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Location: The Greatest city on Earth: City of Atlanta Proper
8,486 posts, read 14,999,411 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Smtchll
When I hear those clips from different areas of the South, they sound like accents that I hear in Memphis all the time. I don't hear one and think "oh, that's Atlanta" or "that's Nashville" Only cities like New Orleans have that distinction.
Well you should adjust your ears as there are differences. Some are subtle, some are extremely different. In order for something to be different doesn't mean the absence of similarities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Smtchll
Memphis doesn't have a huge transplant population, in fact, it's really small.
That's why I qualified my statement by saying "the largest of those metropolitan regions have been flooded with transplants from other regions around the country in the last few decades". Memphis is not one of those places.
The Savannah accent is similiar to the Alabama and Mississippi coastal accent...Even Alabama has different dialects especially the blacks in Alabama.African Americans in Mobile have a different dialect than those from Birmingham,Huntsville and Montgomery.
Well you should adjust your ears as there are differences. Some are subtle, some are extremely different. In order for something to be different doesn't mean the absence of similarities.
That's why I qualified my statement by saying "the largest of those metropolitan regions have been flooded with transplants from other regions around the country in the last few decades". Memphis is not one of those places.
I realize that there are different accents in the South, but they don't have much to do with location. I know people here who sound like the guy in the East TN clip, I know others who sound like the guy in the KY clip. The South has many different accents, but they're all jumbled up. Only some places have their own distinct accents, they're usually in the coastal areas.
It's not really possible to identify someone from Nashville, or someone from Jackson MS or Little Rock, Arkansas by accent alone. It's because these places don't have their own distinct accents. Even with the little quirks like "warsh" for "wash" that seem like they would be distinctive, I've heard that from people in Arkansas, OK, TN, even up in St. Louis and Maryland.
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