How far west into Texas does the southern accent extend?

[TexasReb]

Originally Posted by blueskies49

There's no such thing as an "ultimate" southern accent. People may think that because of Hollywood and "Gone With The Wind" but as has been said throughout this thread, there are variations of the southern accent throughout the South and Texas.

Maybe some of y'all don't have an ear for accents. West Texans pronounce words like "my" and "night" and "I" sounding as "ah" like other southerners and insert typically southern words and slang into their speech like "y'all" "fixin to" and so on. It certainly isn't northern or midwestern or western or pacific northwest or whatever.

LOL I thought this thread and topic had finally died a natural death until my good friend and Texas sis BlueSkies mentioned it to me the other day!

Anyway, what she says above hits the nail on the head. There is really no such thing as a single uniform "Southern accent." Yes, true, there is an accent (much by way of Hollywood influence) which many people accept by default as a "Southern accent" by virtue of the fact it is the one often heard/spoken in areas of the country which are generally considered to be the "most Southern." (i.e. Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia..).

In reality though, that particular dialect is only one of many which make up the broad classification of what is properly known as Southern American English (SAE). And the typical "Texas" accent (or the one most associated with Texas) is in this genre.

Southern American English - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So, really, the original question can be taken two ways. If one accepts that a "Southern accent" is that classic "Gone With the Wind" variety, then the answer of how far it extends into Texas would be, as some have said, "not very far" save deeper parts of East Texas. The flip side though is that such a dialect doesn't go very far north, either. For instance, people in North Alabama have a "mountain South" twang which is noteably different from that "plantation" variety spoken in the southern part.

If however, the question of how far does a Southern accent extend into Texas is taken as to how far Southern American English is spoken? Then the answer is that it covers most of the state.

On a related tangent, Miss BlueSkies brings up something that I confess I had not really thought of before, but is very relevant to the topic. That is, the role of "idiom and slang" in regional dialects! As she says, double-modals like "might could", or terms like "fixin' to" or the common use of "yall" as the second person plural pronoun or "coke" as the generally accepted generic word for a soft drink, also mark Texas speech as "Southern."