Southern American English

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Southern American English
Southern U.S. English
RegionSouthern United States
Early form
Language codes
ISO 639-3

Southern American English or Southern U.S. English is a regional dialect[1][2] or collection of dialects of American English spoken throughout the Southern United States, though increasingly in more rural areas and primarily by White Southerners.[3] The dialect is commonly known in the United States simply as Southern,[4][5][6] while formal, much more recent terms within American linguistics include Southern White Vernacular English and Rural White Southern English.[7][8]

A regional Southern American English consolidated and expanded throughout all the traditional Southern States since the last quarter of the nineteenth century until around World War II,[9][10] largely superseding the older Southern American English dialects. With this younger and more unified pronunciation system, Southern American English now comprises the largest American regional accent group by number of speakers.[11] As of 2006, a Southern accent is strongly reported throughout the U.S. states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia, as well as most of Texas, eastern and southern Oklahoma, southern Missouri, southeastern Maryland, northern and central Florida, and southeastern New Mexico. The accent of some Midland American English (often identified as a South Midland accent) is documented as sharing key features with Southern American English, though to a weaker extent, including in northern Oklahoma, eastern and central Kansas, Missouri generally, the southern halves of Illinois and Indiana, southern Ohio, western Delaware, and south-central Pennsylvania.[12]

Southern American English as a regional dialect can be divided into various sub-dialects, the most phonologically advanced (i.e., the most innovative) ones being southern varieties of Appalachian English and certain varieties of Texan English. African-American English has many common points with Southern American English dialects due to the strong historical ties of African Americans to the South. Recently, the Southern accent has been receding among younger and more urban Southerners.



Southern dialects originated mostly from a mix of immigrants from the British Isles, who moved to the American South in the 17th and 18th centuries with minor African elements introduced by African Slaves brought to the region. Upheavals such as the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and World War II caused mass migrations of those and other settlers throughout the United States.[15]

Modern phonology[edit]

The approximate extent of Southern American English, based upon The Atlas of North American English.[16][17]
A list of typical Southern vowels[18][19]
English diaphoneme Southern phoneme Example words
Pure vowels (Monophthongs)
[eə~æjə] ham, land, yeah
/ɑː/ [ɑ] blah, bother, father,
lot, top, wasp
loss, saw, taught
/ɛ/ [ɛ~ɛjə]
preceding a nasal consonant: [ɪ~ɪ(j)ə]
dress, met, bread
/ə/ [ə] about, syrup, arena
// [i̞i~ɪi] beam, chic, fleet
/ʌ/ [ɜ] bus, flood, what
// [ʊu~ɵu~ʊ̈y~ʏy~ʉ̞u̟] food, glue, new
// [äː~äɛ] ride, shine, try
// [æɒ~ɛjɔ] now, ouch, scout
// [ɛi~æ̠i] lake, paid, rein
/ɔɪ/ [oi] boy, choice, moist
// [ɜʊ~ɜʊ̈~ɜʏ]
preceding /l/ or a hiatus: [ɔu]
goat, oh, show
R-colored vowels
/ɑːr/ rhotic Southern dialects: [ɒɹ~ɑɹ]
non-rhotic Southern dialects: [ɒ~ɑ]
barn, car, park
/ɛər/ rhotic: [e̞ɹ~ɛ(j)ɹ]
non-rhotic: [ɛ(j)ə]
bare, bear, there
/ɜːr/ [ɚ~ɐɹ] (older: [ɜ]) burn, first, herd
/ər/ rhotic:[ɚ]
better, martyr, doctor
/ɪər/ rhotic: [iɹ]
non-rhotic: [iə]
fear, peer, tier
/ɔːr/ rhotic: [o(u)ɹ]
non-rhotic: [o(u)ə]
hoarse, horse, poor
score, tour, war
/jʊər/ rhotic: [juɹ~jɹ]
non-rhotic: [juə]
cure, Europe, pure


The South as a present-day dialect region generally includes all of these pronunciation features below, which are popularly recognized in the United States as a "Southern accent". However, there is still variation in Southern speech regarding potential differences based on factors like a speaker's exact sub-region, age, ethnicity, etc. The following phonological phenomena focus on the developing sound system of the twentieth-century Southern dialects of the United States that altogether largely (though certainly not entirely) superseded the older Southern regional patterns:

