Southern American English: Difference between revisions

This article is about English as spoken in the Southern United States. For English as spoken in South America, see South American English.

Approximate extent of Southern American English, based upon multiple dialect studies.

The merger of pin and pen in Southern American English. In the purple areas, the merger is complete for most speakers. Note the exclusion of the New Orleans area, Southern Florida, and of the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia. The purple area in California consists of the Bakersfield and Kern County area, where migrants from the south-central states settled during the Dust Bowl. There is also debate whether or not Austin, Texas is an exclusion. Based on Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:68).

Southern American English or Southern U.S. English is a collection of related American English dialects spoken throughout the Southern United States, though increasingly in more rural areas and primarily by White Americans. Commonly in the United States, the dialects are referred together simply as Southern. Other, much more recent ethnolectal terms include Southern White Vernacular English and Rural White Southern English.

The Southern U.S. dialects make up the largest accent group in the United States, from the southern extremities of Ohio, Indiana, Maryland, and Delaware, as well as most of West Virginia and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the southern Atlantic coast extending to most of Texas and Oklahoma, and the far eastern section of New Mexico. Southern American English can be divided into several regional dialects and sub-dialects. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) has common points with the Southern dialects due to the strong historical ties of African Americans to the region.

Geography

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 in large part from a mix of immigrants from the British Isles, who moved to the South in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the creole or post-creole speech of African slaves. 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.

General phonology

General Southern pronunciation features are popularly recognized in the United States as a Southern accent, though there is actually wide variation in Southern speech regarding differences based on a speaker's region and sub-region (see the different Southern U.S. English dialects section below for more information), age, ethnicity, etc. The following is an overview of the major phonological characteristics that help define older versus newer (modern) Southern speech.

Older Southern

The following features are characteristic of older Southern:

• Lack of Yod-dropping: Pairs like do and due or toon and tune were distinct because, historically, words like due, lute, and new contained a diphthong similar to /juː/ (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.
• 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 Southern 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. In older Southern, rhotic accents, which fully pronounce all historical r sounds, were 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 South along the East Coast, the consonants /k/ (as in key or coo) and /ɡ/ (as in guy or go), when before the sound /ɑːr/ (as in car or barn), were pronounced with the the tongue fronted towards the hard palate. Thus, for example, garden was something like "gyah(r)den" [ˈgjɑː(ɹ)dən] and "car" like "kyah(r)" [cʰjɑː(ɹ)]. This pronunciation feature was in decline by the late 1800s.
• Mary–marry–merry distinction: Unlike most of the U.S. and modern Southern, older Southern did not merge the three following vowels before /r/: [e~eə] (as in Mary), [æ] (as in marry), and [ɛ] (as in merry). Although the three are now merging in modern Southern, the "marry" class of words is still the least likely among Southerners to merge with the other two.
• Clear /l/ between front vowels: Unlike modern Southern's "dark" /l/ sound (often represented as [ɫ]) between any two vowels and often in other situations (which is also typical throughout the U.S.), older Southern pronunciation had a "clear" (i.e. non-velarized) /l/ sound whenever /l/ appeared 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.).
• Happy-tensing, part of modern Southern and all other U.S. dialects, had not yet occurred.

