Southern Accents
 

A kind friend knew I wasn't feeling well so she brought over snacks and "Sweet Home Alabama" for both of us to watch.

During the movie she made a comment that Reece Witherspoon did NOT have an Alabama accent in the movie, but it was a very convincing Tennessee accent. Since my friend is from Alabama but lived in Nashville for awhile, I guess I'll take her word on that but, honestly, all the southern characters in the movie sounded the same to me :confused:

So tell me, Southern GreekChatters, can you all tell what parts of the south another southerner is from just by their accents? If so, that is pretty damn cool! And if this is the case, I'd like to add that it's a good thing most of you weren't yet born when "Dallas" was on or your ears would have been burning!!!

I can tell between TN, GA, and AL indefinatley. It is how certain words are pronounced and how fast and slow the dialect is...sorta hard to explain. But yeah, Reese has a definate TN accent!

Isn't Reese from TN originally?

I can't always tell where someone in the South is from, but do all right with Southern vs. Deep South. If I know someone is from Kentucky, I can tell which part they're from by their accent. There's a big difference between Louisville and, oh Paducah or Erlanger (and everything in between!)

Christin

Yes, a little out of Nashville. She went to an all girls school. Forgot the name of it, she is a born and bred TN gal

I have heard this too . . . I thought Charlie Therizon (sp?) had a prescious southern accent in Bagger Vance. but I was told by a friend in south Carlolina that it was not a true accent . . .

I have spoken to south Carolina people and people from Kentucky, I am not sure I can tell the difference. Do they have a different accent?

Hell, even in Texas you have several variations of the ubiquitous 'Texas twang': East Texas, West Texas, Panhandle and even South Texas. Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, El Paso, San Antonio and Amarillo are considered neutral, since there's so many of the above variations that live there.

Cherlize does a great job with the accents. She's originally from the south....South Africa! I understand that her first language isn't even English, it's Afrikaans (similar to Dutch).


Now I'm really impressed that my friend said Reece did a convincing TN accent! I don't think either of us knew she was actually from there

Do they say "Adlana"?;) :D

I can distinguiseh pretty well.. I think the Louisianna accent is pretty recognizable. A friend of myne has an Lousianna accent and I absolutely love it. There's also a huge difference between a southern accent and a redneck accent. I can tell the idifference with that.


(I am slightly tipsy....will edit out my mistakes when I'm sober)

yeah, reese busted out a good tn accent....i think all southern accents are different....ms is one way, al is another...they all sound different in diff areas of the state, too. like, eastern KY sounds waaaaaaaaay diff than western or central ky.

weird thought, though, huh?

Accents!!!
 

I can tell if someone is from Kentucky! When I went to L.A. last summer a west coaster looked at me and said, "you're from KY". The prettiest accents by far are LA and GA accents. They just flow so beautifully. I kinda think Kentucky and TN accents are hickish. But thats okay, because hickish can sound cute....occaisionally. ;)

I have some sort of innate ability to tell not only what Southern (and some others) state one hails from, but also what part, and in Alabama, what county/city. Yeah. I guess I'm a good listener. Inflection, vocabulary, etc. all plays in to it. It's sort of a cool ability, in a Henry Higgins sort of way.

This part is SO true!!!

I had a linguists professor who could not only tell what city & state you were from by your accent, but whether it was the north-south-east-west of the city and your socio-economic class! Of course, he was getting paid to make a study of it.

I had another professor - from New York - who just assumed that anyone from the South who didn't work on losing their accent was dumb, lazy, or both. It took a lot to charm him and make him see the error of his ways!

Killarney Rose, check out the accents on "Fried Green Tomatoes", especially the rythym of the sentence structure. That's where you catch most imitators off guard.

Yeah, I agree with Browneyedgirl since I am from Greenville. I absolutely hate it when actors over do the southern accent. In South Carolina, there are three different dialects. You have the mountain appalachia accent (Thats me!!), mid-lands (which tends to sound more like georgia), and Charlestonian accent which tends to be the strongest in the African American community and it is a mixture of English and Gullah (the language of the early slaves).

I have a friend from Lancaster, SC. Is that near you? She once said something about a "spodder" and it took me the longest time to figure out that she meant "spider"! She sounds absolutely adorable though! (is it insulting to refer to a 35 year old mother of two as adorable???)

