Do most young Texans in the cities still have Southern accent? (Houston: transplants, 2013)

[Pavement Pounder]

Met a girl from Waco, Texas, now living in Austin (she's here for 6 months though) and she didn't sound southern at all! I said, 'you don't have the accent', and she said it was because she was urban. I've been to Texas, but only really passed through, and didn't get a good sense of how prevalent the accent was. In Lubbock most of the teenagers at the drive-in didn't have much of a Southern/Texan accent, while one old-timer had a strong accent, and a man probably about 30 years old did a bit. In Austin I asked directions from one young man and he had a moderate Southern accent, but of course no idea where he was from. It seems most young people in the larger Texan cities (maybe under 35) have a weak or non-existent southern accent, even the smaller cities. Would you say that's true?

[War Beagle]

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

[DanielWayne]

The Southern accent is not as prevalent as you are thinking. Of course you will hear it in rural areas, but even then that isn't always the case. It is possible to live in any of the big cities and never hear a southern accent. Also omit the fact that there are a LOT of different ethnicities in Texas leading to even more accents. El Paso is yet another accent. People who trace their ancestry to Acadiana are yet another distinct accent. The point is that the Southern accent is one of many in Tx.

[doctorjef]

I think what you tend to hear in larger cities - and having lived there for a total of 22 years across two separate spans, Austin is what I'm most familiar with - what you tend to hear amongst more middle class and reasonably well educated persons younger than perhaps about forty is a so-called "standard" American accent with mild, inconsistent Southern-Texan notes. You might only catch these after hearing the person speak for a bit. Interestingly, you even run across this in some persons who are considerably older. Last night on the program "History Detectives" they did a story about a case of serial killing in Austin during the year 1885, and interviewed a great grand niece of one of the victims, a lady who looked to be in her 70s, who spoke with very little Southern/Texan accent -- I only heard some mild flattening of vowel sounds occasionally. I was also interested listening to Willie Nelson on a recent interview, where I heard extremely little Southern aspect to his speech. In my own experience there seemed to be a bit more distinctive accent amongst Central Texans when I lived in Austin in the early-mid 1970s than when we returned ten years after moving away the first time, and I would say it has continued to wane, even amongst persons whom I know to be natives and not transplants. We moved away in 2004 but I was last there on a visit in 2013. However, I think there is also a considerable social class and educational dimension to this. In my experience persons from backgrounds below middle class and with no more than some high school are far more likely to express a definite Southern accent.

[TexasHorseLady]

You're not likely to hear a Southern accent, but you might hear a Texas accent (and there are several of those - a native Texan can give a pretty good guess as to which part of Texas someone with a Texas accent is from - East Texas and West Texas, for example, are very different accents). But, yes, with TV, and its standardized accent for announcers, there is a certain sad homogenization in accents. It's positively delightful to me to hear a definite accent from someone, sort of like seeing a splash of color in an otherwise black, grey and white background.

[need4speed2012]

Hit the bushes - means to go to the bathroom !!!!!!!!!!

[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.

[TexasHorseLady]

I've learned, doing genealogical research (aided by the little bit of linguistics that I took in college), that some of the things that are characterized as "Southern" speech in East Texas are, in fact, traceable back to specific counties in England (and in many cases, at least in the family lines I'm familiar with, came here not just by way of going through the South but from England to New England over to Illinois and down to Texas). It's amazing how long some of those things can linger. So, technically, we could say that the Texas accent is an English accent.

My father had a strong East Texas accent that didn't resemble a Southern accent at all. However, he made a point of correcting my pronunciation according to the dictionary, with the result that no matter where I was, including East Texas where I was born, people thought I was from somewhere else. I do tend to fall into a strong Texas accent when either stressed or when having someone on that clearly has stereotypical notions about Texas and Texans.

[SouthernBoy205]

Well, in Houston, especially amongst the blacks, the southern accent is still alive.

[Danbo1957]

Yes, every region has its unique Texas accent. You don't hear the Central Texas accent if you are from the area-- but, I assure you there is one, rather sweet to my ears too.