[wardaddy]

The dialect and speech patterns collectively called Southern accents are representative of older English speech (deep south coastal excepted where French and Arcadian French carry weight...the Bourbon French that I share from the Carolinas is different). Some high English. Some low Low. The Outer banks, parts of Appalachia(prone to even Elizabethan dialect) and tidewater VA are the easiest to spot.

First time I stepped foot in a Scottish inn and heard the local folk music I saw immediately an uncanny resemblance to C&W.

Suprisingly, very few "sayings" overall are young enough to have originated on this side of the pond.

[nopardons]

Right you are ! And, it isn't just in the South.

What was considered to be a N. Y. accent, a la the Bowry Boys and in some gangster movies of the '30s, is, in reality, Irishism. That " toity toid street " stuff is directly from the Irish immigrants in N.Y.C.! But there have been and are so many different N.Y. accents, that that is NOT all that repsesentative at all. Accents, in N.Y.C. ( and I am referring to all FIVE boroughs ! ) vary from street to street sometimes and from generation to generation. My grandmother's was different from my mother's and my accent ( everyone has one ! ) is such a hodgepodge, because I went to boarding school in Pa., undergrad in N.H., and picked up some things from my Bermudian pals, I hung out with, when we stayed at our home there. LOL