"Larry the Cable Guy" and Southern accents

[TV_time]

An interesting irony here might be that John Hillerman who played Higgins on Magnum P.I. had one of the thickest natural Texas accents around. He was from Dennison, Texas but worked on erasing it so he could get parts like Higgins, Betty White’s husband on “The Betty White Show” and his part on Ellery Queen.

[Spoke]

[quote=“johnspartan, post:40, topic:703140”]

Well, I’m gonna go ahead and say it was a skosh turned up at times…

[/QUOTE]

You can find plenty of people with exactly that accent in NW Georgia. Jan Hooks is lampooning a very specific (and very real) “type.”

[Evil_Captor]

@Spoke

Disagree. But I’ll give you a shot. Is this accent (the guy on the left) north Georgia or south Georgia?

What about this one?

Those are from opposite ends of the state, but I really don’t think there’s a nickel’s worth of difference between them.

The first guy sounds middle Georgia, the second one sounds north Georgia, but neither has particularly pronounced accents, and the second guy it’s hard to pick up his accent because he’s been trained to do that preacherly style of oration that messes up the rhythms of his speech and the accents as well.

[Lacunae_Matata]

@Labrador_Deceiver

His southern redneck accent is obviously fake, but still miles better than any fake southern genteel accent I’ve heard Hollywood attempt. I think a lot of southerners might say he sounds country, but not from their neck of the woods. In other words, he doesn’t sound like any one specific region that I’ve ever spent time in, but it doesn’t make me wince, either.

Agree about LTCG - he wouldn’t sound out of place in any bar named “Bubba’s” that I’ve ever been to, even if one can’t pin down his accent to a specific place. Rural southern, and it works for him.

As for fake genteel southern accent: May I point you toward Kevin Spacey’s role as the late Jim Williams in the (mostly terrible) Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil? Really, throughout the movie, Mr. Spacey’s accent is spot-on southern/coastal educated Georgia.

[Osiris_the_1st]

I’m in from Alabama and it seems like accents are highly variable within a small geographic area here. I would have said he exagerated his accent not completely faked it. The most accurate accent I’ve ever heard in a film were in* Fried Green Tomatoes*. Mary Stuart Masterson and Mary-Louise Parker did quite well, but still hit a sour note now and again. Which makes it funny to me that Parker mispronounced the city of Mobile, AL in the movie Red. (FTR it is pronounced Mo-beel not Mo-bull.)

[Spoke]

@Evil_Captor

The first guy sounds middle Georgia, the second one sounds north Georgia, but neither has particularly pronounced accents, and the second guy it’s hard to pick up his accent because he’s been trained to do that preacherly style of oration that messes up the rhythms of his speech and the accents as well.

First guy is from northwest Georgia. Second guy is from Cairo, down on the Florida line.

[Evil_Captor]

@Spoke

First guy is from northwest Georgia. Second guy is from Cairo, down on the Florida line.

Well to be fair to me, neither my north Georgia nor middle Georgia families sound like either guy. Lotsa variation, to be sure.

[ExTank]

Question asked and answered, but I recollect a similar thread from some years back, wherein someone lambasted Tommy Lee Jones for his “fake” accent.

:smack:

[John_Mace]

@AliceCoopersGolfGame

I agree with one of the posters above - as someone who lives in (but is not from) the South, I’d say his accent is more redneck/rural than Southern.

And I think that’s what he’s going for, too.