Saturday, December 04, 2004, 15:32 GMT
The Southern Dialect
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Southern dialect is generally heard south and east of an imaginary line traced along the Maryland-Virginia northern boundary, then along the Ohio River and past the Mississippi (including Souhern Missouri) and finally down through southeastern Oklahoma and East Texas.
Southern talk, like that of New England, began as a type of speech which was basically southeastern English in nature. More than half the colonists in the Virginia colony came from the southern part of England. It is also important to know that whereas the North was largely settled by immigrants who learned English as a second language and who were heavily dependent on the written word, Southerners have always relied on the spoken word. In that respect Southern speech is closer to the native speech of England, and often to Elizabethan English. In any case, only American mountain (or hill) dialect preserves old English so well as Southern talk, and the so-called Ozark accent is often considered a variety of Southern dialect, deriving from the dialect of the Southern Appalachians, which, in turn, was brought there from Pennsylvania by Scotch-Irish immigrants.
Mountain talk is only one possible form of the Southern accent. Southern dialect is extremely varied, and many linguists divide it into smaller dialect regions. Some experts call these divisions the MOUNTAIN (or HILL), PLAINS, and COASTAL DIALECTS. In addition there are the EAST TEXAS DIALECT, LOCAL DIALECTS with Charleston and New Orleans as focal points. Charlestonians are said to be particularly proud of their distinctive accent, which they describe as possessing a amattering of Old English. Older Charlestonians are even sometimes taken for Britons or Scots. New Orleans also boasts of its homegrown Southern accent. A.J. Liebling, a famous linguist, once said about the way people talk in New Orleans: “There is a New York City accent similar to that spoken in New Orleans, even though almost obsolete in New York, living harmoniously in New Orleans alongside Dixie plantation dialect.” It´s major characteristics are:
SLOWER ENUNCIATION: Southern dialects are characterized by a slower enunciation than common in most of the country.
SOUTHERN DRAWL: The Southern Drawl might be described as a gliding or diphtongization of stressed vowels. Results are pronounciations like “yae-yis” for “yes”, “ti-ahm” for “time”. Furthermore “i” is pronounced “ah”, and “oo” is pronounced “yoo”, as in "Ah'm dyoo home at fahv o'clock." and “nice white rice” sounds like “nahs whaht rahs”. An “ow” in words like “loud” is pronounced with a slided double sound “aoo” (combining the vowel sounds in "hat" and "boot").
CORONAL STOPS: Words containing a coronal stop (such as ) and sometimes followed by a high back vowel have a glide inserted between the stop and vowel. Therefore words like tune, new and duty (but not true, rule, sue, dude!) become “tyune” instead of “tune”, “dyuty” instead of “duty” and “nyew” instead of “new”. The forms with are most commonly glided, with less common, and even more rarely. The forms in some varieties become the affricates (eg. ).
CONSONANTS: The final consonants following a combination of slower enunciation and the mentioned drawling vowel sounds (particularly d, l, r and t) are often weakened, resulting in such characteristic Southern pronounciations as “hep” for “help”, “mo” for “more”, “yo” for “your”, “po” for “poor”, “flo” for “floor”, “kep” for “kept”, “nex” for “next”, “bes” for “best”, “sof” for “soft” and “las” for “last”.
SHORT O: Southerners tend to flattern the short o-sound so that it sounds like a short “u”. The most bizarre example is the word “bomb”, which a Southerner invariably pronounces as “bum”.
POSTVOCALIC “R”: The postvocalic “r” is lost in words like “barn” and “turn” in large parts of the Southern Dialect region. Thus Southerners tend to drop the “r” the way New Englanders do, but they don't add extra “r´s”. One has to keep in mind that the “r” is never dropped at the beginning of a word or syllable and a vowel (e.g. “Mary”, “carry” etc.) BEWARE: in some regions (most of Texas, Kentucky) the “r” is kept after vowels!
HOMOPHONES: ”ai” and “a” often fall together so that “blind” and “blond” become homophones (=words that are written differently, but sound alike). ”ai” and “ae” as well often fall together so that “right” is not distinguishable from “rat”.
