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Traditional Texas speech is predominantly Upper South in origin, with some Midwestern and Lower South influences, depending on where in Texas you are. Along the Gulf Coast, Alabamians, Mississippians, and Georgians were important in the area's settlement. The Panhandle, the Red River Valley, and North Texas had large numbers of settlers from Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, Overall, Tennessee was the largest contributor of people to the Texas population and contributed more than any other state to the defenders of the Alamo. I have met people in southern West Virginia whose pronunciations sound almost Texan. The speech of the Upper South, especially Appalachia, was strongly influenced by the Scotch-Irish, with some English and German input. Virginia's Shenandoah Valley was the first area where Upper South speech developed, as Scotch-Irish and Pennsylania Dutch mixed with English settlers from Tidewater Virginia.

Overall, Texan and Southern English are more conservative and truer to the English of the King James Bible and Shakespeare than are the urban dialects of the East Coast cities, which are strongly affected by Italian, Yiddish, and Slavic speech patterns.

One has to take into consideration the Melongeon influence on the population. Many who came "over the Avery" (the trail through NC and East Tenn that is now US 70 and I-40) included them. They settled first in northern Alabama, Mississippi and East and Middle-Tenn. After the Civil War, a number migrated to Texas.

I always thought when I heard someone from the Panhandle or the Red River talk about having a "Cherokee grandma" it was just as likely they had a Melongeon ancestor.

I had a girlfriend from the Panhandle who looks Scots-Irish but with olive skin. People thought she was Jewish. I have olive skin and when I was in India, the locals though I was an Anglo-Indian from Delhi.

Not that these observations have much to do with speech patterns, but it explains a little about who many Texans are.

I was born in a small mountain town on the eastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia border. Obviously, I developed a "mountain twang". Through the years, I've lived in Texas and south Alabama. Much that I read in this article is what I've heard in all of these places.

When I lived in Ft Worth, the message I recorded on my answering machine was a source of much merriment for many of my friends and relatives back "east". Note: a "ranchette" is five acres or less. My message replete with twang went thus: "Howdy partner, you've reached the ______ ranchette. I'm out on the back 4 rite now, but your call is mighty important to me, so at the sound of the cattle call, leave me a message an I'll git rite back to you. Pronto. Audios. I had many messages that contained nothing but the sound of the caller's breathing while they listened to my message, followed by outbursts of laughter.

Ah luv this langwidge.