# data[].attributes.body
The idea of a separate southern vocabulary originated from the Civil War era where the Confederate slave states separated from the northern Union.  This then led to a divide in culture and beliefs, which would spread to things such as language.  This continues to exist today as those who are from the former Confederate are considered to have a southern accent.

# data[].attributes.body
The great amounts of spirituality and religious beliefs that exist in the South greatly affect the vocabulary of this region.  The Bible Belt as it is known, for they are very religious, have more respect and fear for God. #BibleBelt

# data[].attributes.body
“En wid dat I fetch’ her a slap side de head dat sont her a-sprawlin’. Den I went into de yuther room, en ’uz gone ’bout ten minutes; en when I come back dah was dat do’ a-stannin’ open yit, en dat chile stannin’ mos’ right in it, a-lookin’ down and mournin’, en de tears runnin’ down.  My, but I wuz mad!  I was a-gwyne for de chile, but jis’ den—it was a do’ dat open innerds—jis’ den, ’long come de wind en slam it to, behine de chile, ker-BLAM!—en my lan’, de chile never move’!  My breff mos’ hop outer me; en I feel so—so—I doan’ know HOW I feel.  I crope out, all a-tremblin’, en crope aroun’ en open de do’ easy en slow, en poke my head in behine de chile, sof’ en still, en all uv a sudden I says POW! jis’ as loud as I could yell.  She never budge!  Oh, Huck, I bust out a-cryin’ en grab her up in my arms, en say, ‘Oh, de po’ little thing!  De Lord God Amighty fogive po’ ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long’s he live!’  Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb deef en dumb—en I’d ben a-treat’n her so!” (Twain 155-156)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Starting with the Coast
John Fought explains why so many Americans now speak Suthin', tracing the history and geography of dialects in American speech. Read Summary

Most Americans can tell a "Southern accent" from the speech patterns of other regions. Among many sound features recognized as Southern, one in particular stands out: a distinctive pronunciation of the vowel in words such as my, high, light and nine. In the North and West, words such as these have a-y glide after the vowel; in the South, this-y offglide is missing some or all of the time, leading to dialect spellings such as ma,mah and so on. Some dialectologists affectionately term this vowel "Confederate A." It is also heard sometimes in speech from areas next to the Old South, such as Oklahoma, southern Iowa, and farther west.

Regional differences in how we pronounce R sounds are another important feature of American English dialects. Studies of American dialect geography show that R before a vowel, in words such as red, bread, raw, around, is pronounced in much the same way all over the country. Likewise, in most of the United States, in words with an R before a consonant (or before a pause at the end of a word or phrase), for example in card, fire, fork, turn, the R sounds are also pronounced. But in a number of relatively small areas along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, R before a consonant or pause is "dropped." That is, speakers lengthen the preceding vowel sound. These zones of what linguists sometimes call Rless or R-dropping dialects are found in Eastern New England, including Boston ( paahk the caah); in New York City, and in pockets along the coastal plains of Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and the Florida panhandle.

Why do Bostonians drop the r ?

Where did the "Confederate A" come from? Why do Bostonians drop the r? The answers lie deep in our past.

These coastal plains were areas of early European settlement; except for New York City and New Orleans, their early settlers came mainly from the Rless areas of Southeastern England , where both prestigious and popular speech varieties had become Rless shortly before emigration began. In America, some of the aura of the Rless English prestige dialect clung to such speech through its association with the influential proprietors of the Southern plantation agricultural system and with the metropolitan speech of large Northern seaboard cities. For a long time, however, the perceived status of American R less dialects has been paradoxical, evoking both negative and positive stereotypes.

Putting Dialect on the Map

To understand how the coastal southern Rless zones formed, we must look at the early history of their European settlement. The prime farmland of the tidewater zone of the South was mostly occupied by 1750. This was the first American zone of plantation agriculture, where farmers first grew commercial crops of rice, indigo, tobacco, and (later on) cotton. Most of these crops required plenty of water for cultivation and for transportation to market. Such pockets along the Southern coastal zone and its rivers fostered a plantation system of large-scale, capital-intensive farming, soon dominated by slave labor, in zones with rich soil, rainfall and waterways. Along the geological break between the coastal plain and the higher piedmont to its west, the rivers have rapids or waterfalls forming the Fall Line, a barrier to easy water transport of bulk cargo. This Fall Line, together with differences in soil type, made it disadvantageous to operate plantations in much of the inland zone.

AAVE has the greatest number of speakers of any variety of R less Southern

What does this have to do with language? Differences between the agriculture of the coastal and inland zones came to be matched by other cultural differences. Where the plantation system and its wealthy proprietors dominated, there was also a large slave population, sometimes a majority. Millions of slave descendents, although now unevenly dispersed throughout the United States, retain a vernacular speech that is Rless and Southern in its vowel system. This variety, known as African American Vernacular English, has by far the greatest number of speakers of any variety of R less Southern.

Immigration continued to shape our language. Starting about 1750 and continuing for more than a century, Scots Irish speakers of R ful dialects from northern and western Britain emigrated to America in growing numbers for political and economic reasons. By that time, tidewater areas and their port cities along the Southern coasts had been colonized and their farmlands taken up. Newly arriving British Northerners, who had left family subsistence farms and small towns, found open land that suited them in the uplands of the piedmont and along the valleys and streams of the Appalachian and Allegheny mountains. Many of them entered America through the port of Philadelphia, in that early period the largest and busiest in the nation. Most of them moved inland west and southwest, following the rivers that were then the arteries of inland transportation. Their part of the South was settled, in a sense, from behind.

Continuing migration helped to fill in the Inland South, extending it beyond the Mississippi to Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and beyond. Dialect maps show how language features traveled with the new Americans, taking Inland Southern down the major rivers. A pioneering article by Raven McDavid, a great American dialect scholar brings these two layers of cultural history together as they shaped the basic patterns of coastal and inland agriculture, speech and politics in South Carolina.

That's NASCAR, Not NASCAH

Over the past century, it appears, the Rful inland varieties of both Northern and Southern speech have continued to gain population and influence not only within their own primary areas, but also at the expense of the Rless coastal varieties. The changing pattern of economic concentration within the country may be driving this shift. Whatever the reason, the cultural importance of Rful Southern now extends far beyond its old upland geographic base. It has long been the prevailing dialect of the military services (except possibly for the Navy), of NASCAR and other auto sports, and of country music, whose performers are expected to imitate it unless they are native speakers, as is Dolly Parton. Rful Southern is naturally associated with the thriving "Redneck" subculture so expertly lampooned by the comedian Jeff Foxworthy, also a native speaker of Rful Southern. In many parts of the country outside its large home territory, even where it is not the dominant dialect, it is strongly represented. Although it is hard to be sure, it seems that not long ago, Rful Southern overtook R ful Northern as the variety of American English spoken by the greatest number of people.

To understand the basis of its growing influence in American culture and society, we need only look at major regional population (and economic) shifts to the Sunbelt, which have been especially strong since World War II.

Total Population (Millions) 76.0 122.8 281.4

Northeast & Midwest 61% 59% 38%

South & West 39% 41% 62%

Over the past century, the main Northern dialect groups have lost about 20 percent of their share in the ever-growing population. Southern and Western dialects, including the inland Rful group, have gained about 20 percent. The South by itself now has a population of more than 100 million people, the largest of the four Census regions. If we add R ful Southern speakers from parts of other adjoining states where speech is often perceived as "Southern," this might shift another 10 million speakers from the Northern to the Southern count.

In time, as the Sunbelt shift continues (allowing for the usual cultural lag), we should expect Rful Southern to become accepted as Standard American speech, even if this is not always true today. One might begin to trace the cultural shift thus far through changing attitudes toward R ful Southern speech. Consider the growth in the size and spread of the audience for Country Music and the diversification of the genre itself. The genre began with regional performers singing in their native accent at live venues and on regional radio broadcasts. Like jazz and the blues, it has grown into an international style with an international audience. Among the international performers are a number of singers whose native language is not English, who imitate Inland Southern. The roster of participants and the audience for most types of car racing is also dominated by speakers of Inland Southern.
Power of the Media?
A common misperception is that TV will make us all sound alike

National distribution systems for voice media were first developed in the 1930s. First came the motion picture production and distribution syndicates, followed by national radio and television networks that encouraged their performers to use standardized pronunciations. There is a common misperception that the advent of these media led to a homogenization of American English. But much diversity remains: we learn the foundations of our language before mass media play a major role in our lives. It is surely significant that the emergence of early media standards did not cause America's decentralized, locally controlled school systems to make any serious efforts to define and impose national standards of pronunciation - as is common in many European educational systems.

What's more, the brief and partial emergence of media standards appears to have been different in sound films and in broadcasting. Silent films (all that was possible until 1929) were at first a natural extension of the well-developed industry of theater and vaudeville. For decades, films drew on those resources, which may help to explain the very noticeable stagy diction, much of it at least R less Northern if not quite British, heard in many early sound films.

This stage style steadily gave way to more relaxed American pronunciations (and acting styles). A careful study by Nancy C. Elliott of a sample of American actors in American films made from the 1930s through the 1970s shows a steady decline in the average rates of R-dropping, from about 60 percent in the 1930s to zero percent in the 1970s. Even individual performers with long careers modified their pronunciation over time. In this, broadcasting seems to have been different from films. Due to limited technology, radio broadcasting originally only reached local listeners, and regional varieties of speech were commonly heard over the airwaves. (Even now, we often hear local speech varieties in local newscasts; even more so in local commercials.) However, once national radio networks came into being, their central offices adopted network-wide pronunciation standards for employees to use on the air. These standards came to be based on the speech of the Inland Northeast and the Northern Midwest regions, whose dialect group, Inland Northern, had a plurality of speakers in America by the 1930s.

Rless Southern and Rless Northern are losing ground... R ful varieties are gaining

It is hard to forecast the pace and extent of the changes in usage, let alone language attitudes and expectations, that lie ahead. It is clear, however, that for generations both Rless Southern and Rless Northern speech have been losing ground and that Rful varieties have been gaining. It may be that in practical terms, we already have a well-established dual standard of Rless Northern and R less Southern, each dominant in its own region, and each accepted outside it. If this is not yet so, it seems very likely that soon it will be. Time will tell if Inland Southern will continue to grow in geographic and social importance until it becomes the new "General American" variety.

Terms

American R: a special vowel sound with lip-rounding, raising or curling back of the tip of the tongue, and raising of the back of the tongue.

Rful, Rless: these informal terms refer to the dropping or retention of R after a vowel and before a consonant or before a pause in speaking.

Suggested Reading/Additional Resources

Elliott, Nancy C. 'A Study in the Rhoticity of American Film Actors.' Voice and Speech Review. 2000.

Lippi-Green, Rosina. English with an Accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

McDavid, Raven. 'Postvocalic R in South Carolina: A social analysis' American Speech 23 (1948):194-203. Reprinted: Dell Hymes, ed.,Language in Culture and Society: A reader in linguistics and anthropology, New York: Harper & Row, 1964; A. S. Dil, ed.,Varieties of American English: Essays by Raven McDavid, Jr., Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980.

John G. Fought, now an independent scholar, was an Associate Professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania and has also taught at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and at Pomona College. He written on modern Mayan , Chorti (Mayan) Texts I, University of (Pennsylvania Press, 1972) and on the history of American linguistics Leonard Bloomfield: Assessments of Leading Linguists, (Routledge, 1999), and, with Dell Hymes, American Structuralism, (Mouton, 1981). He has studied and taught American regional and social dialectology for many years.
Back to Top

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Do You Speak American . Sea to Shining Sea . American Varieties . Southern | PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Starting with the Coast John Fought explains why so many Americans now speak Suthin', tracing the history and geography of dialects in American speech. Read Summary Most Americans can tell a "Southern accent" from the speech patterns of other regions.

