Do most young Texans in the cities still have Southern accent? (Houston: hotel, to buy)

[SouthernBoy205]

The southern accent in Alabama is not going anywhere anytime soon. People move there and get a southern accent. lol

[doctorjef]

And I think there must be more than one Alabama accent. I always thought of it as a George Wallace-style drawl, but a few years back I met a little guy from Alabama who'd moved here to northern Delaware in conjunction with work, and he had more of a twang than the Deep Southern drawl. Don't know where in Alabama he was from. I do wonder how much of this also has to do with individual vocal characteristics.

[TexasReb]

Originally Posted by doctorjef

TexasReb, I've seen you make this assertion before, associating the mountain Southern twang with West Texas, and the drawl with more eastern parts of the state, but I have personally never heard it that way. When I was 14 and my dad retired from the Marine Corps, we moved first to Monroe, LA where he had an academic post. There for about the first week, I literally couldn't understand what people were saying. Monroe is in northeast LA, and there isn't any significant Cajun influence there -- it's very deep Southern, Mississippi like drawl. After the initial adjustment to the speech pattern there, I perceived that most people had what I would previously have thought to be an African-American accent -- that was due to my own naiveté and the fact that things were indeed different in this country back in the 1960s. Of course, what I had naively thought was a "black" accent was simply a Deep Southern accent pattern. When we moved from there to Lubbock, I found the accent to be much lighter in general, but to the extent that there was one amongst natives, it was very much what I would call a Texas Southern drawl. There wasn't much of what I would call twanginess about it. When I moved then to Austin to attend university, I found the accent amongst true Central Texas natives to be much different again, and more of a twangy sound and soft drawl -- in contrast to the flat vowel sounds of Lubbockites (e.g."mah" rather than "my"). Speaking of flattening, Beaumont is the only place I've ever heard the car make, Volvo, called a "vulva"! Just one more thought on this: during our years in VA and DC, we made annual summer trips down to my mother's relatives in Denton and Tarrant Counties, so I had a lot of exposure both to North Texas speech of the time, and to the way people spoke throughout the South, since we used a whole number of routes and this was also before the interstate highway system was fully developed. It always struck me as a kid that the speech I heard in Tennessee was a lot like what I heard in North Texas, and interestingly by maternal lineage had come to Texas from Tennessee prior to the Civil War.

Good and interesting post, DocJ...but (referring to bolded part), it is not just my assertion. By that I mean I am relying -- in addition to personal experience -- on the opinions of linguistic experts (which, I hasten to add, I am not one of them).

Yes, you and I disagree on this subject...and when it comes to personal experience and all, mine is no better than yours and vice-versa.

There are no hard and fast rules, as you know, Doc...but a "drawl" (at least as concerns the speech region classified as "Southern American English), is generally that of the Lower (Deep) South, which settlement patterns clearly show was mostly an East Texas thing. And the drawl involves at least some "non-rhotic" influences, and is slower in rhythm and cadence. Whereas a "twang" has a very clear pronunciation of the "r" sound, which seems to be more of a western Texas occurrence. And all this very much squares with sub-divisions throughout the South, as a general rule.

Now, in terms of idiom and such, there is not much difference. There is a clear (drawl, twang, Upper, Lower, etc), shared kinship that easily mark Southern American English (which definitely includes Texas) from any other in the United States. In fact, it may be the most "separating" thing of all when it comes to regions...

[doctorjef]

To me the twang is distinguished from a drawl by more than just the difference in sounding the rhotic R. I agree that West Texans do tend to clearly sound the R, whereas Deep Southerners often do not, especially when it occurs as part of a consonant-vowel blend or the -er sound. My North Texas grandmother was also one of those people that called a certain type of fencing "bob war", where the R gets lost from the first word, and the -ir blend in the second word gets flattened into what sounds like a synonym for a paddle that you row with, an interesting blend of Southern non-rhotic and what to me is also a typical West Texas flattening of vowels or vowel-consonant blends. She was originally from Ranger, so not really very far West, though I suppose anything west of Fort Worth gradually segues into West Texas. But if I look at Appalachian dialect, which is classically twangy (think blue grass singing), the vowels are formed way up at the top of the mouth and a bit far back toward the throat. This is more the stereotypical "hillbilly" sound, in contrast to the slow, courtly speech of Deep Southerners.

