Southern accent in Lubbock dying out? (El Paso, Abilene: transplants, theatre, living in)

[The Postman]

We spent a night in Lubbock on our cross-country trip, and realised the variety in Southernness of people's accents. One of the old timers had quite a strong Texan drawl, while a youngish man, maybe 35, still sounded distinctly southern yet a lot less so. most of the kids at the drive-thru movie theatre had but a hint of the Southern accent. Was the presence of the Southern dialect in Lubbock and maybe eastern NM a fleeting thing, and is it dying out? Is the situation there similar to say Abilene, Midland or Odessa?

Culturally would you say it's more like the Great Plains?

[Westerntraveler]

I live in Midland and I don't remember hearing a southern accent like some of my family in Arkansas....I use some texas/southern slang like aint and yall.....but maybe not being able to pick up accents in my area is just me......

[rr2005]

I don't think the western half of Texas has ever had the thick accent of East Texas, which is more akin to that of the deep south. With that being said, I recently read that all accents are fading in the younger generations. The reasons given were immigration, urbanization and gentrification. It also said that nationwide, people under 25 are all gravitating towards a more neutral, Midwestern-type accent.

[Cathy4017]

Originally Posted by rr2005

I don't think the western half of Texas has ever had the thick accent of East Texas, which is more akin to that of the deep south. With that being said, I recently read that all accents are fading in the younger generations. The reasons given were immigration, urbanization and gentrification. It also said that nationwide, people under 25 are all gravitating towards a more neutral, Midwestern-type accent.

I very much agree with this, and I'm talking natives of each area who have lived in the general vicinity most of their lives, rather than transplants.

East and West have very different accents, but I also tend to prefer the more neutral Midwestern-type of accents. They are clearer and often easier to understand than heavy southern accents.

[The Postman]

Yes, maybe the old person wasn't a native of the area? Lubbock seems more like Kansas in some ways than even Abilene.

[Westerner92]

Originally Posted by rr2005

I don't think the western half of Texas has ever had the thick accent of East Texas, which is more akin to that of the deep south. With that being said, I recently read that all accents are fading in the younger generations. The reasons given were immigration, urbanization and gentrification. It also said that nationwide, people under 25 are all gravitating towards a more neutral, Midwestern-type accent.

I agree with all of this. I'm part of the younger generation, and most my age in Lubbock have little to no discernible Texas accent.

[Cathy4017]

Someone originally from Chicago (while I was living in northern NM) summed it up.

I told her, "PLEASE don't tell me I have a southern accent."

She said, "You do have a little of a southern accent, but it's not "southern-southern"....it's Texas.

And...she was right. As an old life-long native of West Texas, I have never considered myself a southerner or to have much (if at all) of a southern accent, certainly not like anything east of Texas (or even East Texas itself)--dialect tests notwithstanding..LOL!

Native East Texans sound like many natives of LA and MS.

[The Postman]

Originally Posted by Cathy4017

Someone originally from Chicago (while I was living in northern NM) summed it up.

I told her, "PLEASE don't tell me I have a southern accent."

She said, "You do have a little of a southern accent, but it's not "southern-southern"....it's Texas.

And...she was right. As an old life-long native of West Texas, I have never considered myself a southerner or to have much (if at all) of a southern accent, certainly not like anything east of Texas (or even East Texas itself)--dialect tests notwithstanding..LOL!

Native East Texans sound like many natives of LA and MS.

Plenty of Texans have an accent just as strong as anywhere in the south. Like in rural central and eastern Texas.

[High_Plains_Retired]

Originally Posted by The Postman

We spent a night in Lubbock on our cross-country trip, and realised the variety in Southernness of people's accents.

Many of the cotton farmers around the Texas South Plains have family roots in eastern Texas where cotton was once king until the boll weevil caused many farm families there to leave for the Texas High Plains where they were able to raise cotton relatively boll weevil free. However, the young descendants of these families are now losing the deep southern accents of their grandparents. As a native east Texan with family roots firmly set in the Deep South, I came to the Lubbock area in the mid-1960s and have never been able to discern much of what I would consider a "southern accent" anywhere on the Texas South Plains unless the person I was talking to was a recent arrival from eastern Texas or the Deep South.

Most of the early immigrants to eastern Texas came through the Deep South prior to, and after, the Civil War era while much of the Texas High Plains wasn't even settled until the State was able to re-establish a bit of frontier protection out here after the Civil War. Many of the people who came to the South Plains and Panhandle areas of Texas came, not only eastern Texas, but from the Great Plains from Kansas to the Dakotas, Minnesota and eastward. My wife's families were some of these.

I would expect that southern accents in eastern Texas will exist long after they have disappeared from western Texas simply because southern culture is much more entrenched on the eastern side of the State. However, all this said, I really don't wish to participate in another discussion of whether Texas is a southern state or a western state. Most of us I believe consider the State to be far too large and diverse to be pigeon-holed into either narrow category.

[The Postman]

Thanks, that's very interesting. Yeah the panhandle isn't really the core of the South, it's just an area where many Southerners went to, like New Mexico, Arizona or parts of California. I also feel Texas is split between South and Southwest. Lubbock and the high-plains/panhandle probably is more Midwestern/great plains with some southern influence. Not much southern influence though like in the far west of Texas. El Paso, of course, is as Hispanic as anywhere in the Southwest or heck even Mexico.