What's your opinion on the Southern accent?

[Prussian to the Iron]

So recently, I began to use a southern (american south, naturally) accent with a couple friends. Then for some reason it began leaking into my normal speech, and at this point I now use it as much if not more than my usual non-accent. I even got some compliments on it (very uncommon in Northern Virginia; met only a couple people with it, and they were real old), and it is a good conversation starter with people I don't know.

But what I want to know is your guys' opinion on it. Quality is not an issue, as growing up for 9 years in North Carolina has provided me with ample experience with it.

So what do the Orgahs think of the southern accent? Cute? Annoying? Funny? What?

[Vuk]

Honestly, I think most Southern accents sound really vulgar (just like some British and Australian accents on women) on men and women. It is not because I associate it with something bad, but just that they sounds seems very guttural and vulgar. I definitely do not hold it against someone if they have one, but it annoys me. (as does a New England accent...but for different reasons :P)

[drone]

I don't know what y'all are talking bout, we don't have an accent. Everyone else just talks funny.

[Centurion1]

i have one. obviously i like it. most people who grow up around the military or are in the military pick one up.

[Subotan]

Poncey Southerners. Say "Ite Love" to them and you get the right odd "Good thanks, yourself?" back at ya. I reckon it's all that sunshine what makes them all so feckless.

I say that as someone who is accosted by Southerners as a Northener, and vice versa because of my untraceable accent, so I'm probably not the best person to go to on advice for that.

In reference to the OP, the American Southern Accent is rather like the Scouse accent, in that it amplifies certain qualities of the individual, notably class. For example, the Scouse accent is lovely when a Scouser is being nice to you, but when they are being nasty it is absolutely terrifying. Likewise with the American Southern accent, only with class.

[thefluffyone93]

Meh.
The Brooklyn accent is the best.

But I don't find anything wrong with the southern accent at all.
Of course, most of my experience with it has been with Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy, so thats not saying much.

[Motep]

I've a half accent, myself. Family has it, people in the region dont, generally. It is homey.

[Ibrahim]

having lived with this accent all around me (miraculously leaving my accent largely intact) for 4 years, I can say that what I told Richard over at project SYW still holds true (it's in context of being in Colorado):

....they don't speak in this annoying Texan twang.

Texan, as some might tell you, is in fact a southern accent. as to why I find it annoying? well, it's almost unintelligible to me-the drawl being the main reason. it's hard to decipher what a person is saying when they sound like this: "owl dem gahs oh-vuh i-at the howlding pin awr fyeedin' duh hawgz". though to be fair, it's not something that is reprehensible or shameful: it's just the way the accent is. it's what happens when your accent's origin lay in another accent that drawled a bit (Cornish apparently).

[Tuuvi]

I'm not a big fan of the southern accent but I like to do one at home for fun.

Some FLDS polygamists have an accent similar to a southern one and it's one of the most awful accents I've ever heard in my life, especially when it's a young adult male who's speaking.

[Monk]

Accents in general don't do anything for me. Though I always have a good laugh when people claim I have one. Yeah right.

[A Nerd]

Pahk the cah at hahvahd yahd. Can't top that. I did go to Virginia once, funny how the southern accent seemed to pop up once you went south of the Maryland border.

[Centurion1]

my town in maryland is pretty southern. we get the first day off deer season off and we are renonwned for our old tobacco plantations. Its the tip of the old southern black belt.

[A Nerd]

Lovely country down there. I enjoyed the scenery much the further south we went. W. Virginia was so wooded, I loved it!

[Monk]

Lovely country down there. I enjoyed the scenery much the further south we went. W. Virginia was so wooded, I loved it!

W. Virginia is indeed very nice, those mountains are creepy as heck if you drive through them at night though.

[A Nerd]

I can understand that! Big Foot or something might lurk out there!

[Monk]

I can understand that! Big Foot or something might lurk out there!

Don't even joke around about that. Sure, you're laughing, having a good time, then suddenly you hear a knock at the window. And there he is. Starring at you. And he shakes his head disappointingly.. and then walks away.

There is no greater shame than to know Big Foot disapproves of your life-style.

[Centurion1]

i feel like some of the residents themselves are more frightening. im pretty sure you can find entire clans of bigfeet ?(plural) at the local walmart supercenter

[A Nerd]

We used to joke around with a friend of mine who had claimed that he saw bigfoot crossing the street near where he lived. He was adamant that he saw bigfoot, but none of us beleived him. Another time, some friends of mine and myself were hiking in the white mountains in New Hampshire and one of my friends stepped in poop that was larger than his foot print in said poop. It was huge. After that, we all said that that was proof of big foot living there. A shame none of us took a picture of it.