Modern Southern

A list of typical Southern vowels

Pure vowels (Monophthongs)
English diaphoneme	Southern phoneme	Example words
/æ/	[æ~æ(ʲ)ə]	act, pal, trap
	[[æ tensing|[eə~æ(ʲ)ə]]]	ham, land, yeah
/ɑː/	[ɑ]	blah, bother, father, lot, top, wasp
/ɒ/
	[ɑɒ~ɔo]	all, dog, bought, loss, saw, taught
/ɔː/
/ɛ/	[ɛ~ɛ(ʲ)ə] preceding a nasal consonant: [[pin-pen merger|[ɪ~ɪ(ʲ)ə]]]	dress, met, bread
/ə/	[ə]	about, syrup, arena
/ɪ/	[ɪ~ɪ(ʲ)ə]	hit, skim, tip
/iː/	[ɪi]	beam, chic, fleet
/ɨ/	[ɪ~ɪ̈~ə]	island, gamut, wasted
/ʌ/	[ɜ]	bus, flood, what
/ʊ/	[ʊ̈~ʏ]	book, put, should
/uː/	[ʊu~ɵu~ʊ̈y]	food, glue, new
Diphthongs
/aɪ/	[äː~äɛ]	ride, shine, try
	[[Canadian raising|([ɐɪ~ɐi])]]	bright, dice, psych
/aʊ/	[æ(ʲ)ɔ]	now, ouch, scout
/eɪ/	[ɛi]	lake, paid, rein
/ɔɪ/	[oi]	boy, choice, moist
/oʊ/	[ɜʊ~ɜʊ̈~ɜʏ] preceding /l/ or a hiatus: [ɔu]	goat, oh, show
R-colored vowels
/ɑr/	rhotic Southern dialects: [ɒɚˠ~ɑɚˠ] non-rhotic Southern dialects: [ɒː~ɑː]	barn, car, park
/ɛər/	rhotic: [e̞ɚˠ~ɛ(ʲ)ɚˠ] non-rhotic: [ɛ(ʲ)ə]	bare, bear, there
/ɜr/	[ɚˠ~ɐɚˠ](older: [ɜ~ə])	burn, first, herd
/ər/	rhotic:[ɚˠ] non-rhotic:[ə]	better, martyr, doctor
/ɪər/	rhotic: [iɚˠ] non-rhotic: [iə]	fear, peer, tier
/ɔr/	rhotic: [o(u)ɚˠ] non-rhotic: [o(u)ə]	hoarse, horse, poor score, tour, war
/ɔər/
/ʊər/
/jʊər/	rhotic: [juɚˠ~jɚˠ] non-rhotic: [juə]	cure, Europe, pure

Mean formant values for the ANAE subjects (Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:?)) from the Southern U.S. (excluding Florida and Charleston, SC). The red symbol marks the position of monophthongized /aɪ/ before voiced consonants. The distinction between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ is preserved mainly because /ɔ/ has an upglide. /eɪ/ is backer and lower than /ɛ/.

The following phonological phenomena help define the current-day Southern dialects of the United States:

