grin I’m with you there. My Southern cow-orkers can always tell when I’m tired, because my Long Island accent comes out very strongly. And I mean, Fran Drescher nasal.
And FTR, I love ** Ryujin’s ** Southern Gennelman ™ accent. But when I went up to Tennessee, I was shocked to hear the stereotypical Southern hick accent. I hadn’t realized people actually spoke like that.
ftr, the “hick” sound isn’t restricted to Southern backwaters. Ever talk to an older small town Midwesterner? Some of the pronounciations and idioms are impossible to follow.
And, at times, what we perceive as an accent is actually a dialect. Ask Lamia about that end of things. 
Tyger:
You’re damn skippy we can.
And Morelin:
You obviously haven’t met my stepfamily. Although they’re an odd mixture of Georgia and Texas backwater hick accents.
Not all Tennesseans do talk like that. Some do, granted. Many do not.
Another factor in all this is the “carpetbagger effect” which has been an ingredient in Southern life since at least the Civil War. Non-southerners continue (despite their alleged aversions) to move into this region for whatever reasons (weather, scenery, better paying jobs, lower tax rates, there may be others) and to have their influence felt in many ways. Speech is one of them.
Stay in the mainly rural regions and the carpetbaggers have had little influence. Go to the larger towns and their position in the community may be such that their accents are less sullied by the exposure to the Southern sloppy speech and they may have even persuaded the locals to adapt to the “right” way to say things.
Get into the bigger towns and cities and you’re just as likely to hear Valley Doll or one whose every other word is “like” or whatever the latest MTV usage dictates for being mod or in or whatever.
The pure Southern accent (if it even exists these days) is very hard to find. You have to look (listen?) for it. When you do find it, it’s recognizably cultured and smart.
Hee Haw, The Grand Ole Opry and Foxworthy are just three examples of how smart Southerners have made some decent pocket money ridiculing themselves. That may be stupid, but look at the buyers!
Zeldar–you’re absolutely right. Jeff Foxworthy, for one, has made his name making fun of his own “folks,” and himself, based on how unintellignet they are. Takes a pretty sharp guy to do that!
I hate generalizations, October but if I had to make one I’d say that rural people have a better gift for self-mockery and self-ridicule than their more uptight urban counterparts. The lifestyle breeds a sense of what-the-fuck. There are more important things to worry about.
And in the South (not really especially, as it applies anywhere that the rural economies have been rendered useless by the mechanization of farm life and the ruin of the small landowner/farmer/agrarian) the movement to towns and cities of otherwise rural people, for factory jobs and the like, has brought that rural mentality with it. The humor, the speech, the basic way of coping all come as part of that urbanization. Roots get lost in that process, but language seems to hold on longer than other facets of the “old ways.”
Check the rurals in any state, coast to coast, and I suspect you find the same pride and fuck-you-if-you-don’t-like-it way of holding on to the few things remaining of what used to be a great way to live.
There’s much wisdom in the backwoods people in this area. TV programs are devoted to the back roads and little towns and to the rugged people who just refuse to be carried along into the melting pot. I’m proud to live in a region that values its past. It would be better for all of us if some of the good things were retained as we “move forward.”
Since I am not a native English-speaker (though I’ve got to where after a couple of days of immersion I could almost merge completely into Mid-Atlantic), all accents are interesting to me – but certainly, in my experience a genteel southern-USA accent enhances the level of heat the lady in question may be already generating.
Oxford, definitely. Cockney works, but only if it’s accompanied by a mischievous expression; I prefer an Aussie accent. I’m fairly neutral toward Yorkshire and Birmingham accents. Liverpool accents are usually just depressing, IMHO–I think it’s the tendency to drop in pitch at the end of phrases.
I thinl This speaks to this thread quite nicely.
An accent, southern or whatever, is a polarizer. If I think the person is attractive for their other qualities, the accent will make them more so. If I think the person is unattractive, the accent will make them more so.
Southern accents on women make me think of them as dainty. I don’t really find dainty women attractive.
I think women with European (but not Irish, for whatever reason)accents a turn on.
from Blazing Saddles
“We’ll take the Negroes and the Chinese*, but no Irish!”
*yeah, I changed the wording ever so slightly…
Well, I was flipping through the channels and saw a woman wotha southern accent, but it was almost un-noticable. I think that did make her more attractive. I guess it depends on the person.
No.
Liverpool.
Hell yes! Especially George Harrison (who’s accent was the strongest of the four’s). Lennon second.
Alabama accents (Holly Hunter) and Louisiana (James Carville) are the prettiest. I’m from NC, and I sound like a female John Edwards.
Some people from outside the South think a southern accent = ignorance. I was in a hotel in London one morning, told my waitperson, “I’ll just have coffee and toast, thanks,” and the couple at the next table, in their very NOO YAWK accents, began singing the theme from the Beverly Hillbillies.
IMHO, drawls are often cute/sexy on a guy OR girl, but there are also some that sound rather…uneducated, for lack of a better word.
British and Irish accents/brogues drive me wild. Quite the turn on.
What absolute morons. I’d have played it up and started asking if they had any possum stew or good ole’ fried corn pones.
And for the record, I love a good brogue. Mmmmm…what would it be like if a Texas Drawl married an Irish brogue?
Don’t know if they’re sexy. I don’t really notice them but that’s because the first 10 years of my life I grew up on a small rural farm in the south. But my parents being ever so bored with farm life decide its time to move. So at age 10 only having lived on this small farm (we didn’t even have a T.V.) got moved to Los Angeles.
I still don’t think I have gotten over the culture shock. However since I went though JR high and high school out here I have developed an almost hybrid accent. It goes from not being there to very strong. It depends on whom I am talking too or how tired/drunk I am. I’ve been told that sometimes I change mid sentence back and forth. But since I grew up around both I don’t notice them.
However I will never give up Y’all.
Y’all is more than just cordial – it’s an functional improvement.
In English, second-person pronouns are identical for singular and plural – there is no really convenient way to distinguish between addressing a group of people or an individual within that group using personal pronouns. Y’all (and its northern brethren youse and you’ns) handily solve this problem.
I was born and raised in West Virginia, which isn’t technically the south – a friend there once described our hometown as the boundary between y’all and you’ns.