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Tag Archives: American Southern Accents
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 9 Comments
American Dialects: A Red State/Blue State Divide?
In a brief piece in Time this week, famed linguist William Labov suggested that American dialects are getting more distinct rather than less. The article is extremely short, but I was nevertheless intrigued by Labov’s comment on the connection between accents and … Continue reading
That’s the Idear: Intrusive ‘R’
Generations of Americans have puzzled over the British tendency to add ‘r’s where (it seems to us) ‘r’s don’t belong. This can be found in such phrases as “an idear of it,” “pastar and sauce,” and ”sawr and conquered.” Termed r insertion (or intrusive r), … Continue reading
On the Hunt for the New Orleans Yat
Some English dialects are so uncommon that they adopt the mythology of the Loch Ness Monster. One such dialect, unique the city of New Orleans, is locally referred to as Yat. It is renowned not because of how strange it … Continue reading