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Exploring the Linguistic Roots of the Southern Drawl
Word Smarts ^ | 01/10/2025 | Jennifer A. Freeman

Posted on 01/12/2025 7:35:46 PM PST by SeekAndFind

A person from Boston speaks differently than a person from New York City, to say nothing of the difference between Midwestern and Southern accents. While all of these are American, the roots of the Southern drawl have a unique colonial history.

While many countries have geographical differences in accents (for example, a posh London accent versus the rough-and-tumble Cockney accent), America’s various accents are particularly pronounced. A person from Boston speaks differently than a person from New York City, despite their relative geographic closeness, to say nothing of the difference between Midwestern and Southern accents. While all of these are American, the roots of the Southern drawl have a unique colonial history. Let’s examine what makes this distinctive accent so quintessentially American.

Call it a drawl or a twang, but one of the primary hallmarks of Southern American English (SAE) is a melodic, relaxing quality. A marketing firm conducted a survey of global English accents, and the Southern accent was voted the most pleasant. (New York and Boston accents were voted the least pleasant — sorry, New Englanders.) 

Some may attribute this laid-back melody to the slower, more relaxed pace of life the South is supposed to have compared to northern regions, but there’s more at play. The specific qualities of the Southern accent (and all accents) developed through the intersection of cultural exchange, geography, and evolving linguistics.

Importantly, there is more than one type of accent within SAE — Texans sound different than Virginians, who sound different than Louisianans. But they all share an origin story in the mingling of British colonists and enslaved Africans. 

The final “r” sound in words such as “four” and “here” is very important to linguists. If speakers drop the final “r,” that’s called “non-rhotic” as opposed to “rhotic,” wherein the “r” is pronounced. In the mid-1700s in the plantation system, using non-rhotic speech to match upper-class British accents was considered “prestigious” speech (“prestigious” being a way linguists classify certain accents as culturally preferred over others). 

As accents have changed over time, it’s more common now for white Southerners to pronounce the final “r” and use rhotic speech and for Black Americans everywhere to use non-rhotic speech. In Southern states outside of the former plantation system, it’s more common to use rhotic patterns. 

The so-called “Southern drawl” can also be explained in linguistic terms. The stretched-out sounds come from vowels — a diphthong is when a vowel shifts from one sound to another. For example, in the word “boy,” the “o” sound shifts into an “i.” The Southern accent prominently features monopthongization, which is when a diphthong, or two-part vowel sound, is flattened into a single vowel sound. 

In a recorded example from a University of Georgia linguist, you can hear how the word “five” changes from a standard diphthong (with an “i” transitioning to an “ee,” as in “me”) to a monophthong in SAE. “Five” is flattened into an elongated “ah” vowel sound. 

Finally, the Southern accent is marked by unique lexical choices and grammatical variations — a Southerner might say “I reckon” or “I might could” instead of “I might be able to.” (For further examples of this, we recommend Instagram personality Landon Bryant, who makes learning Southern slang and lexicon as easy as drinking a glass of sweet tea.)

The Tidewater accent, which sounds particularly gentle and rhythmic, is rooted in early British settlers, and can be found in pockets of Virginia and North Carolina. It has non-rhoticity and a glide in long “i” sounds (“ride” sounds like “royd”). 

The Piedmont accent is found in more urban areas than coastal regions. For example, the North Carolina cities of Charlotte, Raleigh, and Winston-Salem are known for Piedmont accents. It’s somewhat of a stereotypical Southern accent, differentiated by a subtle drawl, rhotic pronunciation of the letter “r,” and elongated vowel pronunciation (“cat” sounds more like “caat”).  

The Appalachian accent is characterized by a Scotch Irish influence. It preserves certain aspects of Elizabethan English through distinctive pronunciations — for example, “like” sounds like “lack.” A musical quality comes from initial syllable stress, which is when the emphasis is shifted to the first syllable of a word.

The areas around the Gulf of Mexico (in particular, Louisiana) have French and Spanish influences, but we’re not talking about the distinct dialects of Louisiana French or Gullah. The SAE accent found in this region is distinctive for a specific vowel shift that linguists call the “PEN/PIN merger.” With this accent, both “pen” and “pin” are pronounced the same, with an “ih” vowel. Another example of this is how the word “feel” might be pronounced like “fill.”

The Texas accent, meanwhile, combines elements of Southern and Western English. A unique characteristic of the Texan accent is the “caught-cot merger,” which displays elements of nasality and sharpness. As with “pen” and “pin,” this linguistic merger makes “caught” and “cot” sound alike (along with other words with these vowel sounds). 

This is just a brief overview of what makes SAE (and its many variations of Southern accents) so special, but any of the linguistic topics mentioned here have layers of nuance and study behind them. We reckon that’ll do it for now.


TOPICS: History; Society
KEYWORDS: accents; blessyourheart; drawl; english; epigraphyandlanguage; godsgravesglyphs; language; linguistics; southerndrawl; twang; wboopi
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To: FamiliarFace

The last company I worked for had a receptionist that had the absolute most pleasant voice I’ve ever heard - very Virginian. I have always been partial to that region’s accent.


41 posted on 01/13/2025 3:31:32 AM PST by Spacetrucker
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To: x

I dunno if it was so much “wanting to sound different”. The Tidewater accent was very much an upper class kind of thing. You didn’t hear it much from yeoman farmers or the like. As for the Coastal Carolina accent, there were always so few speakers with this accent which arose due to their relative isolation. In more recent times more contact has watered it down considerably and it will soon be blended away.