# data[].attributes.body
This video explains the origins for the southern language and how it has changed over time

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Older Southern American English was a set of American English dialects of the Southern United States, primarily spoken by white Southerners up until the American Civil War, moving towards a state of decline by the turn of the nineteenth century, further accelerated after World War II and again, finally, by the Civil Rights Movement. These dialects have since largely given way, on a larger regional level, to a more unified and younger Southern American English, recognized today by a unique vowel shift and certain other vocabulary and accent characteristics. Some features unique to older Southern U.S. English persist today, like non-rhoticity, though typically in only very localized dialects or speakers.

This group of American English dialects evolved over a period of several hundred years, primarily from older varieties of British English spoken by those who initially settled the area. Given that language is an entity that is constantly changing, the English of the colonists was quite different from any variety of English spoken today. The colonists who initially settled the Tidewater area spoke a variety of Early Modern English, which itself was varied. The older Southern dialects thus originated in varying degrees from a mix of the speech of immigrants from the British Isles, who moved to the South in the 17th and 18th centuries, and perhaps also creole or post-creole speech of African slaves.

One theory of historian David Hackett Fischer's book Albion's Seed is that indentured servants from Southern England settled in and therefore influenced the Tidewater dialect in Virginia, while poor Northern English and Northern Irish families did the same for the early dialect of the Southern backcountry; however, linguists have disputed that such migration patterns specifically influenced the American South's dialect development, with a dialect-mixture model being more widely accepted. For example, an Appalachian Journal linguistic article reveals the flawed premises and misrepresentation of sources in Albion's Seed, asserting that a singular influence on Southern backcountry speech is based in no conclusive body of evidence.

The earliest English settlers of the colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts were mainly people from Southern England. The Boston, Massachusetts; Norfolk, Virginia; and Charleston, South Carolina areas maintained strong commercial and cultural ties to England. Thus, the colonists and their descendants defined "social class" according to England's connotations. As the upper-class English dialect changed, the dialects of the upper-class Americans in these areas changed. Two examples are the " r-dropping" (or non-rhoticity) of the late 18th and early 19th century, resulting in the similar r-dropping found in Boston and parts of Virginia during the cultural " Old South", as well as the trap-bath split, which came to define these same two areas (as well as other areas of the South that imitated this phenomenon) but virtually no other region of the United States.

It is difficult to account for all variants of the local accent, which have largely been supplanted by newer Southern features.

The growth of timber, coal, railroad, steel, textile, and tobacco mill industries throughout the South after the Civil War, along with the whole country's resulting migration changes, may have contributed to the expansion of a more unified Southern accent (now associated with the twentieth century), which gradually ousted nineteenth-century Southern accents. Before World War II, the demographic tendency of the South was out-migration, but after the war, a counter-tendency emerged. Now, a high in-migration of Northerners, especially toward urban areas of the South, may have been another motivation for the abandonment of older Southern accent features. Finally, the Civil Right Movement seems to have led white and black Southerners alike to resist accent features associated with the other racial group and even develop newly distinguishing features, which may explain the sudden adoption of rhoticity among most white Southerners (and continued non-rhoticity among black Americans) since the middle of the twentieth century onwards.

The phonologies of early Southern English in the United States were diverse. The following pronunciation features were very generally characteristic of the older Southern region as a whole:

Lack of Yod-dropping: Pairs like do and due, or toon and tune, were often distinct in these dialects because words like due, lute, new, etc. historically contained a diphthong similar to /ju/ (like the you sound in cute or puny). (as England's RP standard pronunciation still does), but Labov et al. report that the only Southern speakers who make a distinction today use a diphthong /ɪu/ in such words. They further report that speakers with the distinction are found primarily in North Carolina and northwest South Carolina, and in a corridor extending from Jackson to Tallahassee. For most of the South, this feature began disappearing after World War II.
Yod-coalescence: Words like dew were pronounced as "Jew", and Tuesday as "choose day."

Wine-whine distinction: distinction between "w" and "wh" in words like "wine" and "whine", "witch and "which", etc.

Horse-hoarse distinction: distinction between pairs of words like "horse" and "hoarse", "for" and "four", etc.

Rhoticity and non-rhoticity: The pronunciation of the r sound only before or between vowels, but not after vowels, is known as non-rhoticity and was historically associated with the major plantation regions of the South: specifically, the entire Piedmont and most of the South's Atlantic Coast in a band going west towards the Mississippi River, as well as all of the Mississippi Embayment and some of the western Gulf Coastal Plain. This was presumably influenced by the non-rhotic East Anglia and London England pronunciation. Additionally, some older Southern dialects were even "variably non-rhotic in intra-word intervocalic contexts, as in carry [kʰæi]." Rhotic accents of the older Southern dialects, which fully pronounce all historical r sounds, were somewhat rarer and primarily spoken in Appalachia, the eastern Gulf Coastal Plain, and the areas west of the Mississippi Embayment.

Palatalization of /k/ and /g/ before /ɑr/: Especially in the older South along the Atlantic Coast, the consonants (as in key or coo) and (as in guy or go), when before the sound (as in car or barn), were often pronounced with the tongue fronted towards the hard palate. Thus, for example, garden in older Southern was something like "gyah(r)den" [ˈgjɑ(ɹ)dən] and "cart" like "kyah(r)t" [cʰjɑ(ɹ)t]. This pronunciation feature was in decline by the late 1800s.

Lack or near-lack of glide weakening: The gliding vowel in words like prize (but less commonly in price or other situations of this vowel appearing before a voiceless consonant) commonly has a "weakened" glide today in the South; however, this only became a documented feature since the last quarter of the 1800s and was otherwise absent or inconsistent in earlier Southern dialects. Today, the lack of glide weakening persists in the High Tider and updated Lowcountry accents. Full weakening has become a defining feature only of the modern Southern dialects, particularly the most advanced sub-varieties.

Mary-marry-merry distinction: Unlike most of the U.S. and modern Southern, older Southern did not merge the following three vowels before /r/: [e~eə] (as in Mary), [æ] (as in marry), and [ɛ] (as in merry). Although the three are now merging or merged in modern Southern English, the "marry" class of words remains the least likely among modern Southerners to merge with the other two.

Clear /l/ between front vowels: Unlike modern Southern and General American English's universally "dark" /l/ sound (often represented as [ɫ]), older Southern pronunciation had a "clear" (i.e. non-velarized) /l/ sound whenever /l/ appears between front vowels, as in the words silly, mealy, Nellie, etc.

Was, what and of pronounced with [ɑ]: The stressed word what, for example, rhymed with cot (not with cut, as it does elsewhere in the U.S.).

No happy-tensing: The final vowel of words like happy, silly, monkey, parties, etc. were not tensed as they are in newer Southern and other U.S. dialects, meaning that this vowel sounded more like the [ɪ] of fit than the [i] of feet.

, as in goat, toe, robe, etc., kept a back starting place (unlike most Southern since World War II, but like most Northern U.S. dialects today); this became an opener [ɔu~ɒu] in the early 1900s. The modern fronted form of the Atlantic South started as far back as the 1800s in northeastern North Carolina, in the form [ɜy], but only spread slowly, until accelerating after World War II.

pronounced as [sɹ] (e.g. causing shrimp, shrub, etc. to sound like srimp, srub, etc.); this feature was reported earliest in Virginia.

Plantation South

Older speech of the Plantation South included those features above, plus:

Non-rhoticity: R-dropping historically occurred in the greater central sections of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, and in coastal Texas and some other coastal communities of the Gulf states. Rhoticity (or r-fulness) was more likely in the southernmost sections of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, as well as in northern Florida, western Louisiana, and eastern Texas.

Trap-bath split: Words like bath, dance, and ask, used a different vowel ([æ̈ɛ~æ̈e]) than words like trap, cat, and rag ([æ~æ̈ɛæ̈]). A similarly-organized (though different-sounding) split occurs in Standard British English.

, as in nurse, was predominantly up-gliding, non-rhotic [ɜɪ] in the "Deep South" (all the Plantation South except North Carolina).

Due to the former isolation of some regions of the Appalachian South, the Appalachian accent may be difficult for some outsiders to understand. This dialect is also rhotic, meaning speakers pronounce Rs wherever they appear in words, and sometimes when they do not (for example, "worsh" or "warsh" for "wash"). Because of the extensive length of the mountain chain, noticeable variation also exists within this subdialect.

The Southern Appalachian dialect can be heard, as its name implies, in north Georgia, north Alabama, east Tennessee, northwestern South Carolina, western North Carolina, eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia, western Maryland, and West Virginia. Southern Appalachian speech patterns, however, are not entirely confined to the mountain regions previously listed.

The dialect here is often thought to be a window into the past, with various claims being made that it is either a pocket of Elizabethan English which survived or the way that the Scots-Irish-origin people that make up a large fraction of the population there would have spoken. However, these are both incorrect. Though some of the distinctive words used in Appalachia have their origins in the Anglo-Scottish border region, a more realistic comparison is the way that people in North America would have spoken in the Colonial period.

Researchers have noted that the dialect retains a lot of vocabulary with roots in " Early Modern English" owing to the make-up of the early European settlers to the area.

The Lowcountry, most famously centering on the cities of Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, once constituted its own entirely unique English dialect region. Traditionally often recognized as a Charleston accent, it included these additional features, most of which no longer exist today:

The " Down East" Outer Banks coastal region of Carteret County, North Carolina, and adjacent Pamlico Sound, including Ocracoke and Harkers Island, are known for additional features, some of which are still spoken today by generations-long residents of its unincorporated coastal and island communities, which have largely been geographically and economically isolated from the rest of North Carolina and the South since their first settlement by English-speaking Europeans. The same is true for the very similar dialect area of the Delmarva (Delaware-Maryland-Virginia) Peninsula and neighboring islands in the Chesapeake Bay, such as Tangier and Smith Island. These two regions historically share many common pronunciation features, sometimes collectively called a High Tider (or "Hoi Toider") accent, including:

Rhoticity (or r-fulness, like in most U.S. English, but unlike in most other older Atlantic Southern dialects)

, such as the vowel in the words high tide, retaining its glide and being pronounced beginning further back in the mouth, as [ɑe] or even rounded [ɒe~ɐɒe], often stereotyped as sounding like "hoi toid," giving Pamlico Sound's residents the name "High Tiders."

is raised to [ɛ] (so cattle sounds like kettle); is raised to [e~ɪ] (so that mess sounds like miss); and, most prominently, is raised to [i] (so fish sounds like feesh). This mirrors the second and third stages of the Southern Vowel Shift (see under "Newer phonology"), despite this particular accent never participating in the very first stage of the shift.

pronounced as [ɔ~o], similar to modern Australian or London English.

, as in loud, town, scrounge, etc., pronounced with a fronted glide as [aɵ~aø~aε]. Before a voiceless consonant, this same phoneme is [ɜʉ~ɜy].

Card-cord merger since at least the 1800s in the Delmarva Peninsula.

The people of the major central ( Piedmont) and eastern ( Tidewater) regions of Virginia, excluding Virginia's Eastern Shore, once spoke in a way long associated with the upper or aristocratic plantation class in the Old South, often known as a Tidewater accent. Additional phonological features of this Atlantic Southern variety included:

Non-rhoticity (or r-dropping).

Trap-bath split: pronunciation of the bath set of words as [æ̈ɛ~æ̈e], different from the trap set of words as [æ~æ̈ɛæ̈].

A possibility of both variants of Canadian raising:

pronounced as [ɛ] in certain words, making bake sound like "beck", and afraid like "uh Fred."

In Tidewater Virginia particularly:

Some of the "bath" words (aunt, rather, and, earlier, pasture, etc.) pronounced farther back in mouth, as [ɒ~ɑ].

