Southern American English

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Southern American English is a dialect of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from central Kentucky and northern Virginia to the Gulf Coast and from the Atlantic coast to eastern Texas. Southern American English can be divided into different sub-dialects (see American English), with speech differing between, for example, the Appalachian region and the coastal area around Charleston, South Carolina. The South Midlands dialect was influenced by the migration of Southern dialect speakers into the American West. The dialect spoken to various degrees by many African Americans, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), shares many similarities with Southern dialect, unsurprising given that group's strong historical ties to the region.

The Southern American English dialect is often stigmatized (as are other American English dialects such as New York-New Jersey English). Therefore, many speakers of this dialect often attempt to eliminate many of its more distinctive features from their personal idiolect, settling for a more "neutral-sounding" English (General American), though more often this involves changes more in phonetics than vocabulary. Well-known speakers of Southern dialect include United States Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton along with playwright Tennessee Williams and singer Elvis Presley. Comedian Jeff Foxworthy, a speaker of this dialect himself, refers to it in one of his routines as "apparently not the world's most intelligent-sounding accent."

Contents

Overview of the Southern dialect

The overall Southern dialect dialect generally follows the borders of the Confederate states that seceded from the United States during the American Civil War. The general southern dialect has its origins in the English immigrants who moved to the South in the 17th and 18th centuries, of whom most were of European Celtic origins (according to an 1860 census, "three-quarters of white Southerners had surnames that were Scottish, Irish or Welsh in origin." [1]). These immigrants brought with them a very distinct style of English speaking, which was then combined with the African languages spoken by the African Americans who were at this time enslaved in the South. Over time this cultural and linguistic diversity combined with the South's rural isolation, and longtime use and familiarity with the King James Version of the Bible in religious life, to produce a unique American dialect.

The Southern dialect in some form can be found cheifly in the States of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, and the Ozark and Little Dixie areas in Missouri. The dialect found in the remaining rural areas of tidewater Maryland is similar to the dialect found in Virginia, and some experts have also suggested that the dialect found in two of Delaware's three counties in related to Southern. There are also places in Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona, where the prevailing dialect is Southern in character, due to historical settlement by Southerners. Also, the speech patterns in the rural areas of the southernmost Counties of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois could also be condidered Southern.


Pronunciation

Few generalizations can be made about Southern pronunciation as a whole, as there is great variation between regions in the south (see the different southern American English dialects section below for more information). One phenomenon that is probably found throughout the region is the merger of [ɛ] and [ɪ] before nasal consonants, so that pen and pin are pronounced the same, but the pin-pen merger is not found in New Orleans and Savannah. This sound change has spread beyond the south in recent decades and is now quite widespread in the Midwest and West as well.

Other typical (sometimes stereotypical) aspects of the Southern accent:

  • /z/ becomes [d] before /n/, for example [wʌdn̩t] wasn't, [bɪdnɪs] business, but hasn't is sometimes still pronounced [hæzənt] because there already exists a word hadn't pronounced [hædənt].
/z/ → [d] before /n/
  • The diphthong /aɪ/ becomes monophthongized to [aː]. Some speakers exhibit this feature at the ends of words and before voiced consonants but Canadian-style raising before voiceless consonants, so that ride is [raːd] and wide is [waːd], but right is [rəɪt] and white is [hwəɪt]; others monophthongize /aɪ/ in all contexts. The [aː]-sound tends toward an [/æː/]-sound throughout most of the region, so that word pairs like rod (SAE [raːd], normally pronounced without any noticeable rounding) and ride (SAE [ræːd]) are never confused.
/aɪ/ → [aː]
  • The diphthongization or triphthongization of the traditional short front vowels as in the words pat, pet, and pit: these develop a glide up from their original starting position to [j], and then back down to schwa. This is the feature often called the "Southern drawl."
/æ/ → [æjə]
/ɛ/ → [ɛjə]
/ɪ/ → [ɪjə]
  • Like Australian English and English English, the English of the coastal Deep South is historically non-rhotic: it drops the sound of final /r/ before a consonant or a word boundary, so that guard sounds similar to god (but the former has a longer vowel than the latter) and sore like saw. Intrusive /r/, where an /r/ sound is inserted between two vowel sounds ("lawr and order") is not a feature of coastal SAE, as it is in many other non-rhotic accents. The more western (including Appalachian) varieties of SAE are rhotic. Non-rhoticity is rapidly disappearing from almost all Southern accents, to a greater degree than it has been lost in the other traditionally non-rhotic dialects of the East Coast such as New York and Boston. The remaining non-rhotic SAE speakers also uses intrusive r, like New England and New York City.
/ɹ/ → 0 | before /+con/
/ɹ/ → 0 | before #
  • The distinction between the vowels sounds of words like caught and cot or talk and tock is mainly preserved. In much of the Deep South, the vowel found in words like talk and caught has developed into a diphthong, so that it sounds like the diphthong used in the word loud in the Northern United States.
  • For many Southern speakers, some nouns are stressed on the first syllable that would be stressed on the second syllable in other accents. These include police, cement, and behind.
  • The distinction between /ɔr/ and /or/, as in horse and hoarse, for and four etc., is occasionally preserved, especially in non-rhotic varieties.
  • Lax and tense vowels often merge before a dark 'l', making pairs like feel/fill, fail/fell, and fool/full homophones. Some speakers may distinguish between the two sets of words by reversing the normal vowel sound, e.g., feel in SAE may sound like fill, and vice versa. The final 'l'-sound in words like fool may be elided altogether, as it normally is in AAVE.
  • The distinction between w and wh, as in wine and whine is preserved for some speakers.
  • The distinction between /ær/, /ɛr/, and /er/ in marry, merry, and Mary may be preserved by some speakers, but often is not. The r-sound becomes almost a vowel, and may be elided after a long vowel, as it often is in AAVE.
  • Yod-dropping is not found among many speakers, thus /dj/, /nj/, /tj/, in due, new, tune is preserved.
  • The distinction between /ɝr/ and /ʌr/ in furry and hurry is preserved.
  • In some regions of the south, there is a merger of [ɔr] and [ɑr], making cord and card, for and far, form and farm etc. homonyms.
  • The distinction between /ɪr/ and /iːr/ in mirror and nearer, Sirius and serious etc. is preserved.
  • The distinction between pour and poor, more and moor etc. is lost in many regions.
  • The l's in the words walk and talk are often pronounced, causing the words talk and walk to be commonly pronounced /wAlk/ and /tAlk/ by southerners. A sample of that pronunciation can be found at http://www.utexas.edu/courses/linguistics/resources/socioling/talkmap/talk-nc.html.