• Southern (Vowel) Shift: A chain shift regarding vowels has taken place in many Southern dialects, especially of the Inland South (i.e. away from the coastline), triggered by Stage 1 below. Stage 1 may have begun in some Southern dialects as early as the first half of the 1800s, however, it was still largely incomplete or absent in the mid-1800s South overall.
  • Stage 1 (/aɪ/ → [aː]): The starting point of the chain shift is the transition of the gliding vowel (diphthong) /aɪ/ (listen^ⓘ) towards a "glideless" long vowel [aː~äː] (listen^ⓘ), so that, for example, the word ride commonly approaches the sound of rod for the majority of Southern speakers. Newer Southern speakers exhibit this feature at the ends of words and before voiced consonants but not before voiceless consonants, where the diphthong instead exhibits Canadian-style raising before voiceless consonants, so that ride is [ɹäːd] and wide is [wäːd], but right is something like [ɹɜɪt] and white like [wɜɪt]. Some speakers exhibit backing to [ɑːe] in environments where diphthongization (preservation of the glide) remains, particularly in Charleston, SC. and possibly Atlanta and Savannah, GA. Traditional inland (i.e. non-coastal) Southern speakers, however, delete the glide of /aɪ/ in all contexts, as in the stereotyped pronunciation "nahs whaht rahs" for nice white rice; these speakers are mostly found today in an Appalachian area that comprises eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina and northern Alabama, as well as in central Texas.
  • Stage 2 (/eɪ/ → [ɛɪ], and /ɛ/ → [e(j)ə]): By removing the existence of [aɪ], Stage 1 leaves open a lower area for /eɪ/ (as in name and day) to occupy, causing Stage 2: the lowering of the diphthong /eɪ/ towards Template:IPA-all or to an even lower and/or more retracted sound. At the same time, a reversal effect occurs for /ɛ/ (as in red or belt), which occupies the area previously occupied by /eɪ/, becoming higher and fronter, so that /ɛ/ approaches a tenser and diphthongized [e(j)ə]. 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 participate in Stage 2.
  • Stage 3 (/ɪ/ → [iə], and /i/ → [ɪi]): /ɪ/ (as in hit or lick) and /i/ (as in beam or meet) both can become diphthongs whose nuclei switch positions, with /ɪ/ raising towards Template:IPA-all, and /i/ lowering towards [ɪi]. Stage 3 is most common in heavily stressed syllables, particularly of inland Southern speakers, like the rest of the Southern shift.
• "Southern Drawl" or "vowel breaking": The short front pure vowels are "broken" into gliding vowels, in words like pat, pet, and pit (almost making these one-syllable words, for example, sound like they have two syllables). The three vowels of these example words, "short a," "short e," and "short i," develop a glide up from their original starting position to [j], and then in some cases back down to a schwa vowel: /æ/ → [æjə]; /ɛ/ → [ɛjə]; and /ɪ/ → [ɪjə], respectively. This phenomenon is on the decline, being most typical of Southern speakers born before 1960, and so may be a feature shared with older Southern.
• Pin–pen merger: The vowels [ɛ] and [ɪ] often merge before nasal consonants, so that pen and pin, for instance, are pronounced the same, as pin, though this merger is not found in New Orleans's Yat dialect, which is largely reminiscent of, and connected with, New York City English. The pin–pen pmerger has now spread beyond the South in recent decades and is now found in isolated parts of the Midwest and West as well.
• Rhoticity and non-rhoticity: The pronunciation of the r sound only before or between vowels (but not after vowels) was historically widespread in the South, particularly in former plantation areas. 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, has become dominant throughout the South, as in most American English, and even more so among younger and female Southern speakers; the only major exception is among African American Southerners, whose modern vernacular dialect continues to be mostly non-rhotic. The sound quality of the Southern r is the distinctive "bunch-tongued r", produced by strongly constricting the root and/or mid-section of the tongue.
• 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]. This is common in vernacular English dialects around the world.
• Lax and tense vowels often [[English-language vowel changes before historic l|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.
• Back Upglide Shift: /aʊ/ shifts towards [æə~eo] (especially in older Tidewater Virginia speakers), pulling /ɔ/ into its former position [ɑɒ~ɑʊ]. Especially before /l/, /ɔɪ/ sometimes loses its glide; e.g. boil /bɔɪl/ [bɔːɫ].
• The back vowels /u/ in goose and /oʊ/ in goat shift considerably forward in modern Southern.
• The vowel /ʌ/, as in bug, luck, strut, etc., is realized as [ɜ], occasionally fronted to [ɛ̈] or raised in the mouth to [ə]. In former plantation areas, a more backed form, [ʌ], is common among older speakers.
• The distinction between the vowels sounds of words like caught and cot or stalk and stock is mainly preserved. In much of the South, the vowel found in words like stalk and caught has developed into a diphthong [ɑɒ], although some words like all may be pronounced with an unrounded vowel [ɑːɫ].
• /z/ becomes [d] before /n/, for example [ˈwʌdn̩t] wasn't, [ˈbɪdnɪs] business, but hasn't is sometimes still pronounced [ˈhæzənt] because there already exists a word hadn't pronounced [ˈhædn̩t].
• Many nouns are stressed on the first syllable that would be stressed on the second syllable in other accents. These include police, cement, Detroit, Thanksgiving, insurance, behind, display, hotel, motel, recycle, TV, guitar, July, and umbrella.
• Card–cord merger: In some regions of the south, there is a merger of [ɔr] and [ɑr], making cord and card, for and far, form and farm etc. homophones. This is because the nucleus of /ɑr/ start is often rounded to [ɒr].
• The "L" sound in the words walk and talk is occasionally preserved, causing the words talk and walk to be pronounced /wɑlk/

Regional phonology

What is commonly referred to as a "Southern accent" in the United States may be one of the most distinguishable regional accents within the country. However, contrary to popular belief, there is no single "Southern accent". Instead, there are a number of sub-regional dialects found across the Southern United States, collectively known as Southern American English. Yet these dialects often share features of accent and idiom that easily distinguish them from the English spoken in other regions of the United States, features that identify those dialects as "Southern," particularly to other Americans.