, as in bird, earth, flirt, hurt, word, dirt, etc. pronounced [ɜʴ], weakly rhotic, with less common non-rhotic variant [ɜ] possible as well.

"Broad a" (as in palm, father, spa, etc.) shifted towards a rounded [ɒ], potentially causing, for example, palm and harm to rhyme.

Southern Louisiana, as well as some of southeast Texas ( Houston to Beaumont), and coastal Mississippi, feature a number of dialects influenced by other languages beyond English. Most of southern Louisiana constitutes Acadiana, dominated for hundreds of years by monolingual speakers of Cajun French, which combines elements of Acadian French with other French and Spanish words. This French dialect is spoken by many of the older members of the Cajun ethnic group and is said to be dying out. A related language called Louisiana Creole also exists. The older English of Southern Louisiana did not participate in certain general older Southern English phenomena, for example lacking the Plantation South's trap-bath split and the fronting of .

New Orleans English was likely developing in the early 1900s, in large part due to dialect influence from New York City immigrants in New Orleans.

Zero copula in third person plural and second person. This is historically a consequence of R-dropping, with e.g. you're merging with you.

You [Ø] taller than Louise.

They [Ø] gonna leave today (Cukor-Avila, 2003).

Use of the circumfix a- . . . -in' in progressive tenses.

He was a-hootin' and a-hollerin'.

The wind was a-howlin'.

The use of like to to mean nearly; liked to merging into like to
I like to had a heart attack. (I nearly had a heart attack)

The use of the simple past infinitive vs present perfect infinitive.

I like to had. vs I like to have had.

We were supposed to went. vs We were supposed to have gone.

Use of "yonder" as a locative in addition to its more widely attested use as an adjective.
They done gathered a mess of raspberries in them woods down yonder.

A project devised by Old Dominion University Assistant Professor Dr. Bridget Anderson entitled Tidewater Voices: Conversations in Southeastern Virginia was initiated in late 2008. In collecting oral histories from natives of the area, this study offers insight to not only specific history of the region, but also to linguistic phonetic variants native to the area as well. This linguistic survey is the first of its kind in nearly forty years. The two variants being analyzed the most closely in this study are the /aʊ/ diphthong as in house or brown and post-vocalic r-lessness as in /ˈfɑðə/ for /ˈfɑðər/.

1. ^ Lippi-Green, R. (1997). English with an Accent. New York, New York: Routledge.

2. ^ Wolfram, W, & Schilling-Estes, N. (2006). American English. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.

3. ^ Fischer, David Hackett (1992). "From the South of England to Virginia". Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. On line stores/Public Libraries: OUP USA. ISBN 978-0195069051.

4. Kirkpatrick, Routledge (ed.) (2010). ^ The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes. Routledge: London and New York. pp. 97-99.

5. ^ Michael Ellis (1992). "On the Use of Dialect as Evidence: "Albion's Seed" in Appalachia". Appalachian Journal. 19 (3): 278-297. ISSN 0090-3779. JSTOR 40933361.

6. Even in 2012 Random House Dictionary labels ^ due, new and tune as having the /yu/ sound as a variant pronunciation.

7. Wolfram, Walt (1997). ^ Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks: The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue. University of North Carolina Press. p. 61.

8. Dubois, Sylvia and Barbara Horvath (2004). "Cajun Vernacular English: phonology." In Bernd Kortmann and Edgar W. Schneider (Ed). ^ A Handbook of Varieties of English: A Multimedia Reference Tool. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 412-4.

9. ^ Batts, Denise (January 22, 2009). "ODU team records area's accent - English with 'deep roots'". hamptonroads.com. The Virginian Pilot.

10. ^ Watson, Denise (2009-01-22). "ODU team records area's accent - English with 'deep roots' | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com". HamptonRoads.com.

Thomas, Erik R. (2006), "Rural White Southern Accents" (PDF), Atlas of North American English (online), Walter de Gruyter

Lippi-Green, Rosina. (1997). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. New York: Routedge.

Shores, David L. (2000). Tangier Island: place, people, and talk. Cranbury, New Jersey. Associated University Presses.

Wolfram, W, & Schilling-Estes, N. (2006). American English. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Older Southern American English was a set of American English dialects of the Southern United States, primarily spoken by white Southerners up until the American Civil War, moving towards a state of decline by the turn of the nineteenth century, further accelerated after World War II and again, finally, by the Civil Rights Movement.

# data[].attributes.body
The vernacular of the Southern United States, or a “Southern Accent”, as many like to call it, is a specific connotation of the English Languages which provides different emphasis on different letters and syllables. This then contrasts with the Midwestern dialect in which may sound completely different altogether.

# data[].attributes.body
Southern English dialect also includes many conjunctions of words

# data[].attributes.body
“I doan’ want to go fool’n er no wrack. We’s doin’ blame’ well, en we better let blame’ well alone, as we de good books says” (Twain 66).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Southern American English or Southern U.S. English is a regional dialect or collection of dialects of American English spoken throughout the Southern United States, though increasingly in more rural areas and primarily by White Southerners. Formal, much more recent terms within American linguistics include Southern White Vernacular English and Rural White Southern English.

A regional Southern American English consolidated and expanded throughout all the traditional Southern States since the last quarter of the 19th century until around World War II, largely superseding the more diverse, older Southern American English dialects. This younger and more unified pronunciation system, popularly known in the United States as a Southern accent or simply Southern, now comprises the largest American regional accent group by number of speakers. The 2006 Atlas of North American English strongly reports a Southern accent in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina (though not Charleston), Georgia (though Atlanta is inconsistent), Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Louisiana (co-occurring with Cajun and New Orleans dialects), as well as almost all of Texas, the Charleston area of West Virginia, the Springfield area of Missouri, and the Jacksonville area of Florida. The accent of southern Midland American English (often identified as a South Midland accent) is documented as sharing key features with Southern American English, though to a weaker extent; this definition would additionally encompass the rest of Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, eastern and central Kansas, southern Missouri, southern Indiana, southern Ohio, and possibly southern Illinois.

Southern American English as a regional dialect can be divided into various sub-dialects, the most phonologically advanced (i.e., the most innovative) ones being southern varieties of Appalachian English and certain varieties of Texan English. African-American English has many common points with Southern American English dialects due to the strong historical ties of African Americans to the South. Since around 1950, the Southern accent has been receding among younger and more urban Southerners.

The dialects collectively known as Southern American English stretch across the south-eastern and south-central United States, but exclude the southernmost areas of Florida and the extreme western and south-western parts of Texas as well as the Rio Grande Valley (Laredo to Brownsville). This linguistic region includes Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Arkansas, as well as most of Texas, Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and northern and central Florida. Southern American English dialects can also be found in extreme southern parts of Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and Illinois.

Southern dialects originated mostly from a mix of immigrants from the British Isles, who moved to the American South in the 17th and 18th centuries with minor African elements introduced by African Slaves brought to the region. Upheavals such as the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and World War II caused mass migrations of those and other settlers throughout the United States.

Most of the Southern United States underwent several major sound changes from the beginning to the middle of the 20th century, during which a more unified, region-wide sound system developed, markedly different from the sound systems of the 19th-century Southern dialects.

The South as a present-day dialect region generally includes all of these pronunciation features below, which are popularly recognized in the United States as a "Southern accent". However, there is still variation in Southern speech regarding potential differences based on factors like a speaker's exact sub-region, age, ethnicity, etc. The following phonological phenomena focus on the developing sound system of the 20th-century Southern dialects of the United States that altogether largely (though certainly not entirely) superseded the older Southern regional patterns:

Southern Vowel Shift (or Southern Shift): A chain shift regarding vowels is fully completed, or occurring, in most Southern dialects, especially 20th-century ones, and at the most advanced stage in the "Inland South" (i.e. away from the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts) and "Texas South" (i.e. much of central and northern Texas). This 3-stage chain movement of vowels, called the Southern Shift, is first triggered by Stage 1 that dominates the entire Southern region, followed by Stage 2 that covers almost all of that area, and Stage 3 that is concentrated only in speakers of certain core sub-regions. Stage 1 (defined below) may have begun in a minority of Southern accents as early as the first half of the 19th century with a glide weakening of /aɪ/ to [aɛ] or [aə]; however, it was still largely incomplete or absent in the mid-19th century, before expanding rapidly from the last quarter of the 19th into the middle of the 20th century;[21] today, this glide weakening or even total glide deletion is the pronunciation norm throughout all of the Southern United States.

Stage 1 (/aɪ/ → [aː] and /æ/ → [ɛ(j)ə]):

The starting point, or first stage, of the Southern Shift is the transition of the diphthong /aɪ/ ( listen ) towards a "glideless" long vowel [aː] ( listen ), so that, for example, the word ride commonly approaches a sound that most other American English speakers would hear as rod or rad. Stage 1 is now complete for a majority of Southern dialects.[22] Southern speakers particularly exhibit the Stage 1 shift at the ends of words and before voiced consonants, but often not before voiceless consonants, where the diphthong instead retains its glide, so that ride is [ɹäːd], but right is [ɹäɪt]. Inland (i.e. non-coastal) Southern speakers, however, indeed delete the glide of /aɪ/ in all contexts, as in the stereotyped pronunciation "nahs whaht rahss" for nice white rice; these most shift-advanced speakers are largely found today in an Appalachian area that comprises eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina and northern Alabama, as well as in central Texas.[23] Some traditional East Coast Southern accents do not exhibit this Stage 1 glide deletion,[24] particularly in Charleston, SC and possibly Atlanta and Savannah, GA (cities that are, at best, considered marginal to the modern Southern dialect region).

This new glideless [aː~äː] vowel encroaches on the territory of the "short a" vowel, /æ/ (as in rat or bad), thus pushing /æ/ generally higher and fronter in the mouth (and also possibly giving it a complex gliding quality, often starting higher and then gliding lower); thus /æ/ can range variously away from its original position, with variants such as [æ(j)ə], [æɛæ], [ɛ(j)ə], and possibly even [ɛ]. An example is that, to other English speakers, the Southern pronunciation of yap sounds something like yeah-up.

Stage 2 (/eɪ/ → [ɛɪ] and /ɛ/ → [e(j)ə]):

By removing the existence of [aɪ], Stage 1 leaves open a lower space for /eɪ/ (as in (name and day) to occupy, causing Stage 2: the dragging of the diphthong /eɪ/ into a lower starting position, towards [ɛɪ] listen ) or to a sound even lower or more retracted, or both.

At the same time, the pushing of /æ/ into the vicinity of /ɛ/ (as in red or belt), forces /ɛ/ itself into a higher and fronter position, occupying the [e] area (previously the vicinity of /eɪ/). /ɛ/ also often acquires an in-glide: thus, [e(j)ə]. An example is that, to other English speakers, the Southern pronunciation of yep sounds something like yay-up. Stage 2 is most common in heavily stressed syllables. Southern accents originating from cities that formerly had the greatest influence and wealth in the South (Richmond, VA; Charleston, SC; Atlanta, Macon, and Savannah, GA; and all of Florida) do not traditionally participate in Stage 2.[25]

Stage 3 (/i/ → [ɪi] and /ɪ/ → [iə]): By the same pushing and pulling domino effects described above, /ɪ/ (as in hit or lick) and /i/ (as in beam or meet) follow suit by both possibly becoming diphthongs whose nuclei switch positions. /ɪ/ may be pushed into a diphthong with a raised beginning, [iə], while /i/ may be pulled into a diphthong with a lowered beginning, [ɪi]. An example is that, to other English speakers, the Southern pronunciation of fin sounds something like fee-in, while meal sounds something like mih-eel. Like the other stages of the Southern shift, Stage 3 is most common in heavily stressed syllables and particularly among Inland Southern speakers.[25]

Southern vowel breaking ("Southern drawl"): All three stages of the Southern Shift often result in the short front pure vowels being "broken" into gliding vowels, making one-syllable words like pet and pit sound as if they might have two syllables (as something like pay-it and pee-it respectively). This short front vowel gliding phenomenon is popularly recognized as the "Southern drawl". The "short a", "short e", and "short i" vowels are all affected, developing a glide up from their original starting position to [j], and then often back down to a schwa vowel: /æ/ → [æjə~ɛjə]; /ɛ/ → [ɛjə~ejə]; and /ɪ/ → [ɪjə~ijə], respectively. This phenomenon is on the decline, being most typical of Southern speakers born before 1960,[26] though mostly after the mid-19th century.