Like all dialects South talk differs widely within the region. Several examples for this are:
SHORT I-PRONOUNCIATIONS: A very distinct pronounciation heard nowhere alse in the South is heard among older citizens of Memphis, Tennessee who will tell you that they are from “Mimphis, Tinnissi”. As a rule, a short i-pronounciations is used whereever a short “e” is followed by “n”, so that “tender” becomes “tinder”, “penny” becomes “pinny” and “ten pens” become “tin pins”. At the end of words, “y” sometimes has a short ih-sound instead of the “ee” of the New England dialect region. This affects words like “happy” and “carefully”.
BROOKLYN DIPHTONG: The R-colored vowel is followed by a short i-sound in some parts of the Deep South. People there pronounce “bird” as “boid”, “girl” as “goil”, “word” as “woid”, “earth” as “oith”, “oil” as “earl” (all is alternate pronounciation in some Southern parts) and “murder” as “moider” – just as they do in Brooklyn!
THE SOUTH MIDLAND “TH”: In the area of the Appalachian Mountains and the Ozark Mountains, an area originally settled by the Pennsylvania Dutch moving south from the North Midland areas and the Scotch-Irish moving west from Virginia, a “th” at the end of words or syllables is sometimes pronounced “f”.
THE SOUTH MIDLAND –ING-FORMS: An “a” is usually placed at the beginning of verb that ends with “ing”, and the “g” is dropped.
THE SOUTH MIDLAND “O”: An “o” at the end of a word becomes “er”. Thus (together with the fourth and fifth point listed above) people there tend to say: "They a-celebratin' his birfday by a-goin' to see 'Old Yeller' in the theatah").
THE ADDES “T”: A “t” is frequently added to words that end with an “s” sound.
THE VIRGINIA PIEDMONT “R”: When an “r” comes after a vowel, it becomes “uh”, and “aw” becomes the slided sound “ah-aw”. Thus, “four dogs” becomes “fo-uh dahawgs”.
“OY” AND “O”: The sound that is like the sound of the “oy” in “boy” becomes simplified to the long o-sound like that of “owe” when followed by the consonant “l” in some regions of the South. Thus “oil” becomes “ol”, “boil” becomes “”bowl” and “coal” becomes “cohl”.
http://www.uni-mainz.de/FB/Philologie-II/fb1413/roesel/seminar0203/regional_varieties/TheSouth.htm
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Southern dialect is generally heard south and east of an imaginary line traced along the Maryland-Virginia northern boundary, then along the Ohio River and past the Mississippi (including Souhern Missouri) and finally down through southeastern Oklahoma and East Texas.
Southern talk, like that of New England, began as a type of speech which was basically southeastern English in nature. More than half the colonists in the Virginia colony came from the southern part of England. It is also important to know that whereas the North was largely settled by immigrants who learned English as a second language and who were heavily dependent on the written word, Southerners have always relied on the spoken word. In that respect Southern speech is closer to the native speech of England, and often to Elizabethan English. In any case, only American mountain (or hill) dialect preserves old English so well as Southern talk, and the so-called Ozark accent is often considered a variety of Southern dialect, deriving from the dialect of the Southern Appalachians, which, in turn, was brought there from Pennsylvania by Scotch-Irish immigrants.
Mountain talk is only one possible form of the Southern accent. Southern dialect is extremely varied, and many linguists divide it into smaller dialect regions. Some experts call these divisions the MOUNTAIN (or HILL), PLAINS, and COASTAL DIALECTS. In addition there are the EAST TEXAS DIALECT, LOCAL DIALECTS with Charleston and New Orleans as focal points. Charlestonians are said to be particularly proud of their distinctive accent, which they describe as possessing a amattering of Old English. Older Charlestonians are even sometimes taken for Britons or Scots. New Orleans also boasts of its homegrown Southern accent. A.J. Liebling, a famous linguist, once said about the way people talk in New Orleans: “There is a New York City accent similar to that spoken in New Orleans, even though almost obsolete in New York, living harmoniously in New Orleans alongside Dixie plantation dialect.” It´s major characteristics are:
SLOWER ENUNCIATION: Southern dialects are characterized by a slower enunciation than common in most of the country.
SOUTHERN DRAWL: The Southern Drawl might be described as a gliding or diphtongization of stressed vowels. Results are pronounciations like “yae-yis” for “yes”, “ti-ahm” for “time”. Furthermore “i” is pronounced “ah”, and “oo” is pronounced “yoo”, as in "Ah'm dyoo home at fahv o'clock." and “nice white rice” sounds like “nahs whaht rahs”. An “ow” in words like “loud” is pronounced with a slided double sound “aoo” (combining the vowel sounds in "hat" and "boot").