Word use

  • Use of double modals ("might could," "might should," "might would," etc.)
  • "You" may be "ye" ("Did ye get yer car?")
  • Use of drowneded as the past tense of drown.
  • Use of hot water heater for the tank that heats the water in a house, apartment, business etc.
  • Occasional preservation of the aspirative "h" for the third person singular neuter ("hit").
  • Use of "y'all" as the second person plural pronoun (less commonly "you-all")
    • When speaking about a group, "y'all" is general (I know y'all)--as in that group of people is familiar to you and you know them as a whole, whereas "all y'all" is much more specific and means you know each and every person in that group, not as a whole, but individually (I know all y'all)
    • Some Appalacian and Ozark dialects prefer "you'uns," and by extension "we'uns" and "they'uns" or even "'uns" used as a pronominal suffix to certain verbs.
  • Use of a- prefix on -ing verbs, such as "He was a-hootin' and a-hollerin,'" or "the wind was a-howlin'"
  • Use of "fixin' to" or "a-fixin' to" as an indicator of immediate future action. For example: "He's fixin' to eat," or "We're a-fixin' to go."
  • Use of the word "done" in place of "have" in present perfect constructions, such as in "We done gone to town" (We have gone to town).
  • Partial or total replacement of "have" (to possess) with "got," as in "I got one of them" (I have one of those).
  • Use of the word "ain't" in place of "have not" in past perfect constructions, as in "I ain't done nothin'" (I have not done anything).
  • Replacement of "doesn't" with "don't" (he don't, she don't, it don't, John don't)
  • Use of past participle forms in place of simple past tense forms, as in "I seen that" (I saw that) or "He come up here" (He came up here).
  • Replacement of "those" with "them."
  • Use of "over yonder" in place of "over there" or "in or at that indicated place," especially when being used to refer to a particularly different spot, such as in "the house over yonder"
  • Partial or total replacement of reflexive pronouns, "myself" becoming "me," "himself" becoming "him," etc. For example, "I'm fixin' to paint me a picture," or "He's gonna catch him a big one."
  • Use of "to love on someone or something" in place of "to show affection to" or "be affectionate with someone or something." For example: "He was lovin' on his new kitten."
  • Use of the term 'mosquito hawk' for a dragonfly or a crane fly (Diptera Tipulidae).
  • Use of the term 'Frigidaire' or 'ice box' for a refrigerator.
  • A distinction between the words 'barbecue' and 'grill.' Barbecued chicken is different from grilled chicken, and so on.
  • Word use tendencies from the Harvard Dialect Survey:
    • A carbonated beverage in general as "coke" or "cocola," likely influenced by the dominance of Coca-Cola in the region
    • The small land crustaceans that roll when you touch them as "roley-poleys" rather than "pill bugs" or "woodlouse"
    • The push-cart at the grocery store as a "buggy"
    • The small freshwater crustacean in lakes and streams as a "crawdad," "crawfish," or "crayfish" depending on the location (note: the pronunciations of crawfish and crayfish can be inverse to the spelling; i.e. crawfish pronounced as though it was spelled crayfish and vice versa)

Different Southern American English dialects

In a sense, there is no one dialect called "Southern." Instead, there are a number of regional dialect found across the Southern United States.

