Follow Us!
Subscribe to Blog via Email
-
Recent Posts
All-Time Most Popular
1. The Accents in Downton Abbey
2. The 5 Best Irish Accents on Film
3. Arrr, Matey! The Origins of the Pirate Accent
4. The 3 Types of Australian Accents
5. Canadian Raising: Nobody Says Aboot
6. South African or Kiwi or Aussie?
7. Top 10 American Accents by Non-Americans
8. Mom Mum Mam
9. When Did Americans Stop "Talking British?"
10. The Wild World of the English "r"Recent Comments
For the Uninitiated
Sites I Love
Categories
Archives
- April 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
Tag Archives: American Southern Accents
Urban Southern English
A reader wrote me recently with a question about his “fading” Southern accent: I am a native, fourth generation Georgian who has lived in Roanoke, Virginia for two years. Before then I spent three years in Austin, Texas; two in … Continue reading
Faulkner, Joyce, and Regional Modernism
I most associate literary modernism with Joyce and Faulkner, writers who pushed literature’s boundaries further than they had, and perhaps have since, been pushed. Both explored non-standard grammar and syntax, so it’s no coincidence that they were master “dialect writers.” That … Continue reading
Regionally “Corrupted” Names
Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks details the real life of a poor woman from rural Virginia whose cancer cells became an important tool for medical innovation. The titular woman hailed from a tiny, impoverished Southern town, which prompts … Continue reading
Regional African-American Accents
Annie Minoff has written a fascinating, in-depth piece on African American English over at WBEZ in Chicago. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but the main thrust of the article is that within African-American English one can find numerous regional … Continue reading
Where Does “The South” Begin?
Yesterday I crossed the border from Pennsylvania to Maryland, and was greeted by a road sign for “The Mason-Dixon Line,” the historical demarcation between the American North and South. It’s a misleading distinction from a linguistic perspective, because one does … Continue reading
“You is Smart:” Dialect Gripes About “The Help”
The other day, a Twitter pal mentioned a certain discomfort while reading Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. Apropos of this blog, it seems there are a number of complaints about the author’s (arguably) shaky command of African American Vernacular English, a … Continue reading
‘Hey!’ and its Variants
The word ‘hey’ has been around for a good thousand years or so (probably more). A remarkably versatile little word, it can be used in American English in any number of contexts. For example, to express annoyance: “Hey! Stop doing … Continue reading
Nasal Vowels
In French, the /n/ at the end of words like ‘garcon,’ ‘mon,’ and ‘Americain’ is typically unpronounced. Instead, the vowel before ‘n’ is nasalized, while dropping ‘n’ itself. How does one ‘nasalize’ a vowel, exactly? It’s fairly simple. The speaker … Continue reading
The Mississippi Accent in 1893
I recently stumbled upon a remarkable 1893 tome on Google Books entitled Some peculiarities of speech in Mississippi by the delightfully-named Hubert Anthony Shands. A glossary of words native to the dialect(s) of that state, the book opens with a detailed … Continue reading
Do Southerners Speak Slowly?
One of the most commonly held assumptions about American accents is one with arguably negative connotations. That would be the pernicious rumor that Southern people speak ‘slower’ than Northerners. I put this assumption in quotation marks, of course, because it … Continue reading
Posted in American English Tagged American Southern Accents, phonetics, stigmatized accents 15 Comments