GWB didn't speak like a Texas or did he?
I know where I came into close proximity of which you speak. The military and moving around the country. Had a couple friends from Texas ;-)
A lot of Texans now have brought their own accents in, especially to the cities, but in the country the traditional one is still going strong.
I was teased about my accent when I worked in downtown Houston!! Rofl!!
It’s really fun, because almost everywhere I go people recognize that I’m from Texas. They don’t even ask - just come up and say something like, “You’re from Texas, aren’t you?” :-)
It’s nice.
It’s true that regional accents have diminished somewhat, or have at least reduced themselves to the point where they are pretty much comprehensible by all speakers of that language in that country. I remember when the Brits had to subtitle programs from Yorkshire because nobody outside of that region could understand them!
I’m from the north but I live in the South now and I don’t have any trouble understanding anybody except the occasional elderly rural white speaker or some of the rural black dialect speakers (who are completely unintelligible to anybody outside of their group).
While the effect of TV has been not exactly standardization, at least it has meant the halting of the “drifting away” of a regional speech to a dialect and then to a whole new language.
There’s an intelligibility standard for the major languages and that’s actually a good thing. Languages, real or imagined or invented, become part of nationalist fantasies and they never have a positive effect on human life.
You may be confusing the "drawl" with the "twang." I don't have the former, but I most assuredly have the latter.
You don't really hit the drawl till you're halfway down Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia. The northern halves of those states have the same twang as their neighbors to the north.
I believe Texans also speak with the twang rather than the drawl. Has to do with the origin of most Texas settlers.