CORONAL STOPS: Words containing a coronal stop (such as ) and sometimes followed by a high back vowel have a glide inserted between the stop and vowel. Therefore words like tune, new and duty (but not true, rule, sue, dude!) become “tyune” instead of “tune”, “dyuty” instead of “duty” and “nyew” instead of “new”. The forms with are most commonly glided, with less common, and even more rarely. The forms in some varieties become the affricates (eg. ).
CONSONANTS: The final consonants following a combination of slower enunciation and the mentioned drawling vowel sounds (particularly d, l, r and t) are often weakened, resulting in such characteristic Southern pronounciations as “hep” for “help”, “mo” for “more”, “yo” for “your”, “po” for “poor”, “flo” for “floor”, “kep” for “kept”, “nex” for “next”, “bes” for “best”, “sof” for “soft” and “las” for “last”.
SHORT O: Southerners tend to flattern the short o-sound so that it sounds like a short “u”. The most bizarre example is the word “bomb”, which a Southerner invariably pronounces as “bum”.
POSTVOCALIC “R”: The postvocalic “r” is lost in words like “barn” and “turn” in large parts of the Southern Dialect region. Thus Southerners tend to drop the “r” the way New Englanders do, but they don't add extra “r´s”. One has to keep in mind that the “r” is never dropped at the beginning of a word or syllable and a vowel (e.g. “Mary”, “carry” etc.) BEWARE: in some regions (most of Texas, Kentucky) the “r” is kept after vowels!
HOMOPHONES: ”ai” and “a” often fall together so that “blind” and “blond” become homophones (=words that are written differently, but sound alike). ”ai” and “ae” as well often fall together so that “right” is not distinguishable from “rat”.
Like all dialects South talk differs widely within the region. Several examples for this are:
SHORT I-PRONOUNCIATIONS: A very distinct pronounciation heard nowhere alse in the South is heard among older citizens of Memphis, Tennessee who will tell you that they are from “Mimphis, Tinnissi”. As a rule, a short i-pronounciations is used whereever a short “e” is followed by “n”, so that “tender” becomes “tinder”, “penny” becomes “pinny” and “ten pens” become “tin pins”. At the end of words, “y” sometimes has a short ih-sound instead of the “ee” of the New England dialect region. This affects words like “happy” and “carefully”.
BROOKLYN DIPHTONG: The R-colored vowel is followed by a short i-sound in some parts of the Deep South. People there pronounce “bird” as “boid”, “girl” as “goil”, “word” as “woid”, “earth” as “oith”, “oil” as “earl” (all is alternate pronounciation in some Southern parts) and “murder” as “moider” – just as they do in Brooklyn!
THE SOUTH MIDLAND “TH”: In the area of the Appalachian Mountains and the Ozark Mountains, an area originally settled by the Pennsylvania Dutch moving south from the North Midland areas and the Scotch-Irish moving west from Virginia, a “th” at the end of words or syllables is sometimes pronounced “f”.
THE SOUTH MIDLAND –ING-FORMS: An “a” is usually placed at the beginning of verb that ends with “ing”, and the “g” is dropped.
THE SOUTH MIDLAND “O”: An “o” at the end of a word becomes “er”. Thus (together with the fourth and fifth point listed above) people there tend to say: "They a-celebratin' his birfday by a-goin' to see 'Old Yeller' in the theatah").
THE ADDES “T”: A “t” is frequently added to words that end with an “s” sound.
THE VIRGINIA PIEDMONT “R”: When an “r” comes after a vowel, it becomes “uh”, and “aw” becomes the slided sound “ah-aw”. Thus, “four dogs” becomes “fo-uh dahawgs”.
“OY” AND “O”: The sound that is like the sound of the “oy” in “boy” becomes simplified to the long o-sound like that of “owe” when followed by the consonant “l” in some regions of the South. Thus “oil” becomes “ol”, “boil” becomes “”bowl” and “coal” becomes “cohl”.
http://www.uni-mainz.de/FB/Philologie-II/fb1413/roesel/seminar0203/regional_varieties/TheSouth.htm