Our accents.

[ConceivedinKY51]

Originally Posted by vasinger

Have you ever noticed that we're losing it?

It doesn't matter whether its Tidewater, or Shenandoah Valley. Virginians don't sound the same today.

Listen to older people from Richmond or Norfolk, or other parts of the state. They sound terribly different than most young people in Virginia do.

I know some older people from Northern Virginia who actually sound like Virginians ! Thats the way people in Northern Virginia used to sound anyway.

I wonder if in the coming years with all the immigration we're having, that our distinctive Virginia accents will be Gone With The Wind.

That's sad if the accents are going away...

[SCBeaches]

Originally Posted by ConceivedinKY51

That's sad if the accents are going away...

They're not gone yet, but do seem to be disappearing. I agree....I love to hear various accents and dialects from different parts of the country! It's one of the things that makes each place unique.

[doctorjef]

It's my impression that certain aspects of a generic Southern accent have spread geographically and proliferated in the USA over the course of my life (I'm 54). This doesn't mean that people living in the upper Midwest now sound as though they're from deep Mississippi. However, there are certain generally Southern speech patterns and vowel pronunciations that I do think have spread. This seems to be in combination with some degree of homogenization of the national American accent, though I would say that many regional accents are still quite identifiable. I also think that the observation about regional accents being largely gone among teens and twenty somethings may be more apparent than real. I base this on my experience living in the UK and hearing 14 year old upper middle class girls talking with California Valley Girl intonations. It was amazing to hear this British version of Valley Girl-speak, but I think it was a very superficial, age-specific fashion that these girls were probably going to gradually outgrow. It's a fashion more than an authentic accent. In the same way, many young English urban people speak with what's called an Essex or Estuary English accent -- it entails such things as "swallowing" and nonpronuciation of the t sound within words. The thing is, almost all of these young people actually know how to speak correctly and can drop their Estuary English if need be, reverting instead to whatever might be the authentic regional accent of their parents and upbringing. I suspect that it's much the same in America and that when the language stylizations of youth gradually get dropped, the speaker reverts to more authentic regional speech patterns. Still, the point is well taken that regional differences are diminishing, albeit to a limited extent.

[janeannwho]

Originally Posted by doctorjef

It's my impression that certain aspects of a generic Southern accent have spread geographically and proliferated in the USA over the course of my life (I'm 54). This doesn't mean that people living in the upper Midwest now sound as though they're from deep Mississippi. However, there are certain generally Southern speech patterns and vowel pronunciations that I do think have spread. This seems to be in combination with some degree of homogenization of the national American accent, though I would say that many regional accents are still quite identifiable. I also think that the observation about regional accents being largely gone among teens and twenty somethings may be more apparent than real. I base this on my experience living in the UK and hearing 14 year old upper middle class girls talking with California Valley Girl intonations. It was amazing to hear this British version of Valley Girl-speak, but I think it was a very superficial, age-specific fashion that these girls were probably going to gradually outgrow. It's a fashion more than an authentic accent. In the same way, many young English urban people speak with what's called an Essex or Estuary English accent -- it entails such things as "swallowing" and nonpronuciation of the t sound within words. The thing is, almost all of these young people actually know how to speak correctly and can drop their Estuary English if need be, reverting instead to whatever might be the authentic regional accent of their parents and upbringing. I suspect that it's much the same in America and that when the language stylizations of youth gradually get dropped, the speaker reverts to more authentic regional speech patterns. Still, the point is well taken that regional differences are diminishing, albeit to a limited extent.

If you listen to the military folks, they have what we used affectionately call the military twang. AF is affected by Texas to a great degree. When we were living in the South we found it easier to take on the accent to avoid hostility, and so when we moved out west, it took us a bit to drop the y'alls.

[doctorjef]

Thanks for that observation, which confirms my own. I've noticed that, too. Of course, a lot of folks in the military are in fact southerners, but I've also listened to military folks on tv who aren't from the South and yet sound like they are. Actually, I lived on Quantico USMC as a kid, but of course I didn't have any real basis for comparison at the time -- I suppose most people just sounded "normal" to me at that time.