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Why do yanks compare American southern accent to English
Hi I have been listening to http://web.ku.edu/~idea/northamerica/usa/usa.htm (listening to various American Accents) mostly because I love the sound.
The accents I'm most drawn to seem to belong to the southern region of America i.e. Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas etc. (all sound cute)
Anyway I was wondering as the subject title depicts why do Northern Americans (granted not all, but I have heard this on more than one occasion) say that it is similar to southern English.
Obliviously this is all generalizations, (various accents exist in both).
p.s. Also could this be the reason why when some people attempt an "American accent" it sounds "southern"
<<The accents I'm most drawn to seem to belong to the southern region of America i.e. Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas etc. (all sound cute)>>
It is natural for you to feel that way, nothing strange about that at all.
In all honesty mate, you should now why this is.
...
A friend of mine who serves in the British army (currently in Afghanistan) said that he prefered to work along side Southerners because it was easy to understand them, and vice versa.
A little hint there.
When they contemplate the supposed origins at all, I don't think most Americans do think of accents in the American South as being derived from the south of England. New England has most of that. The old New York accent is from the Dutch (Nieuw-Nederland). Although a few Southern accents were derived from English speech patterns (noticeable still in Tidewater, Virginia, a region which is one of the oldest English colonies in the New World), most Dixie accents are a modified version of Scots and Scots-Irish accents. Bill Clinton's Arkansas accent is very close to the Ulster sound.
Much of the American South was settled by very large numbers of refugees who were fleeing the collapse of the Royal Stuart "Lost Cause" in Scotland (after the Battle of Culloden, 1745-6 and the Highland Clearances) ; add to those emigrations the impoverished Scots-Irish from the Ulster Plantation. (They often came over as indentured servants and were assigned to teach English to the black African slaves who worked beside them, this contact being a major source of what is called Negro dialect or Black English.)
It is no mere vexillological whimsy that Southern flags incorporate the St. Andrew's Cross from Scotland's national flag (and no co-incidence that the struggle for states' rights in the War Between the States was, after 1865, being termed "the Lost Cause").
So many of the founders and builders of America were the exiled heirs of an ancient Celtic kingdom ; not the early American colonists (Englishmen), but the later Founding Fathers (post-Culloden and Ulster diaspora) leading up to the American Revolution : among these were such notables as Patrick Henry (his father was from Aberdeen), James Madison, James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson (Ulster stock) and Alexander Hamilton. They helped create a Republic with their Scottish and Scots-Irish supporters - hundreds of thousands of them in an American population of less than four million at the time (circa 1776).
The story is often told of the Irish emigrants and how they made good in the New World after their many travails in the old country ; yet American culture also has profound influences from Scots (and perhaps I need not sell you on the fact that Canadian culture is heavily Scottified : Why, the country is practically run by a Scottish mafia).
Why do you think it is, for example, that so many German, Italian, Hungarian, Vietnamese, Korean or Ukrainian emigrants who settle in North America end up giving their babies the names of Scottish kings and saints ? : Alan, Boyd, Colin, Donald, Douglas, Gavin, Ian, Kenneth, Kyle, Neil, Ross - these popular given names were at one time exclusively Celtic. Nowadays, Alan and Murray (the latter being a surname related to the once-banned MacGregor clan name) are practically considered Jewish given names in New York ; Scottish plaid is worn by Greeks in California and Cubans in Florida ; and the Caledonian warpipes are heard at Polish funerals in Illinois.
In the small lovely film entitled LOCAL HERO, Burt Lancaster plays a Texas oil magnate who is sending his subordinate MacIntyre over to Scotland to survey the land for a refinery.
"You've even got the name - You'll be my eyes, my ears," Lancaster's character enthuses, "you're going home, MacIntyre !" Poor MacIntyre later sheepishly admits to a colleague that his parents were Jewish refugees from Hungary who changed their surname to MacIntyre because they thought it sounded American !
FLAG OF SCOTLAND (St. Andrew's Cross) :
http://www.flagpoles.co.uk/assets/products/images/xx-lrg/511.jpg
PROVINCIAL FLAG OF NOVA SCOTIA :
http://www.flagshag.com/smaller/canadian/Nova_Scotia_Flag.jpg
CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG :
http://www.cassvillehistoricalsociety.com/confederate_battle_flag_03.png
COMPOSITION OF THE UNION JACK (St. George's + St. Andrew's + St. Patrick's Cross) :
http://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/world/22978d1215662862-american-flag-vs-union-jack-unionjack.gif
I am well aware of the American south identification with the Celts particularly Scotland, and already knew of both the Scottish Flag and Confederate Flag resemblance.
Whilst the Scottish Accent could of been one of the its early ancestor, my question is more about the similarity however superficial of both the South and the South-East of England (what is identified abroad as an "English Accent").
p.s. As you may already know English as an identifiable heritage is vastly under-represented with most of this stock identifying as American or a later ethnicity.
In the 1980 United States Census, over 49 million (49,598,035) Americans claimed English ancestry, at the time around 26.34% of the total population and largest reported group which, even today, would make them the largest ethnic group in the United States. This outnumbered the population of England at the time.[7][8]
The overwhelming majority of the Founding Fathers of America were of English extraction, including Ben Franklin, George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
John, considerable debate has been had in this forum on that topic. Of particular note is the fact that while Southern American English sounds unpleasant to most General American speakers, a whole lot of British speakers actually prefer the dialect.