Older Atlantic

Older Atlantic Southern, East Coast Southern, or South Atlantic speech here refers to a generalization of the type of pronunciation heard, especially prior to the mid-1900s, among whites in the majority (primarily, the Piedmont region) of Virginia and North Carolina, as well as in and around the Chesapeake Bay and the South Carolina/Georgia Lowcountry. The defining phonological features of older Atlantic Southern, having now mostly disappeared, include:

• Non-rhoticity (or r-dropping).
• Trap–bath split: pronunciation of the "bath" set of words in the trap–bath split as [æ̈ɛ~æ̈e], different from the "trap" set of words as [æ~æ̈ɛæ̈]. Some sub-regions did not show any distinction, however.
• /ʃr/ pronounced as [sɹ] (e.g. in shrimp, shrub, etc.); this feature is actually still heard today, even more generally throughout the South.
• Canadian raising, potentially, of both /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ before voiceless consonants, with /aʊ/ in this context pronounced as [ɜʉ~ɜy].
• Preservation of the diphthong /aɪ/ in some sub-regions (as opposed to its widespread monopthongization to [aː] more recently as well as elsewhere in the South}}.

Virginia Piedmont

The major geographic middle of Virginia once spoke in a way long associated with the upper or aristocratic plantation class in the Old South. Additional phonological features of this Atlantic Southern variety included:

• /eɪ/ pronounced as [ɛ] in certain words, like make and afraid.
• Some of the "bath" words (aunt, rather, and, earlier, pasture, etc.) pronounced with [ɒː].

The dialect also features the Southern drawl (mentioned above).

Tidewater and Chesapeake Bay

Easternmost Virginia (known as the Tidewater region) and isolated islands in the adjacent Chesapeake Bay area included these additional features (some of which are still spoken by generations-long residents of those islands):

• "Broad a" (as in palm, father, spa, etc.) merging towards [ɒː], potentially causing, for example, palm and harm to rhyme.
• Regular short a.
• Rhoticity (or r-fulness) in the Chesapeake Bay, but non-rhoticity among the upper class in Tidewater.

Lowcountry

The Lowcountry, most famously centering around the cities of Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, once included these additional features:

• /eɪ/ pronounced as [ɪə~eə].
• /oʊ/ pronounced as [o~u] or [oə~uə].
• /ɑː/ pronounced as [æ].
• /aɪ/ pronounced as [ɑe].
• /aʊ/ pronounced as [äʊ].
• /ɜːr/ pronounced as [ɜɪ~əɪ].
• Cheer–chair merger towards [ɪə~eə].

Delmarva

Delmarva Peninsula is rhotic.

Midland and Highland

South Midland or Highland Southern

This dialect arose in the inland areas of the South. The area was settled largely by Scots-Irish, Scottish Highlanders, Northern and Western English, Welsh, and Germans.

This dialect's northern boundary follows the Ohio River in a generally southwesterly direction, moves from Kentucky, across far southern Missouri and Oklahoma, and tapers out in western Texas. This dialect is used by some people in Southern Illinois, Southern Ohio and Southern Indiana. It has assimilated some coastal Southern forms, most noticeably the loss of the diphthong /aj/, which becomes /aː/, and the second person plural pronoun "you-all" or "y'all". Unlike Coastal Southern, however, South Midland is a rhotic dialect, pronouncing /r/ wherever it has historically occurred.

The dialect of Oklahoma, for example, is a mixture of Midland American English and South Midland Southern American English. Native Americans in Indian Territory used Southern dialect forms, while white settlers who arrived in Oklahoma Territory from the Midwest in the late 19th century brought more Midland forms.

Southern Appalachian

Main article: Appalachian English

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 "R"s 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.

