The Differences Between Regional Southern Accents, According To A Linguist

[Behind the Aegis]

Southern accents have nuances to them. Here, a linguist explains how they came to be and what the key differences are.

There isn't one thing that makes a Southern accent. The regions' iconic sounds go back hundreds of years.

According to Margaret E.L. Renwick, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Georgia, it was inevitable that speech would evolve. “Language change is going to happen, there’s no stopping it,” she says. “It’s natural, and it changes from generation to generation.” Even today, despite there being evidence that the Southern accent is on the decline, people are influenced in their language choices. For example, children are influenced by their caregivers, teachers, parents, and grandparents and might therefore pick up words like “pocketbook” instead of “purse.”

Language communicates more than just words. “Language is aspirational. Younger kids and teenagers will form ways of talking that are unique to their groups. If they don’t want to be a part of a particular group, they might signal that with their speech,” she says. “A lot of how we talk is social.”

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Related: Could The Southern Accent Be Fading? Researchers In Georgia Say Yes

[Lunabell]

1. This southerner totally agrees!!

The Tennessee accent is vastly different from southern Alabama or N. Florida. Texas has a southern drawl unlike any place else. Georgia and the Carolinas border each other but are not even closely the same. Kentucky and W. Virginia are close, but Virginia is very different from them both.
I can usually tell a fake southern accent, but some actors do it very well. A lot of the actors on The Walking Dead are English and they do a pretty good job with rhe southern accents.

[unblock]

2. To my non-expert ear, there are some similarities between a southern U.S. and some British accents.

Show me a Brit who can do a strong boston accent and I'll be real impressed.

[prodigitalson]

4. I'm from East Texas and here the subdialect is Mississippi/Gulf Coast of the Southern (MGCS) dialect of US English

At least that's how it was once classified. Famous speakers would be Bill Clinton, Elvis, Reese Witherspoon.

Different from your less rhotic Scarlet O' Harra, Jimmy Carter Southern accent.

West Texas has it's own drawl but east of the Trinity River it's MGCS

edited to say - pretty much same as Tennesse I would think

[Lunabell]

5. Tennessee is more country.

And a faster pace than other southern dialects.

[House of Roberts]

3. I talk a dialect from Sand Mountain near Albertville, Alabama.

My dad’s side of the family are from there, and I picked up most of the words and inflections from being around them before I started school here in Huntsville.