I can hear the difference between Texas, Louisiana, Appalachia and the “standard” Southern accent. Maybe you can hear an especially strong “Tennessee twang” (listen to Steve Spurrier some time) with a few people but generally the standard Southern accent prevails from Central Florida up through Mizzourah.


42 posted on 01/13/2025 3:40:39 AM PST by FLT-bird
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To: packagingguy
"When I moved to Tidewater Virginia years ago there was a guy who needed a translator. He spoke English but used an Elizabethan grammar and accent."

This is most obvious when speaking to a waterman.

43 posted on 01/13/2025 4:54:33 AM PST by BubbaBasher ("Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals" - Sam Adams)
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To: Salamander
The Appalachian accent is characterized by a Scotch Irish influence

Appalachian is relative.

It turns out that those "mountain people" are scattered for a thousand or so miles from the hills of north Mississippi, north Alabama, and up the rest of the Appalachian chain.

Hillbilly English flows the same along the way from little towns like Fulton, MS, Hamilton, AL, Chattanooga, TN, Bristol, TN/VA, and all along the chain.

So too, do many of the customs and folkays. Just ask JD Vance.

44 posted on 01/13/2025 5:00:13 AM PST by icclearly
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To: struggle

Yeah, who steals soap?


45 posted on 01/13/2025 6:43:27 AM PST by redangus ( )
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

😊


46 posted on 01/13/2025 7:00:06 AM PST by Bigg Red (Trump will be sworn in under a shower of confetti made from the tattered remains of the Rat Party.)
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To: SeekAndFind

When we visited TN before we moved here, we went to a church where the minister preached about the “SEE-in-ah in the CAY-um-puh”.


47 posted on 01/13/2025 7:10:45 AM PST by MayflowerMadam (It's hard not to celebrate the fall of bad people. - Bongino)
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To: SeekAndFind

I used to have an upstate NY accent. I went to a Harley dealer in South Carolina and told the two fat guys with beards behind the parts counter that I needed an inner tube for the reaR tire of my hog (pronounced hahg up north). The heavier one pointed at me and said “y’all yankee!”

I quickly learned anchor man accent. While I am proficient at the hard Rs or the Maine/New Hampshire distortions I grew up with, I only use them for emphasis now. The current TV generation is moving toward either anchor man speech or inner city hip hop talk and mannerisms.


48 posted on 01/13/2025 7:16:41 AM PST by Poser (Cogito ergo Spam - I think, therefore I ham)
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To: Salamander

Highland Southern Dialect has a nice ring to it. :^)


49 posted on 01/13/2025 7:30:18 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: SeekAndFind

When I was a child coming up in Nashville in the 50s there were a pair of old spinster ladies from back in the hills who still wore bonnets and used thee, ye and thou. My grandmother did also when she got mad.


50 posted on 01/13/2025 8:22:39 AM PST by dljordan (What would Michael Collins do?)
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To: Bigg Red

Now do the Tahdwudder (Tidewater) accent.


51 posted on 01/13/2025 8:55:14 AM PST by Albion Wilde (“Did you ever meet a woke person that’s happy? There’s no such thing.” —Donald J. Trump)
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To: Albion Wilde

😊


52 posted on 01/13/2025 9:26:32 AM PST by Bigg Red (Trump will be sworn in under a shower of confetti made from the tattered remains of the Rat Party.)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

LOL thats a good question


53 posted on 01/13/2025 10:58:44 AM PST by wafflehouse ("there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon" -Alice's Restaurant Massacree)
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To: lurk; SeekAndFind; FamiliarFace

Yes, especially Iowa. Iowa men were sought out in WWII to serve as radio officers since everyone in the country could understand them.


54 posted on 01/13/2025 11:04:11 AM PST by dodger
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To: steve86
in casual use nowadays ‘than’ has the votes

There may be some regional variation, too.

55 posted on 01/13/2025 12:23:21 PM PST by SamuraiScot
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To: SeekAndFind

We live in Phoenix and probably 20 years ago, when he was about 8 or 10, our son had to do speech therapy in school to try to correct his speech because he said a few words just like my grandfather did who was born and raised in Arkansas... We told them that when they wanted to put him into it and two years later, nothing had changed and they ended his speech therapy and told us it must be just something he inherited... like we tried to tell them in the beginning.


56 posted on 01/13/2025 3:52:17 PM PST by AzNASCARfan
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To: Paal Gulli
Interesting.

"The closest accent to that a British gentleman would have used in the late 18th Century is what is spoken today by the elder members of any First Family of Virginia."

Reminds me of what Val Kilmer said about his portrayal of Doc Holliday in the movie 'Tombstone.' He said Holliday's dialect is believed to have been that of a Georgia aristocrat. Although no one uses that dialect today, some of Kilmer's older relatives remembered older people speaking that way.

57 posted on 01/13/2025 5:19:44 PM PST by Tired of Taxes
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To: Locomotive Breath

On deployment we worked with QRF soldiers from Glasgow. I could barely understand them. One guy literally sounded like “Oy oh guh [f-bomb] uh toy uh [f-bomb] ut oy eya uh..” all I could understand were the numerous f-bombs. Great soldiers, but just couldn’t understand them.


58 posted on 01/13/2025 8:16:59 PM PST by ViLaLuz (2 Chronicles 7:14)
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To: ViLaLuz

Same with the Irish, at least the ones I met back in the ‘80s. I dated one, but I could barely understand a word he said, except for the numerous f-bombs.


59 posted on 01/13/2025 9:44:29 PM PST by Tired of Taxes
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To: Tired of Taxes

LOL...a common theme.


60 posted on 01/13/2025 11:43:02 PM PST by ViLaLuz (2 Chronicles 7:14)
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