American Accents in the Golden Era

[rjb1]

The mention of TV shows and accents prompts me to mention that if you want a lesson in Southern accents in some (but not all) of their variety, watch the miniseries "Deadwood".
They have a number of characters who are originally Southern and who were allowed to use their real accents for the show.
Jim Beaver - Whitney Ellsworth - Texas
W. Earl Brown - Dan Dority - Mid- Tennessee
Kim Dickens - Joanie Stubbs - North Alabama
William Sanderson - E.B. Farnum - Memphis, TN
Sean Bridges - Johnny Burns - Eastern North Carolina
Powers Booth - Cy Tolliver - Texas
Gerald McRaney - George Hearst - Mississippi
All had true Southern accents and all are different. When I heard W. Earl Brown/Dan Dority speak on the show for the first time it took about 5 seconds (or less) for me to say to myself, "That guy is from HERE." I looked him up and it turns out he grew up about an hour's drive west of Nashville.

It is always annoying to Southerners to hear actors *trying* to do a Southern accent. Even though they have about a dozen or more to choose from they rarely get any of them right.
I suspect that in the Age there were twice as many Southern variants just because there was less travel and less TV/radio influence.

(Historical note: By choice or by chance, it was accurate for "Deadwood" to have so many Southerners in the cast. There was a saying in the late 1800's that, "The Confederates took Montana without firing a shot." since so many went there after the War.)

 

[LizzieMaine]

Here's one thing I'm curious about, because it was never anything I heard, the term "winda" (that is, window). I first heard this in Limelite, when Buster Keaton says to Charlie Chaplin, "If one more person says 'It's like old times,' I'm gonna jump out the winda." Does anyone still pronounce 'window' that way?

I do, always have. I also say "patata" and "tamata."

According to this article :"ow-reduction" is found in, among others, Cockney, Irish, Southern-American and New England English, but I've also heard it from Midwesterners, so it's pretty widespread. "Put the pilla in the pillacase!"

The author of the article says he's never heard it spoken. He needs to get around more.

 

[rjb1]

Southerners also say "winda", but probably not exactly the way Lizzie and Maine folks would.
I did a quick lookup on Wikipedia and although Buster Keaton was born in Kansas, that was just because his family was on the road in vaudeville.
They were originally from Southern Indiana, so Buster may have been using his real accent in the movie, since Southern-Indiana people have an almost-Southern accent.
"Southern Indiana, in the United States, consists of the entire southern half of Indiana below the latitude of Downtown Indianapolis.
The region's history and geography has led to a blend of Northern and Southern culture distinct from the remainder of Indiana. It is often considered to be part of the Upland South."
I have been there a number of times and know a lot of people from there, and they talk almost like they do here (in Nashville). In fact, a few of those I know from there claim that the area is closer culturally to Alabama than to the rest of Indiana.

 

[Nobert]

Yeah, I meant accompanied with Buster's midwestern, somewhat twangy accent, which seems to my ear to be one you don't hear so much these days (skip ahead to about 1:40).

[video=youtube;VzSazG1DI_g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzSazG1DI_g[/video]

 

[LizzieMaine]

If you've ever listened to "Vic and Sade" on the radio, you'll hear pretty much that same accent from Sade, with that nasal edge to it. Very much a working-class thing.

 

[Sloan1874]

It isn't just prejudice against Australians? Seriously though, the range and subtleties of accents and dialects in the U.K. fascinates me. I've heard that even people from Edinburgh claim to not be able to make out what you Glasgwegians are saying (and we Yanks have trouble with a lot more than that), and the varieties from Cockney, to Yorkshire, to whatever the various Geordie accents are, etc., further divided along, again, class boundaries, it just seems a dizzying array for an area that would fit into New England and upstate New York. I could tell the difference between, say someone from London and someone from Manchester, but that's about the extent of my understanding.

I'm from Edinburgh-way - small town on outskirts called Linlithgow - and I'm also half-English, so while some Glaswegians may hate my anglicised accent, they can understand every dashed word I say. Some Glasgow accents are just impenetrable by anybody's standards:

[video=youtube;0fw_2waRx7s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fw_2waRx7s[/video]

The weird thing is by that the time you hop off the Scottish mainland and head out to the north-east, the locals start to sound closer to Scandinavians!
I guess it all comes down to being a small island that's been invaded time and again from every which way - you're always going to end up with a hotchpotch of accents.

 

[rjb1]

Agree that class is a big factor in language. I once knew a woman from West Tennessee whose ancestors were the plantation owners, not the workers (or slaves). (Their family house was on the National Register of Historic Places.) She was very clearly Southern in accent, but did NOT sound a bit like the Beverly Hillbillies or the people in "Deliverance".

 

[Nobert]

If you've ever listened to "Vic and Sade" on the radio, you'll hear pretty much that same accent from Sade, with that nasal edge to it. Very much a working-class thing.

Also a feature I associate with my native state, the famous "Missouri twang," discernible in the voices of William S. Boroughs, Cliff Edwards and the New-York-reared-but-St Louis-born Al Hirschfeld.

 

[Nobert]

Agree that class is a big factor in language. I once knew a woman from West Tennessee whose ancestors were the plantation owners, not the workers (or slaves). (Their family house was on the National Register of Historic Places.) She was very clearly Southern in accent, but did NOT sound a bit like the Beverly Hillbillies or the people in "Deliverance".

For Southerners, some of the ire must extend from the fact that every American thinks they can pull of a Southern drawl, throwing in a few requisite "Y'all's," with no concept of the difference between a Virginia Antebellum landowner and a Texas cowboy.

