What is give away that some one has southern US accent ? What I read on the internet is the vowel sounds and the letter R is main giveway.
Anyone know here?
Also anyone know of any movies , TV shows or good US presidents with southern US accent that may help me?
What I have seen is people in the suburbs ,towns and country talk slower and in city talk fast and less pronunciation of words almot like they have to say it very fast and talk fast like the world is coming to end.
I seen the movie Fried Green Tomatoes some guys in that movie I think may have bit of thinker accent or southern US accent . But girls in that movie not so noticeable the accent at all .
The girls in the movie mississippi burning have bit more noticeable accent.:o
But it help me understand the vowel sounds and the letter R has that is good place to start find out if some one has southern US accent or what to listen for in movies.
I also hear the letter t in would get change to the d so butter- budder in the south and most people say supper than dinner in the south.
There is not just one southern accent. A rural Texan accent sounds very different from a Carolinian accent, for example. Someone from Louisiana is going to sound even more different still.
Also, if you randomly picked someone from Cave Junction, Oregon, you might think that they had a southern accent even though they are several thousand miles away from the south.
Just keep in mind that the stereotypical Southern accent in movies is largely invented from whole cloth and at this point self-referential. I remember reading about some Hollywood dialog coach insisting that Kim Basinger—who grew up in Georgia—drop her Rs so she’d sound like she was from Georgia. Much better to look at news coverage from Southern disasters or Christian testimonials and Bible lessons on YouTube.
The dropped R is southern, the hard R is Appalachian. But what we have in common is how we pronounce “i.” It sounds almost like “ahh.” It’s flattened. And we tend to use phrases like breast of chicken, soda crackers and funny-turned (weird.)
I have never actually heard any American pronounce butter in casual conversation with a hard T, and I’ve lived in the North my entire life, and travelled all over the US. Everyone says “budder”, “butter” sounds like an English person.
Same here. It’s called an intervocalic alveolar flap. If you listen carefully, it’s not exactly the same thing as a “regular” d sound. If I enunciate both “water” (with a “t”) and “wadder” (with a “d,” a voiced alveolar stop) sound different than the way I (and most Americans) say “water” (with a flap.) But it’s a subtle distinction, and “wadder” is a reasonable way to approximate it.
I grew up in Michigan, and speak pretty much like most people from California, or people on the radio. But a lot of people who grew up in rural areas have a bit of “souther” accent even in Michigan. I did a little work in Kokomo IN, and the people there definitely had a “southern” accent despite being well north of the Mason Dixon line. Anyone from the Ohio River valley, even well into the north side (in Ohio) has a very distinct twang, that anyone from California would immediately call “southern”.
As mentioned above, there are lots of different accents, all called “southern”. My mother is from West Virginia, and on the city street where she grew up, every family up and down the block had decidedly different accents, as did her mother (from a urban Kentucky) and her father (from very rural WVa). Kids have different accents from their parents: their accents match what they hear in school, not what they hear at home.
The Texas accent is probably the most distinct, being partly a western and partly a southern accent. I’ve never been to Nebraska, but I bet you’d find people who sound a bit like Texans living next door to people who sound like the folks in the movie Fargo.
Any attempt to fixate on one aspect of accent will miss a wealth of variety, and leave a lot of definitely “southern” accents out.
I had a college friend from Biafra, Nigeria, who used to chide me with perfect diction, “Jeff, you never pronounce your T’s!” A little experimentation showed that he couldn’t even differentiate between my “an” and “ant”, which any American and I suspect any Brit could, easily. The difference is similar to “water” vs. “wadder”, but the latter is quite a bit more subtle.
“Pin” instead of “pen.” Courtney Cox is a southern girl who (I presume) has done a lot of work on losing her accent, but it still comes out when she says “pen.”
I read that too the drop of Rs and G’s like walking is walkin.That is probably old school and with TV and media now probably not many people US do this now.
Not sure want you mean by hard Rs .
What new trend I have seen with broadcasters today is talking very fast and high pich way of talking.
Here example.
CNN’s Erin Burnett is known for this.
Now contrast is very different to this one.
Where they talk bit slower and talk more of low pich and more pushing the words out mouth more.
The contrast is very different to broadcasters like CNN.
This. I grew up in Texas, and now live in the north. I’ve worked hard over my entire life to not develop an accent… but I can’t break myself of the habit of using the word “Y’all”.
Well, that and “Coke”. “What kind of coke y’all want?”
Somebody from Georgia might say, “We had some friends ovah the other night,” whereas a country person from the hills would say, “We had some friends oveR (strong) the other night.” That’s the main distinction I can think of because we all drop our “g"s.
I don’t know how to pronounce pen other than pin.
ETA " Across the rivah” as oppossed to “acros(t) the riveR.”