Ack! I hate fake Southern accents! What were the studio execs thinking when they cast those English actors as Scarlett and Ashley in Gone With the Wind?:(

My husband is from Georgia and we can distinguish certain words that each of us say differently. As a Texan, I say "pah" for pie and "tile" for towel. He says boo-levard and uses different words than I do--like supermarket instead of grocery store. He also says he's going to carry someone somewhere instead of take them.

Since you're a Texan and probably one of the few GCers other than myself who remember "Dallas", what did you think of the accents of Larry Hagman, Victoria Principal, et al?

I've heard they were horrendous, but I dont' really know how they're SUPPOSED to sound!

She attended Harpeth Hall in Nashville. Her dad and my mom work together!

However, I didn't think her accent sounded Tennessean or strictly Alabamian. You could tell it was Southern, but I thought it sounded more drawn out than mine does (I've been in TN for 13 years) and not nearly as bad as my Alabama relatives. lol

Yes, I can tell accents from various states in the south apart. It's funny that you brought up "Sweet Home Alabama," because my roommate and I went to go see it when it was at the theatres. We said the exact same thing that your friend did.

The easiest to pick out for me are Alabamaians. People from Alabama pronounce things with a flat "i". I can't really think of how to explain it in text, but it's like pronouncing anything with the letter i by just lowering your jaw.

I pick up accents very easily, so I guess it is easier for me to tell them apart, too.

I can tell Texas accents apart from one another
 

Its pretty easy for me having been born and raised here.

To me the two easiest accents to discern are 'panhandle", which is really twangy. East texas is real drawn out. It has to do with the way they pronounce their "r's". The vally is also real easy to discern, because of the influence of spanish. For instance, people will say "Do you want to go to the store, or no?" Only someone from the valley wil bust out with the "or no." Everynow and then someone will call me out as being from the panhandle. I dont think I have had that accent since I left tho. Always catches me off guard. My friends charity and leslie from back home still have their west texas drawl. "oh my gawish!" Like they put extra syllables in theirwords.

I'm no Texan, but I am a native Noo Yawker who's been adopted by Texas :) -- Larry Hagman's a native of Weatherford (his momma's the late Broadway actress Mary Martin), and so is a gen-u-wine Texan by birth. Victoria Principal was born in Japan; don't recall where she grew up at.

Some other famous Texans in film, music and TV:

Sissy Spacek - Quitman (her cousin is Elmer Rual Torn, Jr. - better known as actor Rip Torn, from Temple)
Sandy Duncan - Henderson
Angie Harmon - Highland Park
Morgan Fairchild - Highland Park (birth name: Patsy McClenny)
Farrah Fawcett - Beaumont (?)
Janis Joplin - Port Arthur

For more info on the Dallas actors and actresses, check out http://www.ultimatedallas.com/ . (BTW, I live 5 miles from Southfork Ranch and it's not all that's cracked up to be! :) )

I have one of the wierdest accents ever. English, while my most fluent language, was my second, and I learned it between Baltimore, MD and Houston, TX. I have the oddest drawl and pronounciation, and unless I'm imitating another accent consciously, there is no hope of me loosing it. I've had two voice coaches give up on me, and one simply try to teach me to be British. That was funny.

All that being said, I have a real ear for English. Generally, I can place people in their state and region from around the Eastern Seaboard, throughout Texas, and in most of Britain. I can also place people by their French. There's a lot to be said for learning multiple languages growing up. Even if I can't loose my Baltimore/Houston accent.

As for the "Louisiana" accent thing - if its a drawl, its north Louisiana.

And when I say North Louisiana, I mean anything north of Hammond, a little town about halfway to Baton Rouge from Lake Ponchartrain (the lake "in" New Orleans).

There's also the Lafayette/cajun accent.

People from New Orleans don't have a drawl. I don't have one. I don't have the "n'awlins" accent either. Think Brooklyn. There's a variation of that

South Louisiana (at least by my standards) doesn't have the southern drawl that people think of as a "southern accent."

For those 'yats' who hail from Orleans Parish and surroundings, here's a site for ya: http://www.southernyatclub.com/home.html .

Farrah Fawcett was from Corpus Christi I believe.
Larry Hagman is from Texas and had an authentic Texas accent.
I also though the woman that played his wife Sue Ellen did a good job-not sure where she is originally from.

What bugged me about Larry Hagman's "Dallas" accent was that it wasn't his real one. His real one doesn't sound too Texasy and he probably spent a lot of his youth in California and New York anyway.