 

[rjb1]

You are absolutely right. A fake Southern accent gets groans and eye-rolls around here. Paul Newman was the worst in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". He is *supposed* to be an actor and couldn't even get close. Robert Duvall is the best at adopting a real
Southern accent. If i didn't know who he was he could pass for my next door neighbor. (Also a Texas cowboy, as in "Lonesome Dove".)
And "y'all" is nowhere near as prevalent as not-from-here people think it is.

 

[Nobert]

Making an attempt to weave together the disparate themes of British and old American accents: this clip from Dad's Army interests me. The guy playing the American commander must be, I figure, an Englishman doing an American accent. Not because he does it badly, but because he's doing what sounds like a distinctly 1940s American accent. As though he was channeling old film stars. Some echo of those midcentury American accents by imitation.

[video=youtube;9Ntv_jep5Ds]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ntv_jep5Ds[/video]

 

[HudsonHawk]

It is always annoying to Southerners to hear actors *trying* to do a Southern accent. Even though they have about a dozen or more to choose from they rarely get any of them right.

This is one of my pet peeves as well. Actors often portray Southerners with one accent, whether it's appropriate or not. Forrest Gump is the classic example...a simpleton from rural southern Alabama who speaks with a thick aristocratic northern Virginia accent. Unfortunately, that's the "Hollywood Southern" accent of record. Yet it's very regionally specific.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Southerners also say "winda", but probably not exactly the way Lizzie and Maine folks would.
.

Only a few of them. Most Southern accents are rhotic, which means you always pronounce the hard "r" sound following a vowel. And sometimes even when it's not there. Consequently you more often get words like "winder" and the color "yeller". The rhotic dialects are from the Scots and Scots-Irish who settled most of Appalachia and the Southern colonies. The non-rhotic dialects are English in origin, and you hear those in New England and coastal areas of Virginia and parts of the Carolinas. We also tend to have a drawl, which means extending single syllable words into multiple syllables. "Well" becomes "way-el".

 

[Stanley Doble]

Have heard that Robert Mitchum was a master of dialects and accents, surprisingly enough. Including Cockney and Australian. Can any speech experts confirm or refute this?

 

[Stanley Doble]

What Dialect Do You Speak?

Article from The Washington Post on American dialects, complete with map

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ct-to-do-you-speak-a-map-of-american-english/

 

[plain old dave]

Appalachia (pronounced 'apple-atcha' NOT 'apple-laysha' like them people on the weather channel insist on pronouncing it) is one of the very last holdouts for a specific accent.

Maryville, TN is pronounced "Murvyl" and there are T-shirts that say "Murvyl" on them.

We proudly end our sentences with prepositions.

Most "ville" cities are pronounced "vyl"; if you hear somebody say they're from "Knoxvyl", they're a native.

The words "nine" "five" "rice" and "fries" have no letter "y" in them. We recognize this.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Most "ville" cities are pronounced "vyl"; if you hear somebody say they're from "Knoxvyl", they're a native.

All natives of that region I've ever heard are the exact opposite. The pronounce the "ville" as "vull", almost as if they don't even pronounce the vowel. They also emphasize the first syllable. So they're from "KNOX-vull" or "GREEN-vull". Also, Elvis lived at "GRACE-lund" not "grace-LAND".

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Forrest Gump is the classic example...a simpleton from rural southern Alabama who speaks with a thick aristocratic northern Virginia accent. Unfortunately, that's the "Hollywood Southern" accent of record. Yet it's very regionally specific.

I've lived in northern Virginia for forty years. I have yet to hear anyone with a northern Virginia accent. I expect that it's the flood of us "foreigners'" who have lead to its extinction. Today you can hear Appalachian accents from people who grew up in West Virginia or further south along the mountain range, but the speech of the paladins of pre-1960's Virginia (e.g., the Byrd family) is nowhere to be heard.

Wait! A couple of months ago I had occasion to speak to an employee of the Commonwealth by phone. She was not in any of the Northern counties (i.e., Fairfax, Loudon, Arlington, Prince William, Stafford, Fauquier, Culpepper, etc.) She did have, what was to my ear, an aristocratic Virginia accent. One word that stands out in my memory is "area", pronounced with a drawn-out initial "a", like "AY-rhea".

 

[plain old dave]

All natives of that region I've ever heard are the exact opposite. The pronounce the "ville" as "vull", almost as if they don't even pronounce the vowel. They also emphasize the first syllable. So they're from "KNOX-vull" or "GREEN-vull". Also, Elvis lived at "GRACE-lund" not "grace-LAND".

You said just what I did with different words. Vyl and your vull are the same pronunciation.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I've lived in northern Virginia for forty years. I have yet to hear anyone with a northern Virginia accent. I expect that it's the flood of us "foreigners'" who have lead to its extinction. Today you can hear Appalachian accents from people who grew up in West Virginia or further south along the mountain range, but the speech of the paladins of pre-1960's Virginia (e.g., the Byrd family) is nowhere to be heard.

I know what you mean. When I lived in North Carolina, the most common accent, by far, was from upstate New York. That was where 90% of the people were from. I knew one person who was local and had that classic Carolina accent. I enjoyed speaking with him.

Wait! A couple of months ago I had occasion to speak to an employee of the Commonwealth by phone. She was not in any of the Northern counties (i.e., Fairfax, Loudon, Arlington, Prince William, Stafford, Fauquier, Culpepper, etc.) She did have, what was to my ear, an aristocratic Virginia accent. One word that stands out in my memory is "area", pronounced with a drawn-out initial "a", like "AY-rhea".

Yep, that's it. You almost never hear the "r" pronounced. They don't even pronounce it when saying their home state..."Vuh-ginia". You'll also hear about people from the "sooth" (south).