Southern Accents outside the South

I made a very rough map based on my idea of the Southern accents range, which differs from Labov's (I am not a linguist)...

<img src="http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a118/musicman77/SAE-map.jpg" />

This is all really interesting, but I REALLY have a hard time imagining someone from Ohio or PA with a Southern accent...

"if they also have general breaking of lax vowels"

Travis, I'm new to this lingustics stuff. Could you please point me in a direction to learn more about breaking of lax vowels?

What I simply was referring to is the shifts [{] > [{j] or [{j@_^], [E] > [Ej] or [Ej@_^], and [I] > [Ij] or [Ij@_^], in the case of Southern dialects. The similar but different shift (in that it is a diphthongization of a lax vowel, albeit a different sort of one) that I was referring to in the case of the dialect here in southeastern Wisconsin is [I] > [i1_^].

(Note that I am using X-SAMPA for transcription; for more information go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA .)

One of the North-South divisions is the ON /An/ ~ ON /Qn/ border.
It's /An/ in the North, /Qn/ in the South.
But then again, it can be /an/ in Chicago and /Qn/ in Maine...

Yes, in Eastern New England, we use /Q:n/ for "on".

In Texas we say /An/... /Q/ is hardly ever used in the South.

I think it depends on what you consider south. I consider south anything south of Delaware and that's where the southern accents are. There are different southern accents as far as I'm concerned, but they all sound pretty alike to me.

They differ greatly. If you can't hear the difference, well...

I have known many people who were born and raised in Alaska, and they did not strike me as sounding "Southern". If anything, they seemed to sound a bit like Northern Californians.

The general dialects found in southern Illinois, southern Indiana, and southern Ohio usually have very noticeable "Southern" features. They can often extend further north (Columbus, Ohio for example), but are almost or entirely absent in places such as Chicago, Gary, Toledo, and Cleveland.

Based on what I have heard from Kansas natives, I would say that most of them also have pseudo-Southern accents. The exception would probably be Northwestern Kansas, but I have not heard enough of this dialect to reach a conclusion. In my opinion, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Oklahoma all have very noticeable Southern features.

I have known several Californians from the San Joaquin Valley and while some of them have the pin/pen merger, they often sound less Southern than say someone from Little Egypt, IL.

I am surprised that no one mentioned Colorado. Not all people from Colorado have Southern-influenced dialects, but based on my experiences, I have heard it in a number of individuals from the Colorado Springs area.

<<I am surprised that no one mentioned Colorado. Not all people from Colorado have Southern-influenced dialects, but based on my experiences, I have heard it in a number of individuals from the Colorado Springs area.>>

I've heard that, too. Nearly all the people from Colorado that I've heard have a very slight Southern accent.

"This is all really interesting, but I REALLY have a hard time imagining someone from Ohio or PA with a Southern accent... "

No, many people in both states have markedly "southern" features in their speech. I should also point out that Western Penn is actually the cradle of the Scotch-Irish Appalachian dialect, one of the primary influences on much of what we consider modern Southern speech.

"No, many people in both states have markedly "southern" features in their speech. I should also point out that Western Penn is actually the cradle of the Scotch-Irish Appalachian dialect, one of the primary influences on much of what we consider modern Southern speech."

Bingo!

I'd think the distinctive loss of the offglide in the /aI/ diphthong would also be a noticable feature for people outside of the southern dialect region.

>>I'd think the distinctive loss of the offglide in the /aI/ diphthong would also be a noticable feature for people outside of the southern dialect region.<<

More specifically, that is the conditioned monophthongization of /aɪ̯/ as [aː] before lenis obstruents or in general. There are other dialects which have monophthongization of /aɪ̯/, but they tend to be in particular environments other than such, such as before /l/ or /w/.

<<More specifically, that is the conditioned monophthongization of /aɪ̯/ as [aː] before lenis obstruents or in general. There are other dialects which have monophthongization of /aɪ̯/, but they tend to be in particular environments other than such, such as before /l/ or /w/.>>

Yeah, some dialects in Kentucky and Tennesee make a seperation between the two--[a:] versus [AI]. Although I'm not really sure what the environmental factors are. I'd guess this might be a holdover from the region's Scotch-Irish past, since this split isn't all that different from the [ae] vs. [@i] distinction in mid-Ulster English.