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I know some people don't like them, but most think they're neat. As a Southerner myself, I do also have preferences. I kind of prefer Virginia Tidewater, and the area of Charleston and South Georgia. Im not crazy about Alabama accents (there are variations of those too), or New Orleans (they sound like they are from Brooklyn). But over all, I do like them.
Anyways, there are tons of different southern accents, but I just listed the 4 main ones. You can also add "other" if you know of more dialects.
Virginia Tidewater (includes Richmond, VA down through eastern NC and SC. Some speakers found in Northern Virginia and Upper Shenandoah Valley) This is the most Aristocratic of all Southern accents. Sounds Elizabethean at times.
Appalachian (Southern Mountain Areas)
Gulf Coastal Plain (Central GA, ALA,)
General Southern Lowland (Kind of a general accent heard in the South outside the Mountains and Coastal areas and also in the Border states )
i honestly can't tell one from the other. maybe if i were around the different types all day, but since i'm not, i've never had the opportunity to develop an ear for it.
My three year old is developing a thick southern accent (Tidewater area). Both my husband and I grew up in the north so we don't have southern accents, but I get the feeling he is getting his accent from his southern preschool teachers. It's the cutest thing! But sometimes I can barely tell what he is saying. Some words that should be one syllable he drawls out into two or three syllables. Too funny.
My favorite is what some people call the "Charleston Accent". In this map, it would be the caucasian counterpart to the #22 "Gullah" accent. It starts around the old rice plantations in the Sea Islands of Georgia, and goes up past Savannah, Beaufort, Charleston, Georgetown, and up to Wilmington, NC. I think what the poll calls the "Virginia Tidewater" accent is similar to this one.
Another cool accent is the "Hoi Toide" accent of the remote outer banks, which in the map is #26 Okracoke. NC State University used to have some good sound clips for examples, but I can't find them. It's as Elizabethan as you can get, and doesn't really sound American at all. That accent is going the way of the dodo, however, and I've only met one person who spoke that way.
I also like the southwestern Louisiana accent, as well as all the cajuns I've ever met.
Last edited by anonymous; 09-10-2007 at 10:50 AM..
My favorite is what some people call the "Charleston Accent". In this map, it would be the caucasian counterpart to the #22 "Gullah" accent. It starts around the old rice plantations in the Sea Islands of Georgia, and goes up past Savannah, Beaufort, Charleston, Georgetown, and up to Wilmington, NC. I think what the poll calls the "Virginia Tidewater" accent is similar to this one.
Another cool accent is the "Hoi Toide" accent of the remote outer banks, which in the map is #26 Okracoke. NC State University used to have some good sound clips for examples, but I can't find them.
I also like the southwestern Louisiana accent, as well as all the cajuns I've ever met.
I thought this map was a little off when I saw that the Northern States Drift accent was not identified, and that its area was split into the "Northern Inland", "Chicago Urban" and "Upper Midwestern" areas. I think you misunderstood the question: this is a dialect map, not an accent map. (Still interesting to me, though)
RE: Cajun, I've only met 2 Cajuns up north. One was from Pascagoula, MS, the other from Lafayette, LA. I could discern no accent whatsoever (and I'm usually pretty good at it!)
RE: New Orleans, one of my professors in college grew up (and goes back generations) in the Irish Channel. He didn't have much of an accent, but described the accent in his area as sounding more Brooklyn than Southern.
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3 year old developing southern accent
