Southern American English

Southern American English is a dialect of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from central Kentucky and northern Virginia to the Gulf Coast and from the Atlantic to eastern Texas. Southern American English can be divided into different sub-dialects (see American English). Speakers in the Appalachian Mountains area and the coastal area around Charleston, South Carolina speak slightly different dialects. Another dialect with many similarities is South Midlands.

Speakers of Southern American English are often assumed to be uneducated or stupid, but this stereotype is often untrue. Well-known speakers of Southern dialect include President Jimmy Carter and musician Elvis Presley. Southern American English has a number of similarities to Ebonics.

Distinguishing characteristics

• Use of "y'all" as the plural of you
  • "All y'all" as the plural of you when addressing larger gatherings
• Use of "fixin' to" as a indicator of future action
• Merge of the /e/ and /i/ vowel sounds before nasals, such that "pen" and "pin" are pronounced the same
• Change of the /z/ sound in contractions to /d/, e.g. "wasn't" = /wadnt/
• The diphthong /aI/ becomes monophthongized to /a:/, such that "like" and "night" are pronounced with a single long vowel
• The diphthongization of the sound of /æ/ (as in cat), by the use of vowel glides preceding or following the vowel, an example being the "a" in "can't" being pronounced "cain't"
• Dropping of the /r/ sound at the ends of syllables, such that "guard" is pronounced like "god" and "sore" pronounced like "saw" (but this feature is rapidly disappearing from the South)
• Use of the word "done" in place of "already" or "did", such as in "We done did this" (We already did this).
• Turning a /th/ sound into a /d/ sound, as in 'there' being 'der'.

• Word use tendencies from the Harvard Dialect Survey:
  • A carbonated beverage in general as "coke"
  • The bug-like animals that roll when you touch them as "roley-poleys" rather than "pill bugs"
  • The push-cart at the grocery store as a "buggy"
  • The small freshwater crustacean in lakes and streams as a "crawdad" or "crawfish" depending on location

External link

• U.S. dialect map