"The North Carolina Southern accent is disappearing"

[donbosco]

My family relocated from Long Island to rural eastern NC (Carteret) as I was turning 12. My new classmates were constantly asking if I had any pets so they could hear me say “dawg.” Within a few weeks I was y’all-ing and yonder-ing. Having now lived in the Tampa Bay area for 40 years, my accent is neutral and I can code-switch with surroundings. Same with my wife (Havana-Manhattan-Plilly-St. Pete).

We’ve met and I’ve read about the tribulations of your transition from Deep Chatham. How has your time in the City affected your manner of speech? Are you able to code-switch?

LOL Sunny...if I'm doing any code-switching here in West Harlem it is to just give in and speak Spanish. That's what I do with the folks that work in my building and down at the Grocery Store and my favorite deli at least. Back when we were wearing masks hardly anyone could understand my NC accent so I went almost completely over to Spanish then. I hope you and y'all are doing well down in La Florida!

 

[farce©]

I reject the premise that a North Carolina accent exists. There are multiple NC accents and they bleed into neighboring states.

I grew up in a mill town in the Charlotte area, and most locals had southern accents but that divided into “city” and “country” accents. The most noticeable difference was the pronunciation of the long “i”. Words like “right” “ice” “nice” were immediate differentiators between the city and country accents. Country folks pronounced the long i in those words like Trey Crowder pronounces it in his country-ass east Tennessee accent. City accents in our area were still southern but the long i was pronounced more like the news anchor pronounces it.

When I went off to ECU, I learned about the eastern NC accent. The first thing I noticed was use of the word “wasn’t”. Where I was from people who pronounced it incorrectly called it “wut’n”, as in “I wut’n gonna do that.” The ENC folks said “I won’t gon’ do that.” The ENC folks also talked faster.

My first wife was from the Mobile area and her fathers family talked like people from Charleston (think Fritz Hollings accent.) Her mother was from Winder GA and her family talked more like where I grew up but they talked in the more country accent.

 

[donbosco]

Over at NC State there is a linguistics prof who has a good problem going -- his name is Walt Wolfram (itself a very Old North State Name, though he's not a Tar Heel in any way). He's got some great stuff on the internet about accents.

His most popular book is called Talkin' Tar Heel.

I'll post some of his stuff but here's another fascinating website -- a real rabbit hole.

https://aschmann.net/AmEng/#Au_North_Carolina

I've got it set to go directly to North Carolina examples.

 

[farce©]

Same...Born and raised in western NC, parents are from Ohio. I had one college roommate that likes to bust on my "country" accent, but I've lived in New England for 20yrs and can count on one hand the number of times people commented or asked about my accent.

I was back home for a high school reunion last week and can attest the western NC accent is alive and well. I think of it more as a "country" accent than southern. Although, I do know people in Hickory that I think have more of a southern accent.

Your last paragraph probably illustrates the city and country southern accents in my previous post.

Your first paragraph made me chuckle. I worked in Vermont for 12 years. Quite a few of those Vermonters (I’m talking blue collar folks in the factory who think you’re an outsider if you hadn’t lived on the same mountain for six generations) gave me shit about my southern accent, while being completely blind to their thick New England accents!

 

[mpaer]

Maternal grandaprents moved around a bit-but basically they were from Boston and sounded like it
In their later years they moved to Chapel Hill to be close to family members
They literally could not go grocery shopping because they could not understand the cashiers-at all
Moved back to Hyannis (Not the Kennedy's neighborhood)

 

[farce©]

Over at NC State there is a linguistics prof who has a good problem going -- his name is Walt Wolfram (itself a very Old North State Name, though he's not a Tar Heel in any way). He's got some great stuff on the internet about accents.

His most popular book is called Talkin' Tar Heel.

I'll post some of his stuff but here's another fascinating website -- a real rabbit hole.

https://aschmann.net/AmEng/#Au_North_Carolina

I've got it set to go directly to North Carolina examples.

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.)

Although Concord and Kannapolis border each other the cultural differences back in the Cannon Mill days were significant. Pretty much everybody who lived in Kannapolis worked in the mill, whereas most people who worked for the mill lived in Concord. Even though Concord was a mill town, there was a significant educated white collar presence that did not exist in Kannapolis.