We have posited the idea that perhaps many of the vowel sounds are the same between SAE and BE—and different from General American. From what I've heard in samples of British English dialects, this assessment does seem to hold water.
John, by the way, I'm a speaker of that dialect. After several years of desperately trying to get rid of it, I have learned to accept it, more or less.
Middle age does bring some benefits.
Then why do Americans find English accents pleasant? It seems there is a contradiction in your theory.
X I imagine stereotypes are to blame, people with favourable views of the English may think quaint, old fashioned but nice first even if they are aware of the opposites (think cockney villain); whereas Southerners may be though of as rednecks primarily but may also be aware of gentlemen and belles secondly southern charm etc.
Obviously these are stereotypes and can work in both advantage and disadvantage, but I like southern accent alot and probably whilst I have been raised in a different culture I am aware of the sterotypes they are not automatically linked in my mind.
>>The overwhelming majority of the Founding Fathers of America were of English extraction, including Ben Franklin, George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.>>
There is no need to get so overwhelmed by the "facts" of Wikipedia.
Jefferson's heritage is both mixed (English, Welsh, Scots-Irish) and debatable to this day, but it's clear sailing for the other Founding Fathers : Patrick Henry, Madison, Monroe and Hamilton - all of Scottish stock.
Yes, General Washington was a Virginian, but also proud to fight for "the rights of Englishmen" (in his words).
Surely the Revolutionary influence of Scottish agitation in America against English rule, post Culloden, is undeniable. And while it is true that the English stock New Englanders' aversion to paying the taxes that bought them protection triggered the rest of the rebellion, yet please know that many thousands from those Northern colonies who stayed loyal to the Crown were hanged, chased off their lands, or exiled to Canada.
For anyone with eyes to read it, this is an historical record that Wiki can also relate :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalist_(American_Revolution)
A Redcoat perspective :
http://www.redcoat.me.uk/
L'histoire, c'est une fable convenue.
- Napoleon
("History is a lie agreed upon." =or=
"History is a myth that men agree to believe.")
Texas is cowboy country, it's western not southern and if anything, Texas has gone back to being Mexican more then anything. Texas got redneck but it still aint deep south nor old south nor Appalachian hillbilly.
Get ya southerner hands of the wild west! Viva Texas!
PS what exactly was the difference between the film Southern Comfort and the film Deliverance?
What must be remembered here is that Scotsmen featured very prominently among the signatories to the American Declaration of Independence....little did they know what kind of mammoth superpower of the future they were spawning as they flourished their quill pens on the parchment on that fateful day.
http://www.burkespeerage.com/articles/scotland/saal2-1.aspx
Actually, as I've said before, I quite like to hear the Southern American accent - to me it's both quaintly polite and charming in an old fashioned way, yet strangely smilingly funny at the same time.
On the other hand I am not sure I would like to hear it all around me every day in and every day out on a permanent basis forever and a day - I feel it may even make me yearn to hear some good old Glaswegian again, or even some East London Estuary or even - and I can't believe I'm saying this - Liverpool Scouse or Birmingham Brummie.
I'd probably start looking up flights back to Blighty in the end so that I could hear the whole bloody lot of our own homegrown regional Brit accents once again, for better or worse.
But most of all my own Edinburghspeak.
Very well said, Damian. It's different when you're dwelling in the thick of it and the exotic aspect is long since fled from your ears.
Some American Southern accents are pleasant to hear, some rather less so. Even the folks in the South will plainly (or elegantly) tell you that.
By the way, President Jimmy Carter's cousins are Geordies (north of England).
As I mentioned above, the accent of Tidewater, Virginia, perhaps most nearly resembles the speech of southern England.
Cheers, Quintus.
I'm not really aware of the accent of Virginia generally, let alone that of Tidewater, which I have never heard of tbh with you, but that's understandable isn't it?
Virginia is considered part of the South isn't it? I like the way all those newly founded Americans named their newly established States - Virginia, virgin territory, all ready for living in...nice. I do realise of course that it was so named because of England's (so called) "virgin"* Queen, Elizabeth I? Right?*
In actual fact, whether she was or wasn't a "virgin" as such by the time of her demise in 1603 is highly debatable...the Earl of Essex was reputedly quite a randy, redblooded fellow all said and done and she did consort with him in no small way.
Even further south - in Georgia - the true Deep South...again a clear connection with British royalty, not to mention the two Carolinas.
Right? Most Americans seem to add this word to many of their statements when they expect a response of some kind. I noticed that for the first time among a couple of the American students I met at uni. They seemed to use it quite often.
Yes indeed.
Virginia was named for Elizabeth the Virgin Queen, Georgia for King George (the Second), Carolina for King Charles (the First), Louisiana for Louis XIV of France (or perhaps for his patron saint).
The Spanish explorer Ponce de León arrived in Florida at Eastertide, and thus named the place for an aspect (or epithet) of that holy feast (Pascua Florida, "flowery Easter").
All the other Southern states have Indian names.
Maryland (which borders the South and shares many of its traditions) was named for Henrietta Maria, Queen Consort of Charles I.
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