As noted in the Wiki page, Boomhauer is from the same town (the fictional Arlen, TX - most closely based on Killeen although the Dallas suburbs or any medium sized city on the I35 corridor between San Antonio and Dallas would probably work) as Hank, Bill, and Dale. None of them speak that way, so it clearly isn’t just a regional accent. Or if it is, it’s obviously not a central / north Texas accent. FWIW there was one episode where he visits his grandmother, who he refers to as “meemaw”, and who speaks the same way. Maybe even though Boomhauer himself doesn’t have a speech impediment, perhaps a grandparent / great grandparent did, and that way of talking just got passed down in the family.
ETA: Looking it up, “meemaw” seems to be especially common among Cajuns. Perhaps Boomhaur’s family was originally from the Cajun areas of Louisiana before they moved to Arlen.
My brother, the pain in the ass, has a speech pattern very close to Boomhauer’s. The family suspects too much substance abuse while attending the University of Illinois and the fact that he’s lived in Texas for the past three decades or so could be a contributing factor.
I worked with a guy a couple of decades ago, who honeymooned in Acapulco. [NB: We’re both Californians.] In addition to an intoxicated woman from Nebraska or someplace, which he mimicked, he met a guy who totally talked like Boomhauer. (And he could mimic that pretty well.)
In the '90s I was watching a documentary on the Civil War wherein was interviewed a ‘refined Southern woman’. I don’t remember if she was from Charlotte, or Atlanta. The thing that sticks in my mind is they way she pronounced ‘War’. She said, ‘WO-wah’.
The first sign of hearing loss is the increasing perception everyone around you is doing just what you say. FYI, just sayin’. But trying not to mumble about it.
I’ve never met someone who has all of Boomhauer’s speech characteristics, but I’ve talked with plenty who have most of them. There’s a couple things at play above and beyond the simple accent. The unfiltered stream-of-consciousness is one thing, which leads to some of the scatterbrained incoherence. Then you pair that with verbal tics like “man” or “dang it” and you have another layer. The one that really gets me is the thoughts that only expressed about 80% of the way before just stopping or moving on to the next thing with an awkward mumbling transition. It’s all very ADHD.