Almost always, the common thread in the areas of the South where a rhotic version of the dialect is heard is a traceable line of descent from Scots or Scots-Irish ancestors amongst its speakers. The dialect is also not devoid of early influence from Welsh settlers, the dialect retaining the Welsh English tendency to pronounce words beginning with the letter "h" as though the "h" were silent; for instance "humble" often is rendered "umble".

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

Gulf of Mexico

Gulf Southern and Mississippi Delta

This area of the South was settled by English speakers moving west from Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas, along with French settlers from Louisiana (see the section below). This accent is common in Mississippi, northern Louisiana, Arkansas, West Tennessee, and East Texas, roughly covering the Mississippi Embayment. Gulf Southern and Mississippi Delta dialects are rhotic, like South Midland and Southern Appalachian dialects. Familiar speakers include Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. Dialects found in Georgia and Alabama that are not Southern Appalachian have characteristics of both the Gulf Southern dialect and the Virginia Piedmont/Coastal Southern dialect, the dialects spoken in Georgia and Alabama are more non-rhotic.

Florida "Cracker"

This dialect is found throughout several regions of Florida and in south Georgia. Several variations of the dialect are found in Florida. From Pensacola to Tallahassee, the dialect is non-rhotic and shares many characteristics with the speech patterns of southern Alabama. Another form of the dialect is spoken in northeast Florida, Central Florida, the Nature Coast and even in rural parts of South Florida. This dialect was made famous by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' book The Yearling.

Louisiana

The accents of southern and central Louisiana, while considered Southern, are diverse. Many dialects are unique to the region.

Cajun

Main article: Cajun English

Southern Louisiana, southeast Texas (Houston to Beaumont), and coastal Mississippi, feature a number of dialects. There is Cajun French, which combines elements of Acadian French with other French and Spanish words. This dialect is spoken by many of the older members of the Cajun ethnic group and is said to be dying out. Many younger Cajuns speak Cajun English, which retains Acadian French influences and words, such as "cher" (dear) or "nonc" (uncle). The French language can also still be heard in some parts of southern Louisiana.

Creole

Main article: Louisiana Creole French

Louisiana Creole French (Kreyol Lwiziyen) is a French-based creole language spoken in Louisiana. It has many resemblances to other French creoles in the Caribbean – particularly in the French West Indies (Guadeloupe, Martinique, etc.). While Cajun French and Louisiana Creole have had a significant influence on each other, they are unrelated. While Cajun is basically a French dialect with a grammar similar to that of standard French, Louisiana Creole applies a French lexicon to a system of grammar and syntax that differs considerably from French grammar.

Yat

Main article: Yat dialect

This dialect is spoken in and around the greater New Orleans area. It is referred to as Yat, from phrases such as "Where y'at?" (for "Where are you?") Additionally, many unique terms such as "neutral ground" for the median of a divided street (Louisiana/Southern Mississippi) or "banquette" for a sidewalk (Southern Louisiana/Eastern Texas) are found here. Unlike Gulf Southern, Highland Southern, and Southern Appalachian dialects, Yat dialect is non-rhotic.

Garden District/Uptown

This dialect is spoken in and around the greater New Orleans area. It is common in certain parts of uptown New Orleans, and is more similar to other Southern dialects than the Yat accent. Unlike other Southern accents the "I" in words like "White" is not pronounced as "ah", but rather as "aye". It retains the same unique terms as the Yat dialect, such as "neutral ground" for the median of a divided street (Louisiana/Southern Mississippi) or "banquette" for a sidewalk (Southern Louisiana/Eastern Texas) are found here.

Texas

The accents of Texas, while considered Southern, are also diverse. Many dialects are unique to the region. Like Gulf Southern, Highland Southern, and Southern Appalachian dialects, Texan dialect is rhotic. See Texan English.

African-influenced

The following dialects were influenced by African languages.