  • Southern Vowel Shift (or Southern Shift): A chain shift regarding vowels is fully completed, or occurring, in most Southern dialects, especially 20th-century ones, and at the most advanced stage in the "Inland South" (i.e. away from the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts) and "Texas South" (i.e. much of central and northern Texas). This 3-stage chain movement of vowels, called the Southern Shift, is first triggered by Stage 1 that dominates the entire Southern region, followed by Stage 2 that covers almost all of that area, and Stage 3 that is concentrated only in speakers of certain core sub-regions. Stage 1 (defined below) may have begun in a minority of Southern accents as early as the first half of the 19th century with a glide weakening of /aɪ/ to [aɛ] or [aə]; however, it was still largely incomplete or absent in the mid-19th century, before expanding rapidly from the last quarter of the 19th into the middle of the 20th century;[20] today, this glide weakening or even total glide deletion is the pronunciation norm throughout all of the Southern United States.
      • The starting point, or first stage, of the Southern Shift is the transition of the diphthong /aɪ/ (About this soundlisten) towards a "glideless" long vowel [aː] (About this soundlisten), so that, for example, the word ride commonly approaches a sound that most other American English speakers would hear as rod or rad. Stage 1 is now complete for a majority of Southern dialects.[21] Southern speakers particularly exhibit the Stage 1 shift at the ends of words and before voiced consonants, but often not before voiceless consonants, where the diphthong instead retains its glide, so that ride is [ɹäːd], but right is [ɹäɪt]. Inland (i.e. non-coastal) Southern speakers, however, indeed delete the glide of /aɪ/ in all contexts, as in the stereotyped pronunciation "nahs whaht rahss" for nice white rice; these most shift-advanced speakers are largely found today in an Appalachian area that comprises eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina and northern Alabama, as well as in central Texas.[22] Some traditional East Coast Southern accents do not exhibit this Stage 1 glide deletion,[23] particularly in Charleston, SC and possibly Atlanta and Savannah, GA (cities that are, at best, considered marginal to the modern Southern dialect region).
      • This new glideless [aː~äː] vowel encroaches on the territory of the "short a" vowel, /æ/ (as in rat or bad), thus pushing /æ/ generally higher and fronter in the mouth (and also possibly giving it a complex gliding quality, often starting higher and then gliding lower); thus /æ/ can range variously away from its original position, with variants such as [æ(j)ə], [æɛæ], [ɛ(j)ə], and possibly even [ɛ]. An example is that, to other English speakers, the Southern pronunciation of yap sounds something like yeah-up.
      • By removing the existence of [aɪ], Stage 1 leaves open a lower space for /eɪ/ (as in name and day) to occupy, causing Stage 2: the dragging of the diphthong /eɪ/ into a lower starting position, towards [ɛɪ] (About this soundlisten) or to a sound even lower or more retracted, or both.
  • Unstressed, word-final /ŋ/[n]: The phoneme /ŋ/ in an unstressed syllable at the end of a word fronts to [n], so that singing /ˈsɪŋɪŋ/ is sometimes written phonetically as singin [ˈsɪŋɪn].[26] This is common in vernacular English dialects around the world.
  • Lacking or transitioning cot–caught merger: The historical distinction between the two vowels sounds /ɔ/ and /ɒ/, in words like caught and cot or stalk and stock is mainly preserved.[27] In much of the South during the 1900s, there was a trend to lower the vowel found in words like stalk and caught, often with an upglide, so that the most common result today is the gliding vowel [ɑɒ]. However, the cot–caught merger is becoming increasingly common throughout the United States, thus affecting Southeastern and even some Southern dialects, towards a merged vowel [ɑ].[28] In the South, this merger, or a transition towards this merger, is especially documented in central, northern, and (particularly) western Texas.[29]
  • Rhoticity: The "dropping" of the r sound after vowels was historically widespread in the South, particularly in former plantation area. This phenomenon, non-rhoticity, was considered prestigious before World War II, after which the social perception in the South reversed. Now, rhoticity (sometimes called r-fulness), in which all r sounds are pronounced, is dominant throughout most of the South, and even "hyper-rhoticity",[30] particularly among younger and female white Southerners; the only major exception is among African American Southerners, whose modern vernacular dialect continues to be mostly non-rhotic.[31] The sound quality of the Southern r is the distinctive "bunch-tongued r", produced by strongly constricting the root or midsection of the tongue, or both.[32]
  • Pronunciation of ⟨wh⟩: Most of the U.S. has completed the wine–whine merger, but, in many Southern accents, the phonemes /w/ and /hw/ remain distinct, so that pairs of words like wail and whale or wield and wheeled' are not homophones. This is the last region of the United States to continue preserving this distinction fairly consistently.[33]
  • The back vowel /u/ (in goose or true) is fronted in the mouth to the vicinity of [ʉ] or even farther forward, which is then followed by a slight gliding quality; different gliding qualities have been reported, including both backward and (especially in the eastern half of the South) forward glides.[35]
  • The back vowel /oʊ/ (in goat or toe) is fronted to the vicinity of [ɜʊ~ɜʉ], and perhaps even as far forward as [ɛʊ].[36]
  • Back Upglide (Chain) Shift: In Southern regional dialects, /aʊ/ shifts forward and upward to [æʊ] (also possibly realized, variously, as [æjə~æo~ɛɔ~eo]); thus allowing the back vowel /ɔ/ to fill an area similar to the former position of /aʊ/ in the mouth, becoming lowered and developing an upglide [ɑɒ]; this, in turn, allows (though only for the most advanced Southern speakers) the upgliding /ɔɪ/, before /l/, to lose its glide [ɔ] (for instance, causing the word boils to sound something like the British or New York City pronunciations of About this soundballs).[37]
  • /z/ becomes [d] before /n/, for example [ˈwʌdn̩t] wasn't, [ˈbɪdnɪs] business,[39] but hasn't may keep the [z] to avoid merging with hadn't.
  • Many nouns are stressed on the first syllable that are stressed on the second syllable in most other American accents.[25] These may include police, cement, Detroit, Thanksgiving, insurance, behind, display, hotel, motel, recycle, TV, guitar, July, and umbrella. Today, younger Southerners tend to keep this initial stress for a more reduced set of words, perhaps including only insurance, defense, Thanksgiving, and umbrella.[40][41]
  • Phonemic incidence is sometimes unique in the South, so that:[41]
    • Florida is typically pronounced /ˈflɑrɪdə/ rather than General American /ˈflɔrɪdə/, and lawyer is /ˈlɔjər/ rather than General American /ˈlɔɪər/ (i.e., the first syllable of lawyer sounds like law, not loy).
    • Spigot (a water tap) is often pronounced /ˈspɪkət/, as if spelled spicket.
  • Words ending in unstressed /oʊ/ (especially with the spelling ⟨ow⟩) may be pronounced as [ə] or [ʊ],[43] making yellow sound like yella or tomorrow like tomorra.
  • Variable horse–hoarse merger: the merger of the phonemes /ɔː/r/ (as in morning) and /oʊr/ (as in mourning) is common, as in most English dialects, though a distinction is still preserved especially in Southern accents along the Gulf Coast, plus scatterings elsewhere;[44] thus, morning [ˈmɒɹnɪn] versus mourning [ˈmouɹnɪn].