 

[CeruleanBlueHeel]

Mmmmh... Mmmmh. Good cracker!

 

[hedge]

I did a backpacking tour of Europe one summer / Fall semester when I was in college, went all over the place, including Morocco. Can't tell you how many locals in pretty much every country I visited thought I was Australian due to my thick southern accent...

 

[donbosco]

Here's some of the media associated with Wolfram's book...

Talkin Tarheel

 

[Icky Mettle]

I reject the premise that a North Carolina accent exists. There are multiple NC accents and they bleed into neighboring states.

I grew up in a mill town in the Charlotte area, and most locals had southern accents but that divided into “city” and “country” accents. The most noticeable difference was the pronunciation of the long “i”. Words like “right” “ice” “nice” were immediate differentiators between the city and country accents. Country folks pronounced the long i in those words like Trey Crowder pronounces it in his country-ass east Tennessee accent. City accents in our area were still southern but the long i was pronounced more like the news anchor pronounces it.

When I went off to ECU, I learned about the eastern NC accent. The first thing I noticed was use of the word “wasn’t”. Where I was from people who pronounced it incorrectly called it “wut’n”, as in “I wut’n gonna do that.” The ENC folks said “I won’t gon’ do that.” The ENC folks also talked faster.

My first wife was from the Mobile area and her fathers family talked like people from Charleston (think Fritz Hollings accent.) Her mother was from Winder GA and her family talked more like where I grew up but they talked in the more country accent.

Totally. The accents vary between regions, socio-economic statuses, races, etc.

 

[05C40]

Over at NC State there is a linguistics prof who has a good problem going -- his name is Walt Wolfram (itself a very Old North State Name, though he's not a Tar Heel in any way). He's got some great stuff on the internet about accents.

His most popular book is called Talkin' Tar Heel.

I'll post some of his stuff but here's another fascinating website -- a real rabbit hole.

https://aschmann.net/AmEng/#Au_North_Carolina

I've got it set to go directly to North Carolina examples.

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."

ETA: The deep-woods origins of Down-East expressions - "'Ton timber' needs an explanation. In Colonial days, Mother England tried to get a piece of Maine's lumber business, and the law was that all logs must be sawn in English sawmills. If this law had been obeyed, which it wasn't much, the logs would be hewn four-squared by broad ax for shipping to England. Paid for by the ton instead of board feet, the ton timbers had no bark to take up room in the hold."

 

[Duke Mu]

That Tidewater ‘R’ added to words like wash always gets me.
“Worsh”

The "Hoyd" County accent - that's a mixture of ENC and British seafaring. A sprinkle of pirate in there as well.

 

[Mulberry Heel]

Most people - including younger people - in the rural area and small town I grew up in in the NC foothills still have very noticeable Southern country accents. Based on comments from my longtime friends and family my own accent has modified some over the years but it's still definitely noticeable. I'm not so sure that the NC Southern accent is vanishing as much as that in NC's urban areas and some suburbs the rapid population growth is leading to native speakers being outnumbered by non-NC natives, and thus the accent seems to be disappearing in places like Charlotte or Wilmington or Raleigh-Durham and so on. But based on what I've heard I'd say that the NC Southern accent is still alive and well in most of the state's more rural areas, and still exists in some numbers in places like Winston, Greensboro, Fayetteville, etc.

 

[farce©]

Most people - including younger people - in the rural area and small town I grew up in in the NC foothills still have very noticeable Southern country accents. Based on comments from my longtime friends and family my own accent has modified some over the years but it's still definitely noticeable. I'm not so sure that the NC Southern accent is vanishing as much as that in NC's urban areas and some suburbs the rapid population growth is leading to native speakers being outnumbered by non-NC natives, and thus the accent seems to be disappearing in places like Charlotte or Wilmington or Raleigh-Durham and so on. But based on what I've heard I'd say that the NC Southern accent is still alive and well in most of the state's more rural areas, and still exists in some numbers in places like Winston, Greensboro, Fayetteville, etc.

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.

It’s not just southerners. Younger kids in New England rarely have a thick Boston accent. Same with New York.