Unstressed, word-final /ŋ/ → [n]: The phoneme /ŋ/ in an unstressed syllable at the end of a word fronts to [n], so that singing /ˈsɪŋɪŋ/ is sometimes written phonetically as singin [ˈsɪŋɪn].[27] This is common in vernacular English dialects around the world.

Lacking or transitioning cot-caught merger: The historical distinction between the two vowels sounds /ɔ/ and /ɒ/, in words like caught and cot or stalk and stock is mainly preserved.[28] In much of the South during the 1900s, there was a trend to lower the vowel found in words like stalk and caught, often with an upglide, so that the most common result today is the gliding vowel [ɑɒ]. However, the cot-caught merger is becoming increasingly common throughout the United States, thus affecting Southeastern and even some Southern dialects, towards a merged vowel [ɑ].[29] In the South, this merger, or a transition towards this merger, is especially documented in central, northern, and (particularly) western Texas.[30]

Pin-pen merger: the vowels [ɛ] and [ɪ] now merge when before nasal consonants, so that pen and pin, for instance, or hem and him, are pronounced the same, as pin or him, respectively.[28] The merger, towards the sound [ɪ], is still unreported among some vestigial varieties of the older South, and other geographically Southern U.S. varieties that have eluded the Southern Vowel Shift, such as the Yat dialect of New Orleans or the anomalous dialect of Savannah, Georgia.

Rhoticity: The "dropping" of the r sound after vowels was historically widespread in the South, particularly in former plantation area. This phenomenon, non-rhoticity, was considered prestigious before World War II, after which the social perception in the South reversed. Now, rhoticity (sometimes called r-fulness), in which all r sounds are pronounced, is dominant throughout most of the South, and even "hyper-rhoticity",[31] particularly among younger and female white Southerners; the only major exception is among African American Southerners, whose modern vernacular dialect continues to be mostly non-rhotic.[32] The sound quality of the Southern r is the distinctive "bunch-tongued r", produced by strongly constricting the root or midsection of the tongue, or both.[33]

Pronunciation of ⟨wh⟩: Most of the U.S. has completed the wine-whine merger, but, in many Southern accents, particularly inland Southern accents, the phonemes /w/ and /hw/ remain distinct, so that pairs of words like wail and whale or wield and wheeled are not homophones.[34]

Lax and tense vowels often neutralize before /l/ , making pairs like feel/fill and fail/fell homophones for speakers in some areas of the South. Some speakers may distinguish between the two sets of words by reversing the normal vowel sound, e.g., feel in Southern may sound like fill, and vice versa.[35]

The back vowel /u/ (in goose or true) is fronted in the mouth to the vicinity of [ʉ] or even farther forward, which is then followed by a slight gliding quality; different gliding qualities have been reported, including both backward and (especially in the eastern half of the South) forward glides.[36]

The back vowel /oʊ/ (in goat or toe) is fronted to the vicinity of [ɜʊ~ɜʉ], and perhaps even as far forward as [ɛʊ].[37]

Back Upglide (Chain) Shift: In Southern regional dialects, /aʊ/ shifts forward and upward to [æʊ] (also possibly realized, variously, as [æjə~æo~ɛɔ~eo]); thus allowing the back vowel /ɔ/ to fill an area similar to the former position of /aʊ/ in the mouth, becoming lowered and developing an upglide [ɑɒ]; this, in turn, allows (though only for the most advanced Southern speakers) the upgliding /ɔɪ/, before /l/, to lose its glide [ɔ] (for instance, causing the word boils to sound something like the British or New York City pronunciations of [38] balls ).

The vowel /ʌ/, as in bug, luck, strut, etc., is realized as [ɜ], occasionally fronted to [ɛ̈] or raised in the mouth to [ə].[39]

/z/ becomes [d] before /n/, for example [ˈwʌdn̩t] wasn't, [ˈbɪdnɪs] business,[40] but hasn't may keep the [z] to avoid merging with hadn't.

Many nouns are stressed on the first syllable that are stressed on the second syllable in most other American accents.[26] These may include police, cement, Detroit, Thanksgiving, insurance, behind, display, hotel, motel, recycle, TV, guitar, July, and umbrella. Today, younger Southerners tend to keep this initial stress for a more reduced set of words, perhaps including only insurance, defense, Thanksgiving, and umbrella.[41][42]

Phonemic incidence is sometimes unique in the South, so that:[42]

Florida is typically pronounced /ˈflɑrɪdə/ rather than General American /ˈflɔrɪdə/, and lawyer is /ˈlɔjər/ rather than General American /ˈlɔɪər/ (i.e., the first syllable of lawyer sounds like law, not loy).

The /deɪ/ in words like Monday and Sunday is commonly /di/.

Spigot (a water tap) is often pronounced /ˈspɪkət/, as if spelled spicket.

Lacking or incomplete happy tensing: The tensing of unstressed, word-final /ɪ/ (the second vowel sound in words like happy, money, Chelsea, etc.) to a higher and fronter vowel like [i] is typical throughout the United States, except in the South. The South maintains a sound not obviously tensed: [ɪ] or [ɪ~i].[43]

Words ending in unstressed /oʊ/ (especially with the spelling ⟨ow⟩) may be pronounced as [ə] or [ʊ],[44] making yellow sound like yella or tomorrow like tomorra.

Variable horse-hoarse merger: the merger of the phonemes /ɔː/r/ (as in morning) and /oʊr/ (as in mourning) is common, as in most English dialects, though a distinction is still preserved especially in Southern accents along the Gulf Coast, plus scatterings elsewhere;[45] thus, morning [ˈmɒɹnɪn] versus mourning [ˈmouɹnɪn].

William Labov et al. identify the "Inland South" as a large linguistic sub-region of the South located mostly in southern Appalachia (specifically naming the cities of Greenville SC, Asheville NC, Knoxville and Chattanooga TN, and Birmingham and Linden AL), inland from both the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts, and the originating region of the Southern Vowel Shift. The Inland South, along with the "Texas South" (an urban core of central Texas: Dallas, Lubbock, Odessa, and San Antonio) are considered the two major locations in which the Southern regional sound system is the most highly developed, and therefore the core areas of the current-day South as a dialect region.

The accents of Texas are actually diverse, for example with important Spanish influences on its vocabulary; however, much of the state is still an unambiguous region of modern rhotic Southern speech, strongest in the cities of Dallas, Lubbock, Odessa, and San Antonio, which all firmly demonstrate the first stage of the Southern Shift, if not also further stages of the shift. Texan cities that are noticeably "non-Southern" dialectally are Abilene and Austin; only marginally Southern are Houston, El Paso, and Corpus Christi. In western and northern Texas, the cot-caught merger is very close to completed.

Some sub-regions of the South, and perhaps even a majority of the biggest cities, are showing a gradual shift away from the Southern accent (toward a more Midland or General American accent) since the second half of the 20th century to the present. Such well-studied cities include Houston, Texas, and Raleigh, North Carolina; in Raleigh, for example, this retreat from the accent appears to have begun around 1950. Other sub-regions are unique in that their inhabitants have never spoken with the Southern regional accent, instead having their own distinct accents.

Atlanta, Charleston, and Savannah

The Atlas of North American English identified Atlanta, Georgia as a dialectal "island of non-Southern speech", Charleston, South Carolina likewise as "not markedly Southern in character", and the traditional local accent of Savannah, Georgia as "giving way to regional [Midland] patterns", despite these being three prominent Southern cities. The dialect features of Atlanta are best described today as sporadic from speaker to speaker, with such variation increased due to a huge movement of non-Southerners into the area during the 1990s. Modern-day Charleston speakers have leveled in the direction of a more generalized Midland accent, away from the city's now-defunct, traditional Charleston accent, whose features were "diametrically opposed to the Southern Shift... and differ in many other respects from the main body of Southern dialects". The Savannah accent is also becoming more Midland-like. The following vowel sounds of Atlanta, Charleston, and Savannah have been unaffected by typical Southern phenomena like the Southern drawl and Southern Vowel Shift:

Today, the accents of Atlanta, Charleston, and Savannah are most similar to Midland regional accents or at least Southeastern super-regional accents. In all three cities, some speakers (though most consistently documented in Charleston and least consistently in Savannah) demonstrate the Southeastern fronting of /oʊ/ and the status of the pin-pen merger is highly variable. Non-rhoticity ( r-dropping) is now rare in these cities, yet still documented in some speakers.

Southern Louisiana

Most of southern Louisiana constitutes Acadiana, a cultural region dominated for hundreds of years by monolingual speakers of Cajun French, which combines elements of Acadian French with other French and Spanish words. Today, this French dialect is spoken by many older Cajun ethnic group and is said to be dying out. A related language, Louisiana Creole French, also exists. Since the early 1900s, Cajuns additionally began to develop their own vernacular dialect of English, which retains some influences and words from French, such as "cher" (dear) or "nonc" (uncle). This dialect fell out of fashion after World War II, but experienced a renewal in primarily male speakers born since the 1970s, who have been the most attracted by, and the biggest attractors for, a successful Cajun cultural renaissance. The accent includes: variable non-rhoticity (or r-dropping), high nasalization (including in vowels before nasal consonants), deletion of any word's final consonant(s) ( hand becomes [hæ̃], food becomes [fu], rent becomes [ɹɪ̃], New York becomes [nuˈjɔə], etc.), a potential for glide weakening in all gliding vowels (e.g. /oʊ/ (as in Joe), /eɪ/ as in jay, and /ɔɪ/ as in joy, have reduced glides: [oː], [eː], and [ɔː], respectively), and the cot-caught merger towards [ɑ̈].

One historical English dialect spoken only by those raised in the Greater New Orleans area is traditionally non-rhotic and noticeably shares more pronunciation commonalities with the New York accent than with other Southern accents. Since at least the 1980s, this local New Orleans dialect has popularly been called " Yat", from the common local greeting "Where you at?". The New York accent features shared with the Yat accent include: non-rhoticity, a short- a split system (so that bad and back, for example, have different vowels), /ɔ/ as high gliding [ɔə], /ɑr/ as rounded [ɒ~ɔ], and the coil-curl merger (traditionally, though now in decline). Yat also lacks the typical vowel changes of the Southern Shift and the pin-pen merger that are commonly heard elsewhere throughout the South. Yat is associated with the working and lower-middle classes, though a spectrum with fewer notable Yat features is often heard the higher one's socioeconomic status; such New Orleans affluence is associated with the New Orleans Uptown and the Garden District, whose speech patterns are sometimes considered distinct from the lower-class Yat dialect.

Prior to becoming a phonologically unified dialect region, the South was once home to an array of much more diverse accents at the local level. Features of the deeper interior Appalachian South largely became the basis for the newer Southern regional dialect; thus, older Southern American English primarily refers to the English spoken outside of Appalachia: the coastal and former plantation areas of the South, best documented before the Civil War, on the decline during the early 1900s, and basically non-existent in speakers born since the Civil Rights Movement.

