Your last paragraph probably illustrates the city and country southern accents in my previous post.
The link opened to the NC examples, but I have a bone to pick. One of his examples listed as from Kannapolis is Punchy Whitaker. Punchy is from Concord, not Kannapolis. I graduated from high school with Punchy (his father was Punch). I think this is an example of his note on Dale Earnhardt Sr staing (This would not seem to be a case of Possible Southern Class Distinction, since all of these speakers are clearly working class.)
Totally. The accents vary between regions, socio-economic statuses, races, etc.
My paternal grandfather was from the area between Tabor City and Crusoe Island. He loved to tell stories from his childhood about during the winter, when the fields were fallow, all the adult males and some of the male kids would go into the Green Swamp and cut down "ton-timber," allegedly because that was how much each piece weighed. This "ton-timber" would be dragged down to the Waccamaw River, made into rafts, and then floated down to Georgetown, SC. Once in Georgetown, it would be sold for various manufactured items that couldn't be made on the farm. And, of course, these rafts of "ton-timber" were unwieldy to handle on the river and were even worse on the open waters of Winyah Bay. (Sidenote: Don't bother asking me to pronounce "Winyah." Unless you were born saying it--which I was not--you will never pronounce it correctly to a native.) After telling one particularly terrible story about a storm on Winyah Bay that scattered all but a few pieces of the "ton-timber" and destroyed almost the entirety of the winter's work, but didn't kill anyone, my grandmother--who normally tolerated her husband's tall tales--was visibly upset and quickly told us grandkids that this story was NOT something her husband had personally endured, but was just a tale he had heard as a child. While my grandfather did not contradict my grandmother, you could tell he was thinking something like, "Another perfectly good story, ruined by a damned eyewitness."
The "Hoyd" County accent - that's a mixture of ENC and British seafaring. A sprinkle of pirate in there as well.
My 40 year old niece grew up in Charleston and has no discernible accent, like a TV news reporter. Other than four years she spent at Guilford College she has lived her whole life in Charleston. Her father’s family has been in Charleston for generations and he has a strong low country accent. Her mother (my sister) has the same Piedmont “city” accent that I have. I think a lot of kids must pick up their accents (or lack thereof) from media sources.
