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For reasons I don't fully understand, the drawl is difficult to pick up and does not spread. The twang is the opposite; if you hear people talk this way you pick it up very easily. Few people these days talk with a strong drawl, even in areas where it originated. I have a feeling that I'm gonna miss it one day.
BTW- Country Music Singers can vary as well. Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash had drawls vs. Hank Williams Sr for example.
Of course they can. My point was really to use the "stereotypical" country music sound as an example that might serve as a broad example of that "twang."
I simply love to hear the 'texas drawl' on a woman...sexiest thing I ever heard! I even like it a Southern Drawl on a woman from the South, but, not as much as that texas drawl...
For reasons I don't fully understand, the drawl is difficult to pick up and does not spread. The twang is the opposite; if you hear people talk this way you pick it up very easily. Few people these days talk with a strong drawl, even in areas where it originated. I have a feeling that I'm gonna miss it one day.
So twang is associated with poorer Southerns while drawl is more upper class? Thats what it seems like. My relatives in Oklahoma have the twang. A lot of wealthy older people here in Memphis have the drawl.
I always have to correct non-Southerners when they make assumptions about the Southern accent. Some will say that a Southern accent is hot on a woman, but I have to remind them that there is a classy Southern accent and then there's the one you hear on Jerry Springer all the time. I guess I was comparing the twang & the drawl and I didn't realize it.
The twang is also called "highland southern" which tends to be in the upper and middle south through Texas. The drawl or "coastal southern" encompasses the coastal plains into the piedmonts from Virginia thru East Texas.
There are variations of both and there is no well defined line between the two types as they both tend to "finger" in and out of some southern areas.
I live in an area where coastal southern is spoken with rhotic speech and any non rhotic is slight. Rhotic is whether you pronounce your "r's" or not. Rhotic is "there" ; non rhotic is "they uh"
Last edited by hdwell; 04-11-2009 at 10:26 AM..
Reason: spelling
A twang is mostly associated with the western half of the south, with states like Texas, and Oklahoma. The drawl is basically the rest of the south.
I would say the "twang" is also common in the "Upper" or "Mountain" South as well, Polo. In fact, it is the "originator" of why such is common in West Texas, since that area is where a great number of original settlers came from. Here is a little excerpt and link:
The most basic explanation of aTexas accent is that it’s a Southern accent with a twist,” said Professor Bailey, who has determined that the twang is not only spreading but also changing....The broadly defined “Texas accent” began to form, Bailey explained, when two populations merged here in the mid-nineteenth century. Settlers who migrated from Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi brought with them what would later become the Lower South Dialect (its drawl left an imprint on East Texas), while settlers from Tennessee and Kentucky brought with them the South Midland Dialect (its twang had a greater influence in West Texas).[/
I would say the "twang" is also common in the "Upper" or "Mountain" South as well, Polo. In fact, it is the "originator" of why such is common in West Texas, since that area is where a great number of original settlers came from. Here is a little excerpt and link:
The most basic explanation of aTexas accent is that it’s a Southern accent with a twist,” said Professor Bailey, who has determined that the twang is not only spreading but also changing....The broadly defined “Texas accent” began to form, Bailey explained, when two populations merged here in the mid-nineteenth century. Settlers who migrated from Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi brought with them what would later become the Lower South Dialect (its drawl left an imprint on East Texas), while settlers from Tennessee and Kentucky brought with them the South Midland Dialect (its twang had a greater influence in West Texas).[/
Intresting. But where did the twist in the texas twang come from? I know the drawl came from the eastern half of the south.
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