Inland South and Texas[edit]

William Labov et al. identify the "Inland South" as a large linguistic sub-region of the South located mostly in southern Appalachia (specifically naming the cities of Greenville SC, Asheville NC, Knoxville and Chattanooga TN, and Birmingham and Linden AL), inland from both the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts, and the originating region of the Southern Vowel Shift. The Inland South, along with the "Texas South" (an urban core of central Texas: Dallas, Lubbock, Odessa, and San Antonio)[12] are considered the two major locations in which the Southern regional sound system is the most highly developed, and therefore the core areas of the current-day South as a dialect region.[45]

The accents of Texas are actually diverse, for example with important Spanish influences on its vocabulary;[46] however, much of the state is still an unambiguous region of modern rhotic Southern speech, strongest in the cities of Dallas, Lubbock, Odessa, and San Antonio,[12] which all firmly demonstrate the first stage of the Southern Shift, if not also further stages of the shift.[47] Texan cities that are noticeably "non-Southern" dialectally are Abilene and Austin; only marginally Southern are Houston, El Paso, and Corpus Christi.[48] In western and northern Texas, the cot–caught merger is very close to completed.[49]

Distinct phonologies[edit]

Some sub-regions of the South, and perhaps even a majority of the biggest cities, are showing a gradual shift away from the Southern accent since the second half of the twentieth century to the present. Such well-studied cities include Houston, Texas, and Raleigh, North Carolina; in Raleigh, for example, this retreat from the accent appears to have begun around 1950.[50] Other sub-regions are unique in that their inhabitants have never spoken with the Southern regional accent, instead having their own distinct accents.

Atlanta, Charleston, and Savannah[edit]

The Atlas of North American English identified Atlanta, Georgia as a dialectal "island of non-Southern speech",[51] Charleston, South Carolina likewise as "not markedly Southern in character", and the traditional local accent of Savannah, Georgia as "giving way to regional [Midland] patterns",[52] despite these being three prominent Southern cities. The dialect features of Atlanta are best described today as sporadic from speaker to speaker, with such variation increased due to a huge movement of non-Southerners into the area during the 1990s.[53] Modern-day Charleston speakers have leveled in the direction of a more generalized Midland accent, away from the city's now-defunct, traditional Charleston accent, whose features were "diametrically opposed to the Southern Shift... and differ in many other respects from the main body of Southern dialects".[54] The Savannah accent is also becoming more Midland-like. The following vowel sounds of Atlanta, Charleston, and Savannah have been unaffected by typical Southern phenomena like the Southern drawl and Southern Vowel Shift:[53]

  • /aɪ/ as in bide (however, some Atlanta and Savannah speakers do variably show Southern /aɪ/ glide weakening).
  • /eɪ/ as in bait.
  • /ɛ/ as in bed.
  • /ɪ/ as in bid.
  • /i/ as in bead.