Gullah

Main article: Gullah language

Sometimes called Geechee, this creole language originated with African American slaves on the coastal areas and islands of Georgia and South Carolina. The dialect was used to communicate with both Europeans and members of African tribes other than their own. Gullah was strongly influenced by West African languages such as Vai, Mende, Twi, Ewe, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, and Kikongo. The name and chorus of the Christian hymn "Kumbaya" is said to be Gullah for come by here. Other English words attributed to Gullah are juke (jukebox), goober (Southern term for peanut) and voodoo. In a 1930s study by Lorenzo Dow Turner, over 4,000 words from many different African languages were discovered in Gullah. Other words, such as yez for ears, are just phonetic spellings of English words as pronounced by the Gullahs, on the basis of influence from Southern and Western English dialects.

African American Vernacular English

Main article: African American Vernacular English

This type of Southern American English originated in the Southern States where Africans were at that time held as slaves. These slaves originally spoke indigenous African languages but eventually picked up English to communicate with their masters and one another. Since the slave masters spoke Southern American English, that is the dialect of English the slaves learned. Over time, the form of Southern spoken by these slaves developed into what is now African American Vernacular English, which retains many Southern features. Like Virginia Piedmont, Coastal Southern, and Florida Cracker dialects, AAVE is largely non-rhotic. While the African slaves and their descendants lost most of their language and culture, some vocabulary and grammatical features from indigenous West African languages remain in AAVE. While AAVE may also be spoken by members of other racial groups, it is largely spoken by and associated with blacks in many parts of the U.S. AAVE is considered by a number of English speakers to be a substandard dialect. As a result, AAVE speakers who seek social mobility typically learn to code-switch between AAVE and a more standardized English dialect. Liberian English is said to be at least partially based on AAVE, since that dialect of English was modeled after American English and not British English.

Grammar

Older Southern

• 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.

Modern Southern

Frequency of either "Y'all" or "You all" to address multiple people, according to an Internet survey of American dialect variation.

Frequency of just "Y'all" to address multiple people, according to an Internet survey of American dialect variation.

• Use of the contraction y'all as the second person plural pronoun. Its uncombined form – you all – is used less frequently.
  • 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." /ˈjɔːlz/

  • 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.
  • Some people misinterpret the phrase "all y'all" as meaning that Southerners use the "y'all" as singular and "all y'all" as plural. However, "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.

  "That book is yernses." /ˈjɜːrnzz/

• Use of dove as past tense for dive, drug as past tense for drag, brung as past tense for bring, and drunk as past tense for drink.

Shared features

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

  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 double modals (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.

• 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.

• Use of (a-)fixin' to, or just "fixing to" in more modern Southern, to indicate immediate future action in place of intending to, preparing to, or about to.

  He's fixin' to eat.

  They're fixing to go for a hike.

• 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 that lives in town.

• Use of ever in place of every.

  Ever'where's the same these days.

Vocabulary

• Use of "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". Additionally, "yonder" tends to refer to a third, larger degree of distance beyond both "here" and "there", 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".

See also

• Accents (psychology)
• Drawl
• High Tider
• Old Virginia accent
• Regional vocabularies of American English
• Southern literature
• Texan English

References

• Bernstein, Cynthia (2003). "Grammatical features of southern speech". In In Stephen J. Nagel and Sara L. Sanders, eds., (ed.). English in the Southern United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-82264-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
• Crystal, David (2000). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-82348-X.
• 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, eds., (ed.). English in the Southern United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-82264-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
• Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006), The Atlas of North American English, Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter, ISBN 3-11-016746-8
• Hazen, Kirk, and Fluharty, Ellen (2004). "Defining Appalachian English". In Bender, Margaret (ed.). Linguistic Diversity in the South. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-2586-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Wolfram, Walt; Schilling-Estes, Natalie (2004), American English (Second ed.), Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing
• Thomas, Erik R. (2006), "Rural White Southern Accents" (PDF), Atlas of North American English (online), Walter de Gruyter

External links

• "U.S. dialect map". UTA.fi.
• Beard, Dr. Robert. "Southernese". Glossary of Southernisms.
• "Southern Accent Tutorial, with Voices of Native Speakers". A Site About Nothing.
• "Southern Fried Vocab No. 10". Smarty's World. February 12, 2010.
• Guy, Yvette Richardson (Jan 22, 2010). "Great day, the things that grandparents say". The Post and Courier.