[SoulMane979]

I'm 28 and was raised by my great great anties on my mother's side who is Black.Being raised by black women in their 80's and 90's(one who was born in 1910) definitely makes me realize the difference in my speech and colloquialisms from Texans in other areas.I'm from Hearne and my family has been here since reconstruction or prior,we're really not certain about that fact yet.My grandaddy believes we came from Carbon Hill,Alabama after slavery.I've lived in Austin and people frequently used to ask me if I was from Louisiana or other southern states.I had a buddy of mine from Georgia that I had more in common with than those from Austin which is only 1.5 hours away.I could go down a list of things that most white Texans have never heard or may not understand and there are also phrases and words my white friends grew up with that I never heard or grew up with.My great grandmother was an english teacher who spoke grammatically correct english,but pronounced drawer as draw,wore as wo,orange as ernge,jordan river as jerdan river,there as thea etc... I think the accents in Texas are diverse,but as far as those that resemble a stereotypical syrupy "southern" accent I would say come from people in the Bryan/College Station Metroplex all the way south to Houston and southeast to P.A. and Beaumont.I just recently moved to north Texas and it seems like people here have a twangy accent similar to inland southern accents like Arkansas and Kentucky.There is pronounced thurr up this way.To answer your question,yes I believe accents are becoming more homogenized and flavorless.Even kids in Hearne now don't have as thick of accents as some of us in our late 20's and early 30's from Hearne.

[NoClueWho]

What's the difference between a drawl and a twang?

[TexasReb]

Originally Posted by Mentallect

What's the difference between a drawl and a twang?

Good question (and obviously DocJ and I disagree a bit about it), but from my own research and personal experience (not that it counts any more than anyone else's) a Southern "drawl" is more "laid back" and lyrical, and easy on the ears. It is generally non-rhotic (i.e. the "r" sound either non-existent or, not all that detectable). A twang, on the other hand, is very reminiscent of the sound of a....oh hell...like a "steel guitar" in classic country music, and includes a definite "nasally" quality to the "r" sound, and is a little more "harsh" on the ears than the classic "moonlight and magnolias" Deep South rhythms and cadences. So far as Texas goes, because of settlement patterns, the "twang" is much more common in western parts of the state, while the drawl is more likely to be heard in East Texas.

[TexasReb]

Originally Posted by zdfhadfh

No, not at all, but that isn't a Texas thing. I've lived all over the South and the accents everywhere are fading.

So true and...sad. In fact, I was not long ago talking to a distant cousin/close friend of mine who is from Alabama originally, and has lived in Mississippi for over 30 years (which are often conceded to be the "most" Southern states at all in the stereotypical sense), and she said the exact same thing...

[Campeador]

Originally Posted by doctorjef

IMO East Texas and Central Texas have traditionally retained more identifiable Southern aspects to the speech than is true for West Texas, which I'd say has a more peculiar (in the sense of unique) drawl that isn't really what you would think of as typically Southern. Yet at the same time, some of the natives there pick very little of that up. At least around Lubbock it tends to be a definite flattening of vowel sounds, in contrast to the twangier speech with a much softer drawl that you still find somewhat in Central Texas.

We've had this discussion before, but I would consider Texas accents to be variants of Southern speech patterns. However, it's also important to remember that almost all Americans do certain things in terms of speech that make the accent identifiably American. One of these is tending to draw out syllables or insert extra vowel syllables. I became especially aware of this when moving back from England. My initial reaction was that aspects of the Southern speech pattern were proliferating nationally, but I have subsequently realized that this is a manifestation of current American speech generally (interesting to contrast that with speech you hear in old movies). It is possible that some aspects of Southern speech have indeed proliferated, perhaps due to the assimilation of traditional, Southern-based African-American aspects of speech into the general American accent. Some accents seem to have almost died out, such as the true, old New England accent, while other accents seem more robust, such as the Upper Midwest accent so influenced by Scandanavian settlement.

It's funny, when I read your first post I thought to myself, "why does he use 'amongst'? That's a British usage." Now I see that you lived in England. It's amazing how we absorb speech tendencies from the people with whom we spend time and the places we have lived.

[Gunion Powder]

Originally Posted by Campeador

It's funny, when I read your first post I thought to myself, "why does he use 'amongst'? That's a British usage." Now I see that you lived in England. It's amazing how we absorb speech tendencies from the people with whom we spend time and the places we have lived.

Many people may use amongst in text but not necessarily in speech.