[Louis VI the Fat]

In reference to the OP, the American Southern Accent is rather like the Scouse accent, in that it amplifies certain qualities of the individual, notably class. For example, the Scouse accent is lovely when a Scouser is being nice to you, but when they are being nasty it is absolutely terrifying. Likewise with the American Southern accent, only with class.

Spot on!

Southern is quite awful when some hick speaks it. But when spoken by an educated Charleston Belle....yummie! Just the sweetest accent ever. I could listen to it all day long.



I am quickly at a complete loss when somebody speaks in a variant of English from the British Isles. I don't understand you if you speak Geordie, or Scouse, or Cockney. American variants by contrast are always easy to understand. Never a problem.

[Subotan]

Southern is quite awful when some hick speaks it. But when spoken by an educated Charleston Belle....yummie! Just the sweetest accent ever. I could listen to it all day long

Totally agree! It's much more enjoyable than someone with equivalent sophistication with a Yankee/Cali/Midwest etc. accent

I am quickly at a complete loss when somebody speaks in a variant of English from the British Isles. I don't understand you if you speak Geordie, or Scouse, or Cockney. American variants by contrast are always easy to understand. Never a problem.

I'm reminded that Trainspotting needed subtitles when it was released in the United States. That said, you're not alone, as one of my friend's mum has a lot of trouble understanding another friend's dad, who is Glaswegian. I can understand him fine, but I guess that's the result of having an utterly noxious cocktail of accents.

[Strike For The South]

Meh

[Tellos Athenaios]

@Subotan: on the Internet, Scouse is not just another accent. It's got its own language code: "en-scouse".

[Hooahguy]

I have a very, very slight southern accent, even though I was born in Manhattan.

Probably has something to do with living in the south for the past 16+ years.

[drone]

I'm reminded that Trainspotting needed subtitles when it was released in the United States.

Well, they dubbed Mad Max when it was released over here, so I think it says more about us than about the accents.

The "southern" accent covers a lot of ground though. A Texas twang is a lot different than what you get in North Carolina/Virginia. And God only knows what the people in Louisiana are saying.

[Subotan]

@Subotan: on the Internet, Scouse is not just another accent. It's got its own language code: "en-scouse".

That's brilliant! Looking at Wikipedia, it seems that that was done whilst the internet was still largely whimsical, as I don't think it could get permission to do that today.

Well, they dubbed Mad Max when it was released over here, so I think it says more about us than about the accents.

I still need to see that film, as well as Trainspotting.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I am from Southern California, we have perfected the ability to not have any uniqueness to how we pronounce English.

[Kekvit Irae]

There really aren't such things as 'accents', rather they are varying forms of dialects (variations of a common language). Words are comprised of phones, phonemes, and morphemes. Phones are the most basic sounds you make (pronouncing 'l' in 'love'). Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that carry meaning, differing from phones in that they carry the same equivalent in sounds (cat and kite). Morphemes are phones and phonemes stringed together to form coherent phrases ('fire', 'fight', and 'er' in 'firefighter'). Note that I left out other variations of speech, such as allophones.
Simply because someone strings together morphemes differently (uses "y'all" instead of "you all") doesn't mean they are dumb, just culturally different.

Everyone, to some degree, is a little ethnocentric when it comes to dialects other than their own. Case in point: Pop in your average law movie, and your attention will immediately be drawn to the hotshot lawyer with the thick Texan dialect. It may or may not be that we feel that he isn't suited to the job simply because he's speaking a different dialect than Standard Spoken English, it's just that we are culturally hardwired to draw our attention to people who vary greatly.

Going back to what I said before, just because someone has a perceivable drawl doesn't mean that they are less intelligent than you, it just means that their cultural dialect differs from yours. This also gets to be a problem in some situations, like job interviews, when a person is expected to speak Standard Spoken English rather than their own dialect. In these cases, unfortunately, that a lot of people have to be bi-lingual; speaking their own dialect at home or with friends, and SSE in a work situation.

As you might guess, I'm taking a Linguistic Anthropology course this semester.

[Centurion1]

I am from Southern California, we have perfected the ability to not have any uniqueness to how we pronounce English.

haha false.

[a completely inoffensive name]

haha false.

Give me examples.

[Hax]

Loved it, but that's what you get for listening to Levon Helm's voice all the time. Or Cajuns. Cajuuuunz