Oklahoma "accents"? (home, business, friend)

[Guthrie Kid]

Well I don't know about Ron Howard. He moved away when he was a baby if I'm not mistaken?

What a lot of it boils down to is: Metropolitan or Rural, I'll tell "Yall" what. When you get out in the woods very far away from the OKC metro even, you will not know "if et" your in Mississippi, Tennesee or Oklahoma...LOL!

[Nameless]

Defining Oklahoma's accents is like defining our, climate, geography, etc, etc. It's all original. It's just Oklahoma, simply put.

[montanamom]

That's interesting - Thanks!

[mkfarnam]

Ron Howard is in this clip. (Actually it's a full hour episode)
Gunsmoke : Full Episodes : tvland.com

[StillwaterTownie]

Originally Posted by Synopsis

Reba's a good singer and all but that accent almost sounds made up or she at least tries to talk that way. I always hated hearing her talk, it was like the wrath of the stereotypes..

Oh, well, Reba has always wanted to be like Dolly Parton, including sounding like her.

[jessaka]

I have heard no one in OK that talks like Reba. Or Dolly. I am grateful for that.

[Synopsis]

Originally Posted by jessaka

I have heard no one in OK that talks like Reba. Or Dolly. I am grateful for that.

Yes, for this I am thankful.

[BelgianPea]

It's sort of individual it seems, my husband is from Enid and i don't think he has a very strong accent at all but his parents have it alot more compared to him. But his uncles... now to me have a very strong southern accent. Alot stronger than his parents even.

Maybe i just hear it different since i'm foreign and all but in his family it can go either way

[HeatherDawn]

I think Oklahoma accents are different depending on where in OK you grew up. For instance, Garvin county and the surrounding areas sound very Southern. They draw out the "I"s so that they sound like "ahh". This is odd because it's only about 30 mins South of Norman. Seminole/Okfuskee county has a very different accent, too. People from the Osage (up North) sound different. Then you get far enough West and they sound like Texas panhandle people do. Get far enough South and they sound similar to North Texans. Indians from different parts of the state sound different, too. I think it's very interesting.

[BigOkie]

I think what everyone has described here is pretty accurate. Here's what I see.

I lived in Houston for three years in the nineties. Oklahomans I believe have a propensity to pick up accents from where they live. I had an unmistakable Texas Gulf Coast drawl for about two years after I moved back, then got my old 'Okie' accent back, which, most out-of-staters tell me, isn't much of an accent. I went to San Francisco one year to visit a friend, and his friends could not tell where I was from. The said I sounded like I was from California, but the Central Valley. I told all of them I was from Eastern California until my friend outed me. I think the reason for that is that so many Oklahomans migrated to California during the Dust Bowl days that there are still a few of the descendants left with the accent, and most Californians are used to it.

Northeast Oklahoma, from my observation, has more of a Midwest US accent than a Southern drawl. A bit in between a St Louis accent and the Southern OK accent, which sounds more like a Dallas/North Texas lite accent. Out west near the panhandle, not much of accent unless you're around Gage or Hobart; then it sounds more like North Texas again (obviously from being so close to the Texas Panhandle).

The drawl tends to fade off the further north of the Red River that you get.