Little unified these older Southern dialects, since they never formed a single homogeneous dialect region to begin with. Some older Southern accents were rhotic (most strongly in Appalachia and west of the Mississippi), while the majority were non-rhotic (most strongly in plantation areas); however, wide variation existed. Some older Southern accents showed (or approximated) Stage 1 of the Southern Vowel Shift-namely, the glide weakening of /aɪ/-however, it is virtually unreported before the very late 1800s. In general, the older Southern dialects clearly lacked the Mary-marry-merry, cot-caught, horse-hoarse, wine-whine, full-fool, fill-feel, and do-dew mergers, all of which are now common to, or encroaching on, all varieties of present-day Southern American English. Older Southern sound systems included those local to the:

Plantation South (excluding the Lowcountry): phonologically characterized by /aɪ/ glide weakening, non-rhoticity (for some accents, including a coil-curl merger), and the Southern trap-bath split (a version of the trap-bath split unique to older Southern U.S. speech that causes words like lass [læs~læɛæs] not to rhyme with words like pass [pæes]).
Eastern and central Virginia (often identified as the "Tidewater accent"): further characterized by Canadian raising and some vestigial resistance to the vein-vain merger.

Lowcountry (of South Carolina and Georgia; often identified as the traditional "Charleston accent"): characterized by no /aɪ/ glide weakening, non-rhoticity (including the coil-curl merger), the Southern trap-bath split, Canadian raising, the cheer-chair merger, /eɪ/ pronounced as [e(ə)], and /oʊ/ pronounced as [o(ə)].

Outer Banks and Chesapeake Bay (often identified as the "Hoi Toider accent"): characterized by no /aɪ/ glide weakening (with the on-glide strongly backed, unlike any other U.S. dialect), the card-cord merger, /aʊ/ pronounced as [aʊ~äɪ], and up-gliding of pure vowels especially before /ʃ/ (making fish sound almost like feesh and ash like aysh). It is the only dialect of the older South still extant on the East Coast, due to being passed on through generations of geographically isolated islanders.

Appalachian and Ozark Mountains: characterized by strong rhoticity and a tor-tore-tour merger (which still exist in that region), the Southern trap-bath split, plus the original and most advanced instances of the Southern Vowel Shift now defining the whole South.

These grammatical features are characteristic of both older and newer Southern American English.

Use of done as an auxiliary verb between the subject and verb in sentences conveying the past tense.
I done told you before.

Use of done (instead of did) as the past simple form of do, and similar uses of the past participle in place of the past simple, such as seen replacing saw as past simple form of see.

I only done what you done told me.

I seen her first.

Use of other non-standard preterites, Such as drownded as the past tense of drown, knowed as past tense of know, choosed as the past tense of choose, degradated as the past tense of degrade.
I knowed you for a fool soon as I seen you.

Use of was in place of were, or other words regularizing the past tense of be to was.[citation needed ]
You was sittin' on that chair.

Use of been instead of have been in perfect constructions.
I been livin' here darn near my whole life.

Use of (a-)fixin' to, with several spelling variants such as fixing to or fixinta, to indicate immediate future action; in other words: intending to, preparing to, or about to.

He's fixin' to eat.

They're fixing to go for a hike.

It is not clear where the term comes from and when it was first used. According to dialect dictionaries, fixin' to is associated with Southern speech, most often defined as being a synonym of preparing to or intending to. Some linguists, e.g. Marvin K. Ching, regard it as being a quasimodal rather than a verb followed by an infinitive. It is a term used by all social groups, although more frequently by people with a lower social status than by members of the educated upper classes. Furthermore, it is more common in the speech of younger people than in that of older people. Like much of the Southern dialect, the term is also more prevalent in rural areas than in urban areas.

Preservation of older English me, him, etc. as reflexive datives.

I'm fixin' to paint me a picture.

He's gonna catch him a big one.

Saying this here in place of this or this one, and that there in place of that or that one.
This here's mine and that there is yours.

Existential it, a feature dating from Middle English which can be explained as substituting it for there when there refers to no physical location, but only to the existence of something.

It's one lady who lives in town.

It is nothing more to say.

Standard English would prefer "existential there", as in "There's one lady who lives in town". This construction is used to say that something exists (rather than saying where it is located). The construction can be found in Middle English as in Marlowe's Edward II: "Cousin, it is no dealing with him now".

Liketa is presumably a conjunction of "like to" or "like to have" coming from Appalachian English. It is most often seen as a synonym of almost. Accordingly, the phrase I like't'a died would be I almost died in Standard English. With this meaning, liketa can be seen as a verb modifier for actions that are on the verge of happening. Furthermore, it is more often used in an exaggerative or violent figurative sense rather than literal sense.

Use of the distal demonstrative "yonder," archaic in most dialects of English, to indicate a third, larger degree of distance beyond both "here" and "there" (thus relegating "there" to a medial demonstrative as in some other languages), indicating that something is a longer way away, and to a lesser extent, in a wide or loosely defined expanse, as in the church hymn "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder". A typical example is the use "over yonder" in place of "over there" or "in or at that indicated place", especially to refer to a particularly different spot, such as in "the house over yonder".

Compared to General American English, when contracting a negated auxiliary verb, Southern American English has increased preference for contracting the subject and the auxiliary than the auxiliary and "not", e.g. the first of the following pairs:

Standard English has a strict word order. In the case of modal auxiliaries, standard English is restricted to a single modal per verb phrase. However, some Southern speakers use double or more modals in a row ( might could, might should, might would, used to could, etc.--also called "modal stacking") and sometimes even triple modals that involve oughta (like might should oughta)

I might could climb to the top.

I used to could do that.

The origin of multiple modals is controversial; some say it is a development of Modern English, while others trace them back to Middle English and again others to Scots-Irish settlers. There are different opinions on which class preferably uses the term. Atwood, for example, finds that educated people try to avoid multiple modals, whereas Montgomery suggests the opposite. In some Southern regions, multiple modals are quite widespread and not particularly stigmatized. Possible multiple modals are:

As the table shows, there are only possible combinations of an epistemic modal followed by deontic modals in multiple modal constructions. Deontic modals express permissibility with a range from obligated to forbidden and are mostly used as markers of politeness in requests whereas epistemic modals refer to probabilities from certain to impossible. Multiple modals combine these two modalities.

People from the South often make use of conditional or evidential syntaxes as shown below (italicized in the examples):

Conditional syntax in requests:

I guess you could step out and git some toothpicks and a carton of Camel cigarettes, if you a mind to.

If you be good enough to take it, I believe I could stand me a taste.

Conditional syntax in suggestions:

I wouldn't look for 'em to show up if I was you.

I'd think that whiskey would be a trifle hot.

Conditional syntax creates a distance between the speaker's claim and the hearer. It serves to soften obligations or suggestions, make criticisms less personal, and to overall express politeness, respect, or courtesy.

Southerners also often use " evidential" predicates such as think, reckon, believe, guess, have the feeling, etc.:

You already said that once, I believe.

I wouldn't want to guess, but I have the feeling we'll know soon enough.

You reckon we oughta get help?

I don't believe I've ever known one.

Evidential predicates indicate an uncertainty of the knowledge asserted in the sentence. According to Johnston, evidential predicates nearly always hedge the assertions and allow the respondents to hedge theirs. They protect speakers from the social embarrassment that appears, in case the assertion turns out to be wrong. As is the case with conditional syntax, evidential predicates can also be used to soften criticisms and to afford courtesy or respect.

In the United States, the following vocabulary is mostly unique to, or best associated with, Southern U.S. English:

Bless your heart to express sympathy or concern to the addressee; often, now used ironically

Catty-corner to mean located or placed diagonally

Coke to mean any sweet, carbonated soft drink

Devil is beating his wife to describe the weather phenomenon of a sunshower

Fixin to to mean about to

(preferred over frosting, in the confectionary sense)

Liketa to mean almost or nearly (particularly in Alabama and Appalachian English)

Ornery to mean bad-tempered or surly (derived from ordinary)

Powerful to mean great in number or amount (used as an adverb)

Rolling to mean the prank of toilet papering

Unique words can occur as Southern nonstandard past-tense forms of verbs, particularly in the Southern highlands and Piney Woods, as in yesterday they riz up, come outside, drawed, and drownded, as well as participle forms like they have took it, rode it, blowed it up, and swimmed away. Drug is traditionally both the past tense and participle form of the verb drag.

is a second person plural pronoun and the usual Southern plural form of the word you. It is originally a contraction - you all - which is used less frequently. This term originated with the modern Southern dialect region and is not found in older Southern dialects.

When addressing a group, y'all is general (I know y'all) and is used to address the group as a whole, whereas all y'all is used to emphasize specificity of each and every member of the group ("I know all y'all.") The possessive form of Y'all is created by adding the standard "-'s".
"I've got y'all's assignments here." /jɔlz/

Y'all is distinctly separate from the singular you. The statement "I gave y'all my truck payment last week," is more precise than "I gave you my truck payment last week." You (if interpreted as singular) could imply the payment was given directly to the person being spoken to - when that may not be the case.

"All y'all" is used to specify that all members of the second person plural (i.e., all persons currently being addressed and/or all members of a group represented by an addressee) are included; that is, it operates in contradistinction to "some of y'all", thereby functioning similarly to "all of you" in standard English.

In rural southern Appalachia an "n" is added to pronouns indicating "one" "his'n" "his one" "her'n" "her one" "Yor'n" "your one" i.e. "his, hers and yours". Another example is yernses. It may be substituted for the 2nd person plural possessive yours.

Southern Louisiana English especially is known for some unique vocabulary: long sandwiches are often called poor boys or , woodlice/roly-polies called doodle bugs, the end of a bread loaf called a nose, pedestrian islands and median strips alike called neutral ground, and sidewalks called banquettes.

Discussion of "Southern dialect" in the United States popularly refers to those English varieties spoken by white Southerners; however, as a geographic term, it may also encompass the dialects developed among other social or ethnic groups in the South, most prominently including African Americans. Today, African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a fairly unified variety of English spoken by working- and middle-class African Americans throughout the United States. AAVE exhibits an evident relationship with both older and newer Southern dialects, though the exact nature of this relationship is poorly understood. It is clear that AAVE was influenced by older speech patterns of the Southern United States, where Africans and African Americans were held as slaves until the American Civil War. These slaves originally spoke a diversity of indigenous African languages but picked up English to communicate with one another, their white masters, and the white servants and laborers they often closely worked alongside. Many features of AAVE suggest that it largely developed from nonstandard dialects of colonial English (with some features of AAVE absent from other modern American dialects, yet still existing in certain modern British dialects). However, there is also evidence of the influence of West African languages on AAE vocabulary and grammar.

It is uncertain to what extent early white Southern English borrowed elements from early African-American Vernacular English versus the other way around. Like many white accents of English once spoken in Southern plantation areas-namely, the Lowcountry, Virginia Piedmont and Tidewater and lower Mississippi Valley-the modern-day AAVE accent is mostly non-rhotic (or " r-dropping" ). The presence of non-rhoticity in both black English and older white Southern English is not merely coincidence, though, again, which dialect influenced which is unknown. It is better documented, however, that white Southerners borrowed some morphological processes from black Southerners.

Many grammatical features were used alike by older speakers of white Southern English and African-American Vernacular English more so than by contemporary speakers of the same two varieties. Even so, contemporary speakers of both continue to share these unique grammatical features: "existential it", the word y'all, double negatives, was to mean were, deletion of had and have, them to mean those, the term fixin' to, stressing the first syllable of words like hotel or guitar, and many others. Both dialects also continue to share these same pronunciation features: /ɪ/ tensing, /ʌ/ raising, upgliding /ɔ/, the pin-pen merger, and the most defining sound of the current Southern accent (though rarely documented in older Southern accents): the glide weakening of /aɪ/. However, while this glide weakening has triggered among white Southerners a complicated "Southern Vowel Shift", black speakers in the South and elsewhere on the other hand are "not participating or barely participating" in much of this shift. AAVE speakers also do not front the vowel starting positions of /oʊ/ and /u/, thus aligning these characteristics more with the speech of 19th-century white Southerners than 20th-century white Southerners.

