada. I was often surprised when people commented on my father's accent, which I didn't hear, and when we've visited Melbourne, I'm often surprised by the confusion Aussie's have with his "accent", which they no longer recognize. Worst for me is that whenever I spend time visiting Canada, or speaking with English people I find myself dropping into a very bad form of their accents (which young me legitimately had in my youth). (And skip over my adventures with other languages; other than to say how much I appreciate the kindness, Japanese and Russians have shown me when I've attempted their native tongue.)
As always, thank you so very much for the videos.
I note I have several friends, and in-laws, who've moved back and forth into/out of "the South", and I've enjoyed the changes in their speech.
Very interesting!! I find myself mirroring people around me constantly, often masking my actual "accent." Especially with older Southern folks, who seem so much more relaxed and chill if I sound like THEY do. When I do "just talk" I often get funny looks, as people canNOT figure out my accent.
Would like to make a note for the audio person for this series though - usually the background music is at a good level, but this episode, the music seemed to get louder and louder, and it honestly got distracting at several points. Not sure what can be done there but maybe it's helpful for y'all to know.
Sure dialect leveling is cool, but Dr. B leveling is even cooler after consuming all these fun linguistic videos
she levels me up all right