 

[Zoo_View]

I grew up in Chapel Hill, the son of a hard science professor whose parents were from Upstate New York. My Mom is from Gainesville, FL - in 1939 through when she left in 1959, that was THE SOUTH. They married. One year in Manhattan. Three years in Champagne-Urbana for grad school (Ph.D).

I don’t know if Mom was working to rid herself of her deep Southern accent or if it just happened. Her accent did diminish or disappear……until old friends from Gainesville turned up.

I will say that growing up in Chapel Hill, I didn’t have much of a Southern or North Carolina accent…..and NO country accent.

When I moved to Vermont in 1991, almost no one could peg my accent.

As time went by, I accentuated my Southern accent.

Why?

It was fun doing so.

I played a little low stakes not good poker and a Southern accent helped snooker poor players.

Fast-forward 10-12 years and one of my wholesale wine reps was a Brit. Women would melt at his accent. He was a fucking scouser - lower class from Liverpool.

I remember Iain telling me…..”You should have gone to Australia in your 20’s…..the women would have fainted over your accent……Me?! The Aussies knew I was a fucking scouser….In the US, they think I went to Cambridge.”

He married an heiress to a sizable grocery store chain.

Really nice guy who worked hard.

 

[donbosco]

The snookering of Yankees by playing up the accent, especially the country one, is indeed a good game and one that ought to be played. I hang out in a NYC BBQ joint fairly often and bar banter allows me to get away with that sort of stuff pretty easily. And folks expect me to know QUE once they hear my voice (I'm also usually make it a point to wear Carolina gear when I go there).

On another angle...two word combinations I remember our teachers in first and second grade working very hard with us were

Set/Sit

Pin/Pen

Pen was so mispronounced that to this day most everyone that i grew up with in #DeepChatham will say INK Pen to fully distinguish between a straight pin and a writing tool.

Sit is what people do and set is what hens do.

 

[heelinhell]

I don't know if this "word" is used outside the South, but it is one of my favorites

" Flustrated" is such a perfect word because it condenses "flustered " and "frustrated " into a single word.

 

[Icky Mettle]

My dad is from a small town in eastern NC, right by the coast, where his side of the family had lived for generations. He moved to Charlotte after graduating from law school and his been there for over 52 years now. He still has a very noticeable southern accent, but when we would go back to his hometown to visit family, he would turn it up to 11. It would become much more pronounced than his everyday accent at home. (I haven’t been back with him to his hometown in over 30 years now, so not sure if that’s changed.)

My dad’s sister moved to Boston after graduating from UNC in 1973. She lived there for 20+ years, and then moved to California where she has lived for about the past 30 years. For as long as I’ve known her she has never had anything close to a discernible southern accent. When she was young she made an effort to get rid of it, as she wanted to get out of the south and feared that having a southern accent outside of the south would hold her back.

And then you have my mom’s side of the family. My mom is from upstate/western NY, where her side of the family had lived for generations. Pretty much all of my family members who still live there have that upstate/western NY accent, which is somewhat comparable to a midwestern accent. Interestingly, though, neither my mom, her brother, nor my grandparents have/had that accent. But so many of my cousins do, including cousins in my mom’s generation and cousins in my generation. Yet the accent was much less pronounced, and in some cases non-existent, in most people I knew from there in my grandparents’ generation and older. My theory there is that the accent was much more prevalent and pronounced among the working class (and working class folks up there to this day generally have a VERY pronounced upstate/western NY accent), and much less so among the middle and upper class folks. Then over time, the upper class in that area sort of died off/got old, and what was left of it, along with the middle class, mingled more and more with the working class. From there, the heavy accent that was prevalent among the working class spread to everyone else.

 

[farce©]

On another angle...two word combinations I remember our teachers in first and second grade working very hard with us were

Pin/Pen

Pen was so mispronounced that to this day most everyone that i grew up with in #DeepChatham will say INK Pen to fully distinguish between a straight pin and a writing tool.

My wife is a Yankee English teacher and she insists those two words are pronounced differently. For 30 years my response has been “bullshit, then why do we need adjectives to differentiate them?”

Then again she also thinks wonder and wander are pronounced differently, and she pronounces nighttime sleepwear paJAMas rather than the proper pronunciation paJAHmas. I have however, been successful in teaching her the proper pronunciation of peCAHN.

 

[donbosco]

Right...PeCAHN Pie and PeCAN Tree.