But it was like the producers said,"Okay, Larry, you just don't sound like what the public expects Texas to sound like, camp it up!"

You're right 'bout that... Larry spent time in California and Noo Yawk, and as part of his training as an actor had to disguise or eliminate his Texican accent, as do many actors and actresses nowadays.

i lived in texas on and off for twelve years and can definately tell the texas accents from other southern accents. i made the mistake ;) of going to school in pennsylvania and always get sh*t for sayin things like "fixin" and ya'll. my northern friends just don't understand why "coke" can mean any kind of "soda or pop". i'm lucky that 3 of my best friends in the sorority are southerners too. georgia, kentucky and southern virginia. we all comisserate together!

on a totally different rant, you can't get decent barbeque or a good glass of iced tea in the north either!

Yeah, Lancaster is like 45 mins from me. I was just thinking about southern/mountain dialect. I was at Applebees in Asheville and the server asked my mom if she wanted Izz. We were sitting there like what the hell, she meant Ice. Here are some common southern things I was thinking off the top of my head.

Whatcha
Howya
Prezidant-president
Bap'tiz-Baptist
Go' en-going
Izz-Ice
Cher-chair
Bizcuts-biscuits
Ant-Aunt
colige-college
muror-mirror
stove-oven
demercrats-democrats
cloff-cloth
deener-dinner
der-deer
squirl-squirrel
squitters-mosqitos
lawn mo- lawn mower

Actually, its more St. Bernard parish than Orleans.

There's a distinct accent from different parts of NOLA actually - I can tell an uptown accent from Carrolton, etc.

:)

You can tell an eastern North Carolina accent from a western NC accent... someone from the mountains usually has a thick accent, similar to TN. On some of the Outer Banks, the people who have lived there all their lives have SUCH a peculiar accent... I've been told it's because they haven't been exposed to other kinds of North Carolina accents, and so it's more pure? Overall, North Carolina accents are more mildly Southern than the Deep South like Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama. Although we all say those classic Southern sayings- I am always "fixin" to do somethin' :)

Even someone not from the South should be able to distinguish a Charleston accent because of that Gullah tinge in it!

Ok, yesterday I had 2 random people tell me that I had a strong accent. They both described it as a Houston accent. Kinda interesting, because I have been to Houstona grand total of 10 times in my life.

I had a classmate tell me she needed to change the oil in her car. I did not understand her. It sounded like "uh-l" :P

I think my southern accent's evident in certain words. Dam* south ga! hopefully will change soon enough :p

Omg, yeah a lot of those words are more mountain. Try going around North Greenville College, or near Anderson, SC. I have heard a lot of super duper southern accents since I have been in Florence, SC.

It's Harpeth Hall...I have a friend who went there, she says Reese came back and was totally sweet to everyone.


Harpeth Hall

I know that she acts for a living so I may be completely fooled, but from what I've seen and read of her on talk shows and in magazines, she really does seem like a very classy, nice person.

The mailman just asked me if I was from Alabama b/c of my "strong southern accent".

Odd, I grew up an hour away from where I live...Except for 4 years of college in NW Ohio, I've lived in SW Ohio my whole life.

I was able to pick someones North Carolina accent out the other day. My buddy John is from NC and I was talking withthis dood at the bar and he said "KNOAW" for the word no. Made it a 3 syllable word. lol. I told him he had to have some NC up in him. Indeed, he did. I was impressed at myself.

BTW my sister, the speech-language pathologist, told me that the correct term is DIALECT, not accent. If english is your second language and you native toung influences they way you poronounce words, that is an accent. A dialect is a regional variation in a language.

Sometimes I love having my DIALECT cause people know exactly where I'm from....and I don't think I sound hickish!!! Mine is not that strong or "twangy" its just certain word that you can pick it up in. When I get really mad, my accent no longer exists...wierd

I was told my DIALECT was more Georgian anyway. So, no offense taken from that TN accent comment :)

But I hate the double takes I get, here in Chatty....it's odd for an Asian gal to have a Southern DIALECT, because most moved down here from up north. Eh, oh well....

It's weird, I don't like guys with Southern DIALECTS....I don't know why. Most can't carry it off well....they all sound like Forrest Gump to me :D


LOL, DIALECTS

Yup, no Korean ACCENT here!!

LOL!!!! No Japanese accents here either! BlazerCheer came from Japan at age 2 months and she talks like everyone else here--"Hai! How are yew?"