For those who speak southern, there are several good and entertaining books on “southernisms”, and well worth a read. But one in particular, titled ‘Whistlin’ Dixie’, went so far as to describe regionalisms. That is, expressions unique to just part of the South, not the whole thing.
Being raised in a family of one of these regions, though in the southwest, I was amazed that the expressions could be broken down into three parts: totally familiar, those I had heard of but rarely used, and those that were completely alien.
Fascinating.
A Georgian friend of mind provided me with a useful pronunciation guide in an ice cream parlor, when ordering a two scoop cone:
“Pee-can ripple and Budderpecahn.” He explained the accent is always on the first syllable. Then, if you speak with your teeth closed, you sound southern.
Oh, as a trivia side note. Southern Arizona territory was, for six months, a part of the Confederacy, declared as such by Jefferson Davis. This is great fun to point out to southerners, who reject the notion that AZ “is part of the South and the Confederacy”.
They usually end up by deciding that only the “southeast” is part of the “real South”, and Texas is, well, Texas.
When traveling in south Georgia on business, I made the mistake of calling the nuts peeecan. I was corrected by a sweet elderly southern woman (I knew I was in for it when she started with "Why bless your heart...").
"Honey. A peee can is what you put by your bed at night. A peecon is what you eat"