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Lin, Jinxian Campbell and Fu, Yucheng David Dr. Lauren Holt ENG 101-03P: Southern (Dis) Comfort-Fall 2013 Group Reportage: Southern Dialect and Accent Writing Portion Version 2 25 September 2013 English is the most spoken language in the United States. However, since the country is very large, people in different regions speak with different accents. For example, people in the South speak with a Southern accent. Although many people have stereotypes about Southernness, learning about Southern American English helps them to explore a unique and distinct Southern culture and to clear up stereotypes. The history of Southern American English leads us to look at the South from a different perspective. The origins of Southern American English can be found on the islands off the shore of the Netherlands and in northern Germany and southern Denmark...or, to go back a bit further, on grassy plains somewhere in mid Eurasia...That is, Southern American English has the same origins as all other dialects of English (Algeo 6). To specify, according to The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language 2 Edition, the British colonists settled down in two places in the New World, New England and Virginia, bringing their language to this new continent (Crystal 93). Nevertheless, what largely shaped Southern American English was African American Vernacular English. Dutch slave traders introduced African slavery to America in 1619, and by the time the trade was abolished in 1807, some 400,000 Africans had been forcibly settled in America(Algeo 11). They had brought along their influences of language. In 19th and 20th centuries, black culture became well known around the country, especially for its music, African Americans gained more opportunities of education, and they were more involved in political roles during the Abolitionist Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. All these things had facilitated the growth and the awareness of Black English Vernacular (Crystal 96-97). And this kind of speech gradually

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influenced the Southern white people and became the modern Southern American English (West Washington University). However, Southern American English (SAE) has long been regarded as a conservative variety preserved in large part by the rural, insular character of the region...At its worst, the view of SAE as a conservative variety and the focus on British roots has led to the assertion that SAE is pure Elizabethan or pure Shakespearean English (Tillery and Bailey 159). However, SAE is more than a replication of British English. A piece of research by Michael Montgomery suggests that many of the prototypical features of SAE either emerged or became widespread during the last quarter of the nineteenth century later and that many older SAE features have been disappearing rapidly. The Linguistics Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS) in 1991 shows that before 1875, the pen/ pin merger was relatively infrequent in the South. After 1875 the merger began to expand rapidly until by World War II more than 90 percent of the informants Brown examined had the merger. Recent research on the evolution of SAE...suggests not a conservative dialect bound to its past, but rather a dynamic, innovative variety than has experienced rapid, fundamental change over the last century and a quarter (Tillerly and Guy 159-71). According to the Language Samples Project, Southern American English is spoken mostly in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and parts of Arkansas, Maryland, Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia (University of Arizona). Although there are different dialects in different states, they share some phonetic features that separate the Southern accent from other accents in the US. Sounding Southern: Phonetic Features and Dialect Perceptions, a study by Rachael Allbritten, shows following features (Allbritten 10-16) : 1. Monophthongization of Diphthong /"# /1 into /"$/
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the phonetic alphabets have been adjusted to International Phonetic Alphabets (IPA).

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This is probably the most well-known feature of the Southern American English. For example, the word wide in standard English is pronounced as /w"#d/ while in SAE is pronounced as /w"d/ where /#/ is omitted. 2. The Alternation of -ing and -in In the South, words ending with -ing such as something, coming, and working are pronounced as somethin, comin, and workin. 3. Drawl Among linguists, drawl is typically thought of as an addition to a monophthong of one or more of the following: length, glides, or a drop in amplitude or pitch during the vowel. To put it simple, Southerners tend to pronounce a word with only one short vowel as if it has a longer vowel by adding an additional monophthong. For example, in standard English, the word pit is pronounced as /p#t/ where /#/ is a short monophthong. However, this word in the South sounds more like /p#j%t/ where /j%/ is an additional sound that makes the word sounds longer.

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Other well-known features of Southern accent also include (Trawick-Smith): 4. Pin-pen Merger It means that words ending in -in, -en, -im and -em are pronounced with the same vowel. As the name of this feature suggests, the word pen in the South sounds very similar to the word pin. 5. Non-rhotic In Southern accent, similar to the British accent, /r/ that is followed by a vowel is pronounced while /r/ that comes after a vowel is often silent. For example, /r/ in the word red is pronounced while /r/ in the word butter is silent so that it sounds like /b&t%/ instead of /b&t%r/. The history of Southern American English and phonetic features of the Southern accent are, we believe, the two most important perspectives to learn about Southern American English. And

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they constitute parts of the Southern culture that is equally interesting and fascinating as other regional cultures in the US.

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Works Cited Algeo, John. "The Origins of Southern American English." English in the Southern United States. Ed. Stephen J. Nagle and Sara L. Sanders. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2003. 6, 11. Print.

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Allbritten, Rachael, M.S. "Sounding Southern: Phonetic Features and Dialect Perceptions." Diss. Georgetown University, 2011. Georgetown University. Web. 16 Sept. 2013.10-16. <http:// repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/553139/allbrittenrachael.pdf? sequence=1>. Crystal, David. "World English." The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge UP, 2003. 93, 96-97. Print. Tillerly, Jan, and Guy Baily. "Urbanization and the Evolution of Southern American English." English in the Southern United States. Ed. Stephen J. Nagle and Sara L. Sanders. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2003. 159-71. Print. Trawick-Smith, Ben. "American Accents." Dialect Blog. N.p., 2011. Web. 16 Sept. 2013. <http:// dialectblog.com/northamerican-accents/>. University of Arizona. "Southern States English." Varieties of English. Language Samples Project, n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2013. <http://ic-migration.webhost.uits.arizona.edu/icfiles/ic/lsp/site/>. West Washington University. "The Dialects of American English." Linguistics 201: The Dialects of American English. n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2013. <http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/ test3materials/AmericanDialects.htm>.