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I noticed here in Central WA the older generation...around age 60+ has a strong Western drawl. It sounds straight out of some old Western movie. It can be so thick that it actually sounds somewhat offensive to me for some reason. Younger people do not have this cowboy accent at all. Is the Western drawl dying out? I wonder if this same trend is happening in states like Wyoming.
I noticed here in Central WA the older generation...around age 60+ has a strong Western drawl. It sounds straight out of some old Western movie. It can be so thick that it actually sounds somewhat offensive to me for some reason. Younger people do not have this cowboy accent at all. Is the Western drawl dying out? I wonder if this same trend is happening in states like Wyoming.
If so, it’s unfortunate. Nothing like a strong “cowboy” accent when men were actually men, none of that hipster bull crap
I haven't spent enough time in the West to tell, but many regional accents around the country are dying off, or at least getting markedly less common. It seems like the younger generation distinguishes its dialects more by social grouping - frat guys have a different accent from trendy urban kids or from nerds or from artsy hipsters, but those accents will be fairly similar from one area to the next.
Two things are happening. One, yes, regional accents are dying off, as more and more people, like Don Williams, "learn to talk like the man on the six oclock news".
Second, most Americans are now well-traveled enough that they hear regional accents in their own confines, and they become less noticeable the more you are exposed to them.
I've heard it from time to time when off the beaten path in central California.. also a few times when I traveled in Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado. Personally, I call it the "Modest Mouse" accent, since the lead singer of that band has it (he grew up in a small town in Idaho which probably has similar accents as rural central WA.) It's similar to the accent in West Texas (where I live now) and New Mexico though it's a bit different than the Southeast accent (which we traditionally think of as the "Southern" accent.)
I lived in Montana from 1991 to 2007 and in Wyoming from 2007 to 2015 and I never encountered a drawl in either state unless I was talking to a Southerner. So it must have died quite some time ago.
I noticed here in Central WA the older generation...around age 60+ has a strong Western drawl. It sounds straight out of some old Western movie. It can be so thick that it actually sounds somewhat offensive to me for some reason. Younger people do not have this cowboy accent at all. Is the Western drawl dying out? I wonder if this same trend is happening in states like Wyoming.
Like a John Wayne movie.
John Wayne was really from Iowa but perfected the drawl.
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