Virginia Piedmont

The Virginia Piedmont dialect is possibly the most famous of Southern dialects because of its strong influence on the South's speech patterns. Because the dialect has long been associated with the upperclass or aristocratic plantation class in the South, many of the most important figures in Southern history spoke with a Virginia Piedmont accent. Virginia Piedmont is non-rhotic, meaning speakers pronounce "R" only if it is followed by a vowel (contrary to New York City English, wherein non-rhotic accent is now mostly used by middle- and lower-class speakers). In addition, when the "R" sound comes after a vowel the sound becomes UH (meaning that brother is pronounced like "broth-uh"). The dialect also features "aw" sounds becoming a slided sound "ah-aw." This results in the words "four dogs" sounding like "fo-uh dahawgs." Due to the frequently extended nature of the pronunciation of such sounds in comparison to other regional variants, this phenomenon is frequently referred to as drawl, and the dialect, by extension, Southern Drawl.

Coastal Southern

Coastal Southern resembles Virginia Piedmont but has preserved more elements from the colonial era dialect than almost any other region of the United States. In addition, like Virginia Piedmont, Coastal Southern is non-rhotic.

South Midland

This dialect arose in the Appalachian and Ozark Mountains. The area was settled largely by Scots-Irish, Scots Higlanders, persons from the North and Western Parts of England and Wales, and has retained a number of elements of Elizabethan English (the language spoken by Shakespeare).

Ozark

This dialect developed in the heart of the Ozark Mountains. The dialect was made famous as the one supposedly spoken by the Beverly Hillbillies.

Southern Appalachian

Due to the isolation of the Appalachian regions of the South, the Appalachian accent is one of the hardest for outsiders to understand. This dialect is also rhotic (unlike most Southern dialects), meaning speakers pronounce "R"s wherever they appear in words.

The Southern Appalachian dialect is, among all the dialects of American English, the one most closely related to the Scots dialect of English (see Scots language, Ulster Scots language). The dialect can be heard, as its name implies, in North Georgia, North Alabama, East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Eastern Kentucky, Southwestern Virginia, and West Virginia. Southern Appalachian speech patterns, however, are not entirely confined to these mountain regions previously listed. For instance, there are places in Georgia far from the mountains where among the white population, the manner of speech is indiscernable from the speech spoken in the North Georgia mountains — for instance Glascock County and Jefferson County in the east central part of the state.

The common thread in the areas of the South where a rhotic version of the dialect is heard is almost invariably a traceable line of decsent from Scots or Scots-Irish ancestors amongst its speakers. The dialect is also not devoid of early influence from Welsh settlers, the dialect retaining the Welsh English tendency to pronounce words beginning with the letter "h" as though the "h" were silent; for instance "humble" often is rendered "umble".

Gullah

Main article: Gullah

Sometimes called Geechee, this creole language originated with African American slaves on the coastal areas and coastal islands of Georgia and South Carolina. The dialect was used to communicate with both Europeans and members of African tribes other than their own. Gullah was strongly influenced by West African languages such as Vai, Mende, Twi, Ewe, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, and Kikongo. The name and chorus of the Christian hymn "Kumbaya" is said to be Gullah for come by here. Other English words attributed to Gullah are juke (jukebox), goober (Southern term for peanut) and voodoo. In a 1930s study by Lorenzo Dow Turner, over 4,000 words from many different [[Afr]n languages were discovered in Gullah. Other words, such as yez for ears, are just phonetic spellings of English words as pronounced by the Gullahs, on the basis of influence from Southern & Western English dialects.

Gulf Southern

This area of the South was settled by English speakers moving west from Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas, along with French settlers from Louisiana (see the section below).

Louisiana

Louisiana features a number of dialects. There is Cajun French, which combines elements of Acadian French with other French and Spanish words. This dialect is spoken by many of the older members of the Cajun ethnic group and is said to be dying out. Many younger Cajuns speak Cajun English, which retains Acadian French influences and words, such as "char" (dear) or "nonc" (uncle). The standard French language can also still be heard in Louisiana, along with different mixtures of all of these dialects and languages.


African American Vernacular English

This type of Southern American English orignated in the Southern States where blacks at that time were held as slaves by the whites. Some of these slaves were freed and sent back to Africa in a country which is now known as Liberia. These blacks originally spoke indigenous African dialects, until the whites forced many of these blacks to speak English. This caused many blacks to lose their indigenous heritage and follow the American way. And because the white slave masters spoke English with a Southern American accent, this lead to the development of African American Vernacular English today. It is spoken by blacks in many parts of the U.S., and it is also sometimes spoken by whites, typically in urban areas.

See also

External link

References

  • Crystal, David (2000). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge, England : Cambridge University Press.
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