One strong possibility for the divergence of black American English and white Southern American English (i.e., the disappearance of older Southern American English) is that the civil rights struggles caused these two racial groups "to stigmatize linguistic variables associated with the other group". This may explain some of the differences outlined above, including why most traditionally non-rhotic white Southern accents have shifted to now becoming intensely rhotic.

In the United States, there is a general negative stigma surrounding the Southern dialect. Non-Southern Americans tend to associate a Southern accent with cognitive and verbal slowness, lack of education, ignorance, bigotry, or religious and political conservatism, using common labels like "hick", "hillbilly", or "redneck" accent. The accent is also associated nationwide with the military, NASCAR, and country music; in fact, even non-Southern American country singers typically imitate a Southern accent in their music. Meanwhile, Southerners themselves tend to have mixed judgments of their own accent, some similarly negative but others positively associating it with a laid-back, plain, or humble attitude. The sum negative associations nationwide, however, are the main presumable cause of a gradual decline of Southern accent features, since the middle of the 20th century onwards, among younger and more urban residents of the South.

Bernstein, Cynthia (2003). "Grammatical features of southern speech". In Stephen J. Nagel; Sara L. Sanders (eds.). English in the Southern United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82264-0.

Crystal, David (2000). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82348-7.

Cukor-Avila, Patricia (2003). "The complex grammatical history of African-American and white vernaculars in the South". In In Stephen J. Nagel and Sara L. Sanders (ed.). English in the Southern United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82264-0.

Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006), The Atlas of North American English, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-016746-7

Hazen, Kirk & Fluharty, Ellen (2004). "Defining Appalachian English". In Bender, Margaret (ed.). Linguistic Diversity in the South. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-2586-6.

Thomas, Erik R. (2003), "Rural White Southern Accents" (PDF), Atlas of North American English (online), Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 1-37. [Later published as a chapter in: Bernd Kortmann and Edgar W. Schneider (eds) (2004). A Handbook of Varieties of English: A Multimedia Reference Tool. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 300-324.]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Southern American English or Southern U.S. English is a regional dialect or collection of dialects of American English spoken throughout the Southern United States, though increasingly in more rural areas and primarily by White Southerners. Formal, much more recent terms within American linguistics include Southern White Vernacular English and Rural White Southern English.

# data[].attributes.body
“Oh, come to the mourners’ bench! come, black with sin! (amen!) come, sick and sore! (amen!) come, lame and halt, and blind! (amen!) come, pore and needy, sunk in shame! (a-a-men!) come all that’s worn, and soiled, and suffering!—come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door of heaven stands open—oh, enter in and be at rest!” (a-a-men! glory, glory hallelujah!) (Twain 133)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On the occasion of my retirement from the University of Mississippi in 2014, I knew I had to talk about the South, the topic I have spent my career studying, pondering, writing about, and teaching. The more I thought about what to present in a final, university-wide lecture, my personal journey seemed relevant, for I think my family and personal stories parallel some developments in the South's history. My roots and raising were in middle Tennessee, as part of a very close-knit southern family. My parents were from small towns in tobacco country north of Nashville. They were what historians would call the "plain folk"-not wealthy, not the stereotypical poor whites, but, in my father's case at least, poor in worldly goods as a child. My father's people were burdened with a hardscrabble life as tenant farmers. My mother's life was more sheltered, growing up in the small town of Springfield, near the Kentucky border. Neither had traveled farther than Nashville, but that changed when the United States entered World War II. Their story was typical of so many southerners of the early twentieth century, and the Great Depression of the 1930s was a particularly hard context in which to grow up. Many historians would now say that World War II had a greater impact on changing the South than even the Civil War did. My father joined the new Army Air Force and was stationed for three years in Bassingbourn, England. One of the most important themes in the study of the South now is globalization, and my father was part of that early on, in his uprooting from rural, farm Tennessee to be sent halfway across the globe.

After the war ended in the spring of 1945, my dad came home, and he and my mom married within a few months, and moved to Nashville, becoming a part of the postwar migration of southerners to cities and towns. The 1960 census was the first one in which more southerners lived in cities than in rural areas, and my family's experience reflected that change. I was born in Nashville, but when I was nine years old, in 1957, we left Tennessee to move to El Paso, Texas, a move occasioned by my mother's worsening health in the wet and humid Southeast. So we went west, going on Highway 80, shortly after which the federal government built what's now called the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system. That program would tie the nation together in productive ways, and one result was bringing the South more directly into connection with the rest of the nation. That interstate highway system was a tangible expression of one of the most important factors in modernizing the South and making life better for our people, namely, the investment the federal government made in sending a disproportionate amount of federal tax money to the South to stimulate economic development.

In any event, this uprooting severed me from an extended kin of grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins, but it bound me even closer to my nuclear family. We had joined the movement to the Sunbelt, that term coined in the 1980s to reflect the South's close ties to the Southwest, stretching to southern California. I grew up in a very cosmopolitan, suburban place-El Paso, a city with a mobile military population, high tech researchers associated with the defense industry, and strong cultural influences from southern California (my high school was just like that one in American Graffiti). And I was amidst an intriguing Anglo-Hispanic culture of a Mexican border town. In those days, it was a free-flowing border where we went across to Juarez to shop, eat, get our haircut, and buy gas-everything was less expensive there. El Paso itself, with its large Latino population, was somewhat exotic for a young Tennessean. I discovered I was a southerner playing with kids named Jesus and Juan on the playgrounds. I remember going to a birthday party at my friend Juan's house, a colorful place for a child, and for the first time I saw a piñata. The tradition is the blindfolded child swings a stick trying to hit the piñata and when you do so, candy and toys fall out for the taking. I took the blindfold off, looked at all the treats, and thought, "Where have they been hiding this from me?" Suffice to say, I took to Hispanic culture, and I was ahead of the curve in terms of understanding the significance of the Latino migration to the South when it happened after I came to Oxford. When I moved there in the early 1980s, there were no Mexican restaurants, no Mexican beverages. I used to buy fresh tortillas in Texas and bring them back as carry-on luggage.

I discovered I was a southerner playing with kids named Jesus and Juan on the playgrounds.

The move to the Southwest had created opportunities for my family, and one of the lessons I learned from that move was an openness to change, to seizing opportunities when they arise. The move took us out of the comfort zone of our Tennessee home, but my family found ways to keep the family connection. Each summer my mother, my brother, and I would return to Greenbrier, Tennessee, where our grandparents lived and where we had that small town South experience. The rest of the year, my mother and her mother would write a letter to each other every day (no texting or email in those days), reviewing often the mundane or sometimes exciting events of the day. Change does not have to mean a severing of connections, just new ways to find to connect.

I have been using the word "southerner" to describe myself and my family members, but that is in retrospect. I do not remember my parents calling themselves southerners. They were very self-conscious of being from Tennessee, and my mother wrote poems about the state and her feelings for it. But we were not self-consciously southern in those days. They told no family stories of the Confederacy, and they taught us no racial obsessions nor self-conscious white identity. Like all white southern families, mine benefited from a way of life that gave whites opportunities denied to African Americans. But my family could not afford the legendary "help," and my brother and I were the yardmen, not the African American man seeking work. Somewhere along the lines, though, I realized we were southern in culture. We attended the same church denomination we had in Tennessee, my mother cooked fried chicken and pork chops and sweet potatoes as her mother before her, my brother and I heard our mother singing religious songs, and we listened to country music as the good Nashvillians we had once been.

That visceral appreciation of the importance of culture to southern identity served me well when I came to Oxford in 1981 to be one of the editors of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, work on which, through two editions, has been a focus for my over thirty years at the University. When I arrived in Oxford, you could still see hints of the older South. There were still two hardware stores on the Square, as there once were in small towns. I knew Oxford was changing when both hardware stores left the Square, and a boutique named Chantilly Lace opened where one of them had been. At that time, the University only had about 7,000 students, and the three antebellum buildings had not yet been renovated and were in a noticeable state of decline. The Center for the Study of Southern Culture had only recently begun its work, and it soon launched or supported innovative projects including an undergraduate curriculum, conferences and workshops, magazines and newsletters, and scores of other activities. When I began teaching my course on southern religious history, the enrollments were relatively high. History department chair Bob Haws suggested that students thought they were signing up for a devotional hour. Nonetheless, the course was part of the history department and Southern Studies commitment to teaching and researching about the South-to "tell about the South," as Oxford's own Mr. Faulkner wrote. My interest in popular culture led me to become a collector of souvenirs of the South, those mass-produced, curious knick-knacks that relate to southern culture, which I often used in teaching and public presentations to illustrate points about the South. They are kitsch, but someone gave them a term out of southern vernacular-southern tacky.

The Lure of Southern Tacky

I first felt the lure of southern tacky in childhood. Each summer, our 3,000 or so round-trip miles between El Paso and Nashville presented many possibilities for gifts from the road. Frontier-village amusement parks, tourist meccas like Six Flags Over Texas, animal farms with snakes and alligators-each had a souvenir to buy and save. And how many times did we stop at Stuckey's, a once-vibrant roadside store with a wealth of tacky-plastic armadillos, cedar plaques praising Moms and Dads in rhyme, and an impressive quantity and variety of salt-and-pepper shakers.

My half-formed interest in southern tacky lay dormant for years, but when I began work on the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, I started to look at such artifacts anew. Perhaps I needed the whimsy of having a mosquito fashioned from seashells on my desk or a pink flamingo toothpick dispenser to counter-balance the scholarly responsibility of preparing a weighty reference book. Whatever the reason, in my reborn passion I came to realize that mass-produced objects regarded by people with "good taste" as being in "poor taste" featured an explicit southern dimension worth pondering. I collect southern tacky because these artifacts stir meaningful associations for me. They may be souvenirs of a theme park, resort, or historic spot; they may be mementos of a political campaign or a religious retreat or the everyday lives of our ancestors. Often they overtly portray the region's icons-the Bear Bryant Coca-Cola bottle, magnolia paintings for Mississippians, bluebonnets for Texans, or Confederate generals on a Stone Mountain paperweight.

Perhaps I needed the whimsy of having a mosquito fashioned from seashells on my desk or a pink flamingo toothpick dispenser to counter-balance the scholarly responsibility of preparing a weighty reference book.

Spurred to research, I discovered that southern tacky actually has a history. It dates from the late nineteenth century, when admirers of the Confederacy created an iconography of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson. Manufacturers placed their images on prints, knives, whiskey bottles, sacks of flour, decks of cards, and innumerable other objects. A century later, southern tacky remains tied to popular culture. Likenesses of celebrities of music, literature, film, and television appear on postcards, buttons, pins, ties, shoestrings, and matchboxes. Dolly Parton, Richard Petty, Jackie Robinson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Andy Griffith, Dr. Martin Luther King-all are familiar images.

The king of southern tacky, though, has to be Elvis. His life itself embodied the phenomenon. Born into a poor family, Presley developed an aesthetic of flashy colors, opulence, and sensuality that appealed to the fantasies of many rural southerners. His ideal must continue to fascinate, too, for his image adorns countless artifacts to this day. My favorite is a card marketing "Elvis's Sweat." Boasting a close-up of Presley's face, the card-all bright yellow and blue and pink-proclaims: "The impossible has happened! Elvis poured out his soul for you and NOW you can let his PERSPIRATION be an INSPIRATION." Attached to the front of the card is a small vial of liquid. (I have never actually opened this relic, fearing its power.) Now, this object has a cleverness and originality, yet it was mass-produced. I have no idea if it is serious or just plain awful, but I know it has a certain soulfulness and humor.

