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Maybe you hear it from your fellow southern transplants but ya'll/y'all is not common in Chicago. We agree to disagree on "you guys" and that's fine. "ya'll/y'all" is better than "yinz" I suppose.
And y'all makes much better sense than "you guys".
Though with your video for Texas, that's strictly Houston. Dallas has an entirely different accent from Houston.
Just out of curiosity, Spade. In your experience, do you think that a Texas/Southern accent is, anymore, much the norm in any large Southern city? I mean, I can't really say much about the southeast. But so far as Texas goes, yes, get off the beaten path in Dallas or Houston or Austin or wherever, and the Southern aura and accent is very much still there. And of that, there is no question, far as I am concerned.
But? Alas. My own experience with the DFW area in the suburbs is that such a thing is gradually fading away.
The loss of regional accents is a cultural tragedy. I cringe every time I hear a grown man talk in that camp 16-year-old-girl-from-OC accent. "Ohmygaaaahd, that like so sucks, duuude...". But unfortunately that seems to be the new neutral accent the mass media has imposed on the country.
I find Southern accents in general to be very mellow and musical.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Geography Freak
I find Southern accents in general to be very mellow and musical.
And on top of that the style of speech is very poetic. This is what I think sets Southern dialects apart from other American dialects. If you sit and listen to a Southerner tell a story (and get rid of any bias you have) you will hear a layered story that creates a colorful picture of what is being described. Because of this it is of little surprise that a large number of the most celebrated authors in American history are Southerners:
William Faulkner - Mississippi
Harper Lee - Alabama
Truman Capote - Louisiana/Alabama
Alice Walker - Georgia
Eudora Welty - Mississippi
Richard Wright - Mississippi
Margaret Mitchell - Georgia
Flannery O'connor - Georgia
Zora Neale Hurston - Alabama
Tennessee Williams - Mississippi
No, the "general american" accent is purely the invention of the media as the standard they decided for what American English should sound like. In reality though, most Americans don't speak this way.
What do I mean by that?
Northeasterners in general don't speak that way: Population 54,741,353
Southerns in general don't speak that way: Population 109,083,752 (the largest, by a very wide margin, group of Americans)
Westerners in general don't speak that way: Population 69,355,643
That leaves 66,217,736 Midwesterns on their lonesome with the general American english accent....and most of them probably don't speak this way.
I suggest that you add the 54M Northeasterners with the 66M Midwesterners, and you will get a larger group than your 109M Southerners; after all, if you're going to count everyone from Virginia to Florida to Texas, then I'll count everyone from Maine to Pennsylvania to Minnesota..
Fair is fair, after all...and North is just as inclusive as South..
Just out of curiosity, Spade. In your experience, do you think that a Texas/Southern accent is, anymore, much the norm in any large Southern city? I mean, I can't really say much about the southeast. But so far as Texas goes, yes, get off the beaten path in Dallas or Houston or Austin or wherever, and the Southern aura and accent is very much still there. And of that, there is no question, far as I am concerned.
But? Alas. My own experience with the DFW area in the suburbs is that such a thing is gradually fading away.
I don't really know much about the DFW and Houston suburbs except the Southern Dallas suburbs. But I would say it's half and half. Meaning that half of the population still has the Texan accent and the other half pretty much sounds like some place else. Again, this is for Dallas proper and Houston proper. I think the neutrality of the accent in Texas is going to increase more if Texas continues to gain residents from other parts of the country and world. Austin though is just about gone. I don't think it's the norm anymore to hear the Southern accent down there. San Antonio as well. You'll hear some but it's in the minority.
You and I both know that it's harder for Blacks accents to dramatically change. But it still can be influenced a bit. But the other groups (younger Whites, Hispanics, Asians, any others) Southern accents are fading or they simply never had it to begin with. So it's really hard to say.
We have that old fashioned southern accent - very proper, understandable, & pleasant to listen to but not so twangy.
Last edited by Cuttz; 11-24-2010 at 02:14 PM..
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