Doing a bit of theater research, and looking for good examples. Any native Mississippians care to weigh in with their expertise?
Morgan Freeman is from Clarksdale. It doesn’t get any more authentically rural Mississippi than that.
What sort of character? The accent might differ by social class.
I can tell you generally that all the Southern accents in Sling Blade are authentic, and it is set in nearby Arkansas.
You could also look up YouTube clips of Mississippi politicos like Haley Barbour and Trent Lott, if you can stomach that sort of thing.
“Maybe someday, after Old Mrs. Hatcher (Lord love her) goes to her heavenly reward, Great Auntie Eliza’s whole misguided marriage to that Yankee will be forgotten and we’ll be accepted back into the social register.”
That’s the kind of accent I’m looking for.
A female character, I guess? Well, here’s a video blogger with a good Southern accent.
May I ask a favor? Pronounce your 'r’s. This is something actors always get wrong (and which grates on the ears of native Southerners). There are only a few coastal accents which are non-rhotic.
In other words, don’t imitate Scarlett O’Hara.
I see you’re in Austin. Shouldn’t be too tough to find a Southern accent there. I know Texans often deny being Southern, but the fact is there’s not a nickel’s worth of difference between the so-called Texas twang and the typical Southern accent.
And that, friend, is precisely why I’m looking for good samples of the genuine article. I’d rather hear an accent produced by a native of the region in question than depend on an imitation performed 70 years ago by an English actress.
But there are many different accents recognizable as distinctly Texan. Dallas, Waco, and Houston, to name a few, can be readily identified by the practiced ear. So to prepare for the role of a rural Mississippian, I’d prefer to hear examples of the genuine dialect than to assume all Southern accents are pretty much the same.
Although, in the past, non-rhoticism was more common in the south than it is now. And, the accents in parts of Mississippi are non-rhotic.
‘Rural’ (as in the geographic descriptor) covers many different races, cultures, education levels and income brackets. Can you be more specific as to the character? There are several major ‘accents’ I notice on a daily basis.
I agree with Slingblade and Morgan Freeman being acceptable. In general, I cringe when I see someone try to portray the authentic Southern accent because so many actors butcher it. But it does vary by region.
Was it? Maybe so, but my 108-year-old grandmother pronounced her 'r’s until she died.
Where? I used to live there as a kid, and I never heard it that way. The only place I can imagine where it might be that way would be the immediate environs of Biloxi, since the non-rhotic accents are confined to pockets on the coasts these days.
A recent movie with surprisingly good Southern accents is Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. All the actors did good work there.
Oh, and in Sling Blade, you might listen especially closely to the accent of Natalie Canerday (who plays Frank’s mother). It’s the real thing. (Check out some of her other films, too. October Skies, for example.)
I can imagine her delivering the line you’ve given us.
The character in question is from a small town in the Jackson area. Age, about 30. White, working class. Time period is the early 70s.
As it happens, I was a kid in that area, in that time period. (We lived in Meridian. Just for a short time, though. My family’s roots are in Georgia.)
I think Natalie Canerday’s accent is the one you’ll want to emulate.
spoke- speaks the truth. Don’t forget to be overly polite, never pronounce a ‘g’ at the end of a word (running = runnin’), no religous swearing, and groups of people are always ya’ll.
This is true, but a single person is never ya’ll. It’s something that I hear and immediately know the person is affecting the accent.
Whoa, now, wait a minute. There are exceptions. (And actually, this is another thing actors often screw up.)
For example, the ‘g’ gets pronounced in these words:
thing = thang
anything = anythang
everything =everythang or everthang
On the other hand:
Nothing = nothin’
Something = sumpthin’
A semi-hijack question:
Query to those Dopers in the know: the film O Brother Where Art Thou? was set in rural Mississippi. How well did the actors do with their Mississippi-an accents? I was always curious, as I have never heard a native from Mississippi speak, to my knowledge.
Well, it was a mixed bag.
George Clooney, Holly Hunter and Tim Blake Nelson were excellent. (They are all native Southerners. In fact, come to think of it, Holly Hunter is another good example of a genuine Southern accent for the OP. She is from Georgia.)
John Turturro was awful. And there were some pretty bad accents in the supporting cast. Didn’t matter, though. The movie was so much fun, I hardly noticed the bad accents. 