The king of southern tacky, though, has to be Elvis. His life itself embodied the phenomenon.

Not every southern souvenir is so playful, though. I collect old church fans and they touch something different and reflect very real religious concerns. These fans, like other material expressions of southern culture, were cheap to make, easy to distribute, and qualify as ephemera in our modern life. But I've learned they are important expressions of everyday life, of ordinary time. Writer James Agee in his classic book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men wrote of the majesty of looking closely at the ordinary in southern life, in the simple objects of a household collected by southerners who often had hard lives. Agee was thinking mostly of folkways, but in the modern and postmodern worlds mass-produced artifacts reflect something of southern pleasures, aspirations, and humor. Southern stuff is a material expression of southern identity, a topic that has been at the forefront of my generation of scholars' efforts to find lessons about the South. My collection of southern stuff is in Barnard Observatory, the historic antebellum house that houses the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. It likely will be there a long time, as my wife does not share my fascination with southern tacky, and the collection will probably not wind up at home.

In the modern and postmodern worlds mass-produced artifacts reflect something of southern pleasures, aspirations, and humor.

Locating "the South" Takes More Than a Map

Regions like the South or the West or New England are geographical areas that because of long histories, cultural practices, and ideas associated with them take on meaning as places of identity. They produce social groups that associate themselves with the spaces of a region. In modern times, we all carry around many identities in our heads: I'm an American, a historian, a professor. I'm a member of a religious group. Like many people in the South, I also think of myself as a southerner. People have identities based around being members of social clubs, voluntary groups, or sports teams, among other activities. Not everyone who lives in a region comes to claim that regional identity, of course. I have a friend who was born in Nebraska, went to college and graduate school at the University of Nebraska. Despite living and teaching in Mississippi for over forty years, he'll always been a Cornhusker.

It has long been assumed that national and regional identities were enduring, essential, and unchanging, and generalizations were made about them. A Polish proverb says, "What the Italian invents, the Frenchman makes, the German sells, the Pole buys, and the Russian takes it from him. Mark Twain observed: "One speaks of FRENCH vivacity and GERMAN gravity and ENGLISH stubbornness. There is no American temperament. The nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two-the composed NORTHERN and the impetuous SOUTHERN; and both are found in other countries." (The only unifying American characteristic, according to Twain, was "the national devotion of ice water." And we might add, iced tea in the South.)

The creation of the South, real and imagined, came from a long process of historical change and cultural practices, and its meanings change from group to group and person to person.

Twain was witty as ever, but he was dealing humorously with what we now know are stereotypes. Scholars have shown that regions like the South are socially constructed ideas, producing stereotypes, positive and negative, with meanings that evolve. They are contingent on changing circumstances and are inherently unstable, full of possibilities for change even while preserving continuities. The creation of the South, real and imagined, came from a long process of historical change and cultural practices, and its meanings change from group to group and person to person. The Mississippi Delta is one South, Piedmont North Carolina another, and the Appalachian South yet another still. There are many Souths and many southerners. Being southern is learned behavior and that varies from place to place in the region.

Defining the South itself must take into account the varieties of southern experiences. "The South" appears at times, for example, as a historical term-the eleven states of the former Confederacy. But Kentucky and Missouri were slave states in 1861, shared many customs and attitudes with people farther south, and, hey, we play them in athletics because they are in the SEC. The U.S. Census Bureau classifies the South as the former Confederate states, plus Maryland, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Delaware, and Washington, D.C. For the federal government to place the nation's capital inside the South, which once rebelled militarily against it, seems a bureaucrat's irony, but it again illustrates that locating "the South" takes more than a map.

Virginia is southern at its historical sites, but in places near Washington it is also a part of the northeastern megalopolis. How does the world of south Florida fit into a South identified with moonlight and magnolias, or moonshine, for that matter? Where is the dividing line between East Texas and West Texas, between "southern" and "western" spheres? Writer Willie Morris once told me that one Texan he met knew exactly where that line was-Conroe, Texas-because west of that small central Texas town bar fights were indoors and east of Conroe bar fights were outdoors.

From 'Cue to Kibbee

The South can be seen as a collection of regions. The Appalachians, the Alleghenies, the Blue Ridge, and the Ozarks are the Mountain South. The Upland South has been a place of hill country farmers, the tobacco business, and textile mills. The Lowland South is the Deep South, a place of cotton growing, the blues, warm Gulf Coast breezes, Florida beaches, and Latin rhythms. The urban South has been the center of each New South since the late nineteenth century. One could chart more specific landscapes in Cajun Louisiana, the Kentucky bluegrass, the Mississippi Delta, and the Piney Woods.

Each place is defined culturally by its food as well as its terrain. ¹ Barbecue provides a classic example. All southern regions can affirm the importance of this gift of King Hog. North Carolinians cook it so long that it falls apart, and they insist on serving it shredded on hamburger buns. South-central Kentucky restaurants often serve slices of pork shoulder as barbecue with bones in, dipped in sauce, and accompanied by white bread. Texans barbecue sausage links, a practice that dates from German settlement in the nineteenth century. Sometimes barbecue is not even pork. Those same Texans barbecue beef brisket in tribute to the cows that have been a part of their way of life for so long, some Kentuckians feast on mutton barbecue, and Latinos have encouraged the rest of us to enjoy barbecued goat.

Foodways also demonstrate the way ethnic identities become intertwined with regional identities. Eli Evans, in chronicling the story of Jewish southerners, told of the young Alabama man who remembered his mother serving "kosher grits," a good emblem in memory of his self-consciousness. When I was in school in central Texas, I remember going to Oktoberfest in New Braunfels, which had been settled by Germans in the nineteenth century. I bought a German sausage that had been wrapped in a tortilla and put on a stick-a southwestern eclecticism that I probably would not have found in Munich.

One of my favorite family memories is of my wife's family, the Antoons, who are from Greenwood. They are Lebanese by ancestry and have lived in Mississippi for generations. One Thanksgiving, my father-in-law Asper hosted more than forty relatives for a family reunion. His mother, Marie's grandmother, known affectionately as "Big Mama," even though she was no taller than five-foot-three, was in attendance and in good spirits at age ninety-four. My father-in-law fried Cajun turkeys-whole turkeys or turkey breasts cooked in sizzling peanut oil for less than an hour, coming out juicy on the inside because of a rich marinade and the hot oil sealing in the flavor. He and his nephew, who had come to Mississippi from Washington State for this event, also made kibbee, that wonderful Lebanese meat dish. We had stuffed grape leaves and cabbage rolls and baklava, reflecting the family's heritage, but also oyster dressing and sweet potato casserole, which reflect their identity as southerners. The meal and the family embody much for me about the South: the diversity that belies the simple stereotypes of the region and the underlying cultural practices that shape all sorts of folks into southerners, and the South into many Souths.

Legacies and Futures

Any way you look at it, race relations has been a defining feature of the South. Our early economy came to rest on slave labor, and after emancipation, it rested on coerced labor and nurtured an oppressive society for African Americans. My history department predecessor, James Silver, wrote in the 1960s of Mississippi as a closed society, indicating the sometimes ruthless enforcement of racial orthodoxy. Thankfully, we have come a long way from those days, but we can't let ourselves off the hook too easily. If our race relations look a lot like those in the rest of the nation, that's faint praise. If the signs indicating "colored" and "white" no longer mark our landscapes, the divisions remain, more subtle and coded but still noticeable and deeply felt.

Moreover, our campus will always be burdened with the special responsibilities that came with the crisis over the admission of our first African American student, James Meredith, in 1962. It pains me that one lesson I have learned is that it is more difficult for some faculty to teach about the South than for others. I know from conversations with African American faculty that they sometimes face disrespect and hostility from students, making their teaching about the South all the more fraught. Former Mississippi governor William Winter reminds us that there have always been southerners who witnessed for civility in discussions with people with whom you might disagree. It's a southern tradition, but only if we practice it. And we had a fraught year in 2014 because of the defacing of the James Meredith statue commemorating the integration of the university in 1963. The campus collectively experienced a cultural trauma that exposed deep doubts and anxieties about how far we have come. A theorist of cultural trauma writes that one possible outcome of trauma can be to mobilize human agency, which, through coping with trauma, can bring a rebirth, a force for social progress. Becoming something new. The optimist in me hopes this will be the case here. I was impressed with the student reaction to the incident, as student leaders across campus condemned the act, university-sponsored forums addressed the issues surrounding the event, and ad hoc student expressions expressed frustration that recent efforts at fostering racial reconciliation had failed to prevent another race-related incident.

We know that how we represent history can skew how we see the present. Whose history in whose South?

The defacing of the Meredith statue was not an isolated incident, but my optimism hopes it will be the trauma that forces our collective free will to say, "No more." Looking into the future, perhaps this incident was so traumatic that it will be the turning point when our campus truly embraces the Meredith statue and the ideals of racial reconciliation that it represents. Given that no one publicly endorsed this vandalism, why do such incidents keep happening? Is there something in the culture here that has fostered a tolerance for symbols of racial antagonism? I fear we sometimes have a sanitized history. If we celebrate hoop skirts and colonels, we distort history in not acknowledging the slave quarters that tell the other side of the story, a story that informs our community equally. We know that how we represent history can skew how we see the present. Whose history in whose South?

But I remain hopeful, partly because I often learned from my students. That is one of the pleasures of being a professor, and this was so as I was thinking about this lecture. I was on a thesis committee for an Honors College student, Meagan Henry. Her wonderful thesis was on the Christian writer C. S. Lewis, and it was about the idea of transformations. It struck me that our campus continues to be in an on-going transformation from an older worldview to a newer one.

Meagan wrote of the need for "new stories and new experiences," and that is what I have learned teaching about the South over a long time period. There are many ways to be southern, and we should affirm those that reflect our creativity and achievements, not our failures and defeats in the past. The dominant black-white paradigm has been a central factor in creating southern culture, although of course the South is, again, more complex than this binary may imply. Despite segregation, the South's peoples have managed to interact over generations. Ours is the story of distinctive cultural groups-Natives, Europeans, and Africans-who created a new culture in the South. In the course of living together on southern soil for centuries, they maintained cultural traditions while exchanging cultural knowledge and blending their expressive traditions in creative ways. The South discovered you cannot segregate the eardrum. People with musical talents crossed racial lines to hear each other's music and make use of it in making their own. Jimmie Rodgers heard African American singers on the railroad crews of Mississippi and then created the white blues as the father of country music. Hank Williams learned to play the guitar from a black street singer in Montgomery, and Ray Charles listened to country music growing up in Georgia, so it was no surprise when he chose to record a soulful country music album in the 1960s. Elvis Presley grew up poor, in a society that threw together whites and African Americans who shared economic deprivation and also their music, and the result from people like Elvis and Fats Domino and Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins and Little Richard was rock 'n' roll.

The South discovered you could not segregate the palate. Barbecued ribs, fried chicken, grits, cornbread, okra, black-eyed peas-these went in a cauldron of racial amalgamation, in which meat and vegetables, recipes, and ways of cooking boiled down into a new stew distinctive to the South. Thinking of food reminds us that the southern story is not just a biracial story, as the Native Americans of the Southeast pioneered southern foodways, and not only that, but environmental knowledge, folk beliefs, transportation routes, and so many other cultural forms trace back to the Native peoples of the Southeast. Restoring the Indians to the center of southern history is a lesson I've learned in studying the region, and one that will continue to preoccupy scholars telling new stories, which in fact are old stories unacknowledged.

The southern saga is of peoples from dramatically different cultures trying to live together and build a better society. The story includes injustice and tragic moments, but it also reveals heroic struggle and the possibility of change and reconciliation.

