Where did southern accents in the US come from?
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There is not single southern accent. I’m from Georgia and people from different regions of the state sound different from each other. There’s even a generational difference too. My father was in his 50’s when I was born, and his accent and other of his age sounded different than my own accent and other people my age. And then there are different accents in other states too. My mom is from South Carolina and her side of the family has a very different accent from my fathers side. I rang up a customer at my first job and asked if he was from coastal South Carolina. He said yes and asked how I knew. I told him because he sounded just like my grandfather.
Source: I’ve live in the south all my life. All of the above is anecdotal
Don’t forget Africa.
“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world” may not be true, but it certainly has an impact on speech. If your nanny, who is raising the child, is an enslaved person from Africa, you’re going to have African speech patterns enter the language.
Don’t forget Africa.
“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world” may not be true, but it certainly has an impact on speech. If your nanny, who is raising the child, is an enslaved person from Africa, you’re going to have African speech patterns enter the language.
There is not single southern accent. I’m from Georgia and people from different regions of the state sound different from each other. There’s even a generational difference too. My father was in his 50’s when I was born, and his accent and other of his age sounded different than my own accent and other people my age. And then there are different accents in other states too. My mom is from South Carolina and her side of the family has a very different accent from my fathers side. I rang up a customer at my first job and asked if he was from coastal South Carolina. He said yes and asked how I knew. I told him because he sounded just like my grandfather.
Source: I’ve live in the south all my life. All of the above is anecdotal
There is not single southern accent. I’m from Georgia and people from different regions of the state sound different from each other. There’s even a generational difference too. My father was in his 50’s when I was born, and his accent and other of his age sounded different than my own accent and other people my age. And then there are different accents in other states too. My mom is from South Carolina and her side of the family has a very different accent from my fathers side. I rang up a customer at my first job and asked if he was from coastal South Carolina. He said yes and asked how I knew. I told him because he sounded just like my grandfather.
Source: I’ve live in the south all my life. All of the above is anecdotal
Not a native speaker, but a linguistics graduate. I once read an article on this in The Atlantic or some other similar publication and, basically, that’s how British settlers used to enunciate back when they arrived in the New World.
Adding up interactions with other settlements or cultures through war or interventions, besides simple language evolutions and so on, contemporary American accents are just derivations of the most common British cadences of the 18th century.
Not a native speaker, but a linguistics graduate. I once read an article on this in The Atlantic or some other similar publication and, basically, that’s how British settlers used to enunciate back when they arrived in the New World.
Adding up interactions with other settlements or cultures through war or interventions, besides simple language evolutions and so on, contemporary American accents are just derivations of the most common British cadences of the 18th century.
Not a native speaker, but a linguistics graduate. I once read an article on this in The Atlantic or some other similar publication and, basically, that’s how British settlers used to enunciate back when they arrived in the New World.
Adding up interactions with other settlements or cultures through war or interventions, besides simple language evolutions and so on, contemporary American accents are just derivations of the most common British cadences of the 18th century.
(Not a linguist, so this is a half-remembered scrap from some documentary.)
There are different types of “southern accent”, but apparently from the various countries of origin of the settlers. Various UK, French, and German accents, slowed down and drawn, apparently become Southern drawls or Northern twangs, depending on how they’re reinforced by a closed group of people.
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