And there is the crux of whose South it is. The diversity that has always been a part of southern life, the presence of peoples of a variety of cultural ways, has often not been acknowledged. There are many Souths and many southerners. The University of Mississippi and the state of Mississippi need to be in the forefront of the contemporary South's struggles to affirm, to say yes, to its legacy. The South is no longer the home of nineteenth-century southerners; those of us who claim the southern identity are no longer twentieth-century southerners. We are twenty-first century southerners. As the United States and the rest of the Western world increasingly interact with peoples from many cultures from around the globe, the southern story will likely continue to resonate. The southern saga is of peoples from dramatically different cultures trying to live together and build a better society. The story includes injustice and tragic moments, but it also reveals heroic struggle and the possibility of change and reconciliation. Acknowledging the inclusive story of the southern past and present is a possibility that has to be a collaborative project, one that will require work to achieve. I have learned teaching about the South at the University of Mississippi that that is the South's legacy to the world.

Whose South is it? It's all of ours if we shoulder its burdens, embrace its complexities, appreciate its diversities, revel in its joyful noises and delightful flavors, and build on its history to forge a twenty-first century South.

This essay first appeared in the Winter 2016 issue (vol. 22, no. 4).

Charles Reagan Wilson was the Kelly Gene Cook Sr. Chair of History and Professor of Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, where he taught from 1981-2014 and directed the Southern Studies Program (1991-1998) and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture (1998-2007). Wilson received his BA and MA from the University of Texas at El Paso and earned his PhD in history from the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (1980), Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis (1995), and Flashes of Southern Spirit: Meanings of the Spirit in the U. S. South (2011). He is coeditor (with Bill Ferris) of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (1989), general editor of the 24-volume New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (2006-2013), and editor or coeditor of Religion and the American Civil War (1998), The New Regionalism (1996), and Religion in the South (1985). NOTES

This essay was originally presented as the University of Mississippi's Last Lecture of the spring semester, delivered May 2, 2014, in the University's Gertrude C. Ford Center. I want to thank all of my colleagues in the department of history and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. I particularly want to thank the history department chairs, Fred Laurenzo, Bob Haws, and Joe Ward for their support. The Center's founding director, Bill Ferris, and its long-time associate director, Ann Abadie, made the Center a stimulating and creative place, which continues under the direction of director Ted Ownby and associate directors Jimmy Thomas and Becca Walton.

The following paragraphs draw from my "The South: Where, Who, and What's for Dinner," Introduction to A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South, ed. John T. Edge (New York: Berkeley Publishing Group, 1999), xiii-xvii.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On the occasion of my retirement from the University of Mississippi in 2014, I knew I had to talk about the South, the topic I have spent my career studying, pondering, writing about, and teaching.

# data[].attributes.body
Much of the vocabulary which is spoken in the South plays a great deal into the culture of this region.  Many people can connect their childhood to this southern vocabulary if they did in fact grow up in the Southern United States.  #speech=culture #southernslang

# data[].attributes.body
“Don’t you give me none o’ your lip, says he. You’ve put on a considerable many frills since I been away. I’ll take you down a peg before I get done with you” (Twain 19).  #SouthernVocab??

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A

a-

A prefix added to the present participle to make it purtier, e.g. "Abe's a-workin in backer t'day; Ma's a-talkin to you, son!" (see also agwine, agonna; acoming, aworking, etc.)

Airy

All

n. A petroleum-based lubricant as in, "Fill up d'all 'n check duh gas in muh pickup." Yankees drag this meager three letter word out into three syllables (o-ee-yul) for reasons linguists have yet to explain. (For regular all see awl.)

Awfully

adv. Substitute for very, which can't be used south of the Mason-Dixon line. Very is avoided in the South. See also mighty.

B

Bag

n. A milk container with four spigots that hangs under the rear end of a cow. For example: "Did you hear about Katie Belle? She wuz amilkin the cow when somebody rolled a hangernade under it and it went off!"
"Lord a-mercy! Was she kilt?"
"No, bless Patsy, the cow was; Katie Belle was jis left holdin the bag!"

Boat

n. (1) A screw with a nut on it that you tighten with a ranch, as in, "Pass me dat-air munky ranch, Homer Joe, sos'n I can tighten up dis-here head boat." (2) A marine vessal of some type.

Bob war

n. A twisted wire studded with barbs. Usage: "Boy, stay away from that-air bob war fence!"

Borry

v. (past tense: bard) To take something with the full intention of returning it someday or t'other.

C

Conniption

n. A major fit, total loss of control of one's temper; you pitch a conniption (cf. hissy).

Consarned

adj. (Archaic euphemism for darned) Doggoned, dad-burned.

Coon

n. (Rac)coon. Syllables preceding the accented one seldom catch the attention of people born below the Mason-Dixon line. See also backer, Bammer, gater, Lanner, tater.

Corn bread

A lethal form of bread made from cornmeal fried in pork lard.

D

Dang nabbit!

See Dawg nabbit.

Dat-air

Away from me, as in, "Gimme dat-air munky ranch, bubba." (See also dis-hyeer.)

Dis-hyeer

E

Et

v. past tense. The past tense of eat, also found in other English dialects, such as Received Pronunciation, as in: "How many dem poke sawssigiz is you et, Caeser Earl?" "Et two, Brutus Bob. Dass awl."

F

Far

n. A conflagration. For example:
"What did da Wise Men do for a livin?"
"I don't know what?"
"Dey was farmen."
"How joo know dat?"
"Well, hit sez in da Bible dat when dey came to see baby Jesus, dey was a-comin from a far."

For crying out loud!

Well, I'll be darned!

G

Gator

n. The larval stage of alligator boots and pocketbooks. (Initial syllables often elude detection in the South. See also backer, Bammer, possum, Lanner, tater.)

Gwine

v. aux. Contraction of agwine; a mountain variant for on: "Yo daddy's on whup you," would be, "Yo daddy's gwine whup you!" up in them thar hills.

H

Haid

n. The uppermost part of a human or animal body. Etymology: Early High-Falutin head.

Haint

n. (1) A supernatural spirit that means living fokes no good. (2) A variant of ain't.

Her

n. The frizzly stuff growing on yore haid and else whir round yore body.

Her'n

poss. pro. Belonging to her: "The pickup ain't her'n but everthang else is." Etymology: either morphological analogy from "mine" or the Southern suffix "-n" found elsewhere in young'n, his'n, etc.

I

Idnit?

Same problem as with bidnis-them "s's" before "n" again.

If that don't beat all!

A phrase expressing surprise: "If that don't beat all! Bobby Leroy done gone and got hisself hitched!"

If'n

conj. Variation of "if". (Southerners love their new suffix, -n, so much, they stick it everywhere. See young'n and his'n.

J

K

L

M

Member

v. Remember. (See also backer, Bammer, possum, Lanner, tater.) Antonym: dissermember.

Mighty

adv. Substitute for very, which can't be used south of the Mason-Dixon line. Very is avoided in the South. See also awfully.

N

-n

Suffix for creating nouns from adjectives: young-n, little-n, big-n, that-n over yonder. However, Southerners are so proud of it, they stick it on a lot of other words: if'n, his'n, her'n, sos'n, etc.

Nairy

O

(Overcompensation)

In many dialects speakers try to compensate for characteristic features that are ridiculed by others. Since Southerners are accused of dropping their r's, they compensate by adding this sound to the end of words. Problem is, they don't know where the r's go, since they have never pronounced them, so they often put them where they are not supposed to go, e.g. "Cuber," (At)lanter," "(Ala)bammer," and so forth.

P

Poke

n. (1) A sack, as in a pig in a poke. (2) Pork, as in "Gimme wunna dem poke chops, hunny."

Possum

n. Opossum. Southerners are characteristically uninterested in what comes before the accented syllable of a word. See also backer, Bammer, gater, Lanner, member, tater.

R

Rile

v. Stir something or someone up. Etymology: From Early High-Falutin roil (see also bile.)

S

Sot (down)

v. Past tense of sit, as in "Jis as soon as I sot down, them fokes started makin fun of my hercut."

T

Tarnation

An acceptable substitute in the presence of ladies for "damnation".

Thank

v. The ability to cognitively process. Usage: "Ah thank ah'll have a bare."

Them-air

pro. Variant of them: " Whirs them air nails I bawt, Willy Earl?"
"Why, they's rye-cheer, Uncle Bubba. If'n they'd abeen a snake, hit wood abicha."

Thoe

n. To chunk, toss. Very similar to throw without the R: "Thoe me dat ere munky ranch, Lureen, but don't aim it at muh head."

U

V

W

Wadn't it?

That pesky little "s" before "n". (See " bidnis", " idnit").

X Y Z

Young'n

(See -n) A young thang, a baby.

Thanks to Faye Beard, Chris Blackwood, Thomas Peebles, Michael Gedenberg, Paula Gray, Emmett H. Griner, Steve Innskeep, Rachael Malagon, Danielle Davis, William "Mike" Chapman, Julie McIntosh of Dallas, Dee Miller from somewhere down there, and Stacy from Carteret County, NC, among many others, for their suggestions and contributions.

Did You Enjoy this Glossary?

Send theGlossary of Quaint Southernisms to a friend! Just click here.

Rebel-Yankee Test
If you liked the dictionary, you would probably enjoy taking Rebel-Yankee Test as much as the 3 million people who have already taken it.

Historical Dictionary of US Slang
If you enjoyed the Glossary of Quaint Southernisms, you will probably enjoy exploring the changes in US slang over the centuries.

Discuss accents and dialects with others.
Now you can talk with others about your accent and theirs. You might want to talk about other topics, too, at our Alpha Agora.

So, What's the Good Word?
While you are here, check out our daily word-of-the-day feature, the daily Good Word. We select an interesting word and tell you all about it-how to say it, what it means, where it comes from, and how to use it. You can have it delivered to your email inbox daily, for free!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Glossary of Southern Accents * alphaDictionary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A a- A prefix added to the present participle to make it purtier, e.g. "Abe's a-workin in backer t'day; Ma's a-talkin to you, son!" (see also agwine, agonna; acoming, aworking, etc.) Airy All n. A petroleum-based lubricant as in, "Fill up d'all 'n check duh gas in muh pickup."

# data[].attributes.body
“They found people hungry for spiritual guidance and a connection with a Christian God” (Gray 131). #BibleBelt

# data[].attributes.body
As the Southern United States was the epicenter for slavery where African Americans were often in the majority, the whites felt a need to assert their dominance over the other race. This evolved into intense racism and the extensive use of the n-word.  #racistsouth

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/maps-reveal-slavery-expanded-across-united-states-180951452/

# data[].attributes.body
As many whites became more and more disconnected from the African American slaves, these slaves and African Americans alike were treated more like animals. #slavery

# data[].attributes.body
“He was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn’t ever been away from home before in his life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks do for their’n” (Twain 157).

# data[].attributes.body
This racism is also seen when the slur of the n-word is used in a negative way. This slur as seen as someone who is below the average person and does not deserve the same rights.

# data[].attributes.body
“It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger- but I done it, and I warn’t even sorry for it afterwords, neither” (Twain 87).

# data[].attributes.body
“Yes, dey will, I reck’n, Mars Tom, but what kine er time is Jim havin’? Blest if I kin see de pint.  But I’ll do it ef I got to.  I reck’n I better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in de house” ( Twain 264).

# data[].attributes.body
“Well, you can’t get your n****r, that’s all— so dry up your blubbering.  Looky here—do you think you’d venture to blow on us? Blamed if I think I’d trust you. Why, if you was to blow on us—“ (Twain 218)

# data[].attributes.body
“Cuss the doctor!  What do we k’yer for him?  Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side?  and ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?” (Twain 179)

# data[].attributes.body
“All right, then, I’ll go to hell” (Twain 215)

# data[].attributes.body
“and they’ve took my nigger, which is the only nigger I’ve got in the world, and now I’m in a strange country, and ain’t got no property no more” (Twain 217).