Today, the accents of Atlanta, Charleston, and Savannah are most similar to Midland regional accents or at least Southeastern super-regional accents.[53][55] In all three cities, some speakers (though most consistently documented in Charleston and least consistently in Savannah) demonstrate the Southeastern fronting of /oʊ/ and the status of the pin–pen merger is highly variable.[55] Non-rhoticity (r-dropping) is now rare in these cities, yet still documented in some speakers.[56]

Southern Louisiana[edit]

Most of southern Louisiana constitutes Acadiana, a cultural region dominated for hundreds of years by monolingual speakers of Cajun French,[57] which combines elements of Acadian French with other French and Spanish words. Today, this French dialect is spoken by many older Cajun ethnic group and is said to be dying out. A related language, Louisiana Creole French, also exists. Since the early 1900s, Cajuns additionally began to develop their own vernacular dialect of English, which retains some influences and words from French, such as "cher" (dear) or "nonc" (uncle). This dialect fell out of fashion after World War II, but experienced a renewal in primarily male speakers born since the 1970s, who have been the most attracted by, and the biggest attractors for, a successful Cajun cultural renaissance.[57] The accent includes:[58] variable non-rhoticity (or r-dropping), high nasalization (including in vowels before nasal consonants), deletion of any word's final consonant(s) (hand becomes [hæ̃], food becomes [fu], rent becomes [ɹɪ̃], New York becomes [nuˈjɔə], etc.),[58] a potential for glide weakening in all gliding vowels (e.g. /oʊ/ (as in Joe), /eɪ/ as in jay, and /ɔɪ/ as in joy, have reduced glides: [oː], [eː], and [ɔː], respectively),[58] and the cot–caught merger towards [ä].[58]

One historical English dialect spoken only by those raised in the Greater New Orleans area is traditionally non-rhotic and noticeably shares more pronunciation commonalities with the New York accent than with other Southern accents. Since at least the 1980s, this local New Orleans dialect has popularly been called "Yat", from the common local greeting "Where you at?". The New York accent features shared with the Yat accent include:[53] non-rhoticity, a short-a split system (so that bad and back, for example, have different vowels), /ɔ/ as high gliding [ɔə], /ɑr/ as rounded [ɒ~ɔ], and the coil–curl merger (traditionally, though now in decline). Yat also lacks the typical vowel changes of the Southern Shift and the pin–pen merger that are commonly heard elsewhere throughout the South. Yat is associated with the working and lower-middle classes, though a spectrum with fewer notable Yat features is often heard the higher one's socioeconomic status; such New Orleans affluence is associated with the New Orleans Uptown and the Garden District, whose speech patterns are sometimes considered distinct from the lower-class Yat dialect.[59]

Older phonologies[edit]



  • Plantation South (the Black Belt excluding the Lowcountry): phonologically characterized by /aɪ/ glide weakening, non-rhoticity (for some accents, including a coil–curl merger), and the Southern trap–bath split (a version of the trap–bath split unique to older Southern U.S. speech that causes words like lass [læs~læɛæs] not to rhyme with words like pass [pæes]).
  • Lowcountry (of South Carolina and Georgia; often identified as the traditional "Charleston accent"): characterized by no /aɪ/ glide weakening, non-rhoticity (including the coil-curl merger), the Southern trap–bath split, Canadian raising, the cheer–chair merger, /eɪ/ pronounced as [e(ə)], and /oʊ/ pronounced as [o(ə)].
  • Outer Banks and Chesapeake Bay (often identified as the "Hoi Toider accent"): characterized by no /aɪ/ glide weakening (with the on-glide strongly backed, unlike any other U.S. dialect), the card–cord merger, /aʊ/ pronounced as [aʊ~äɪ], and up-gliding of pure vowels especially before /ʃ/ (making fish sound almost like feesh and ash like aysh). It is the only dialect of the older South still extant on the East Coast, due to being passed on through generations of geographically isolated islanders.



    I done told you before.
    I only done what you done told me.
    I seen her first.
    I knowed you for a fool soon as I seen you.
    You was sittin' on that chair.
  • Use of been instead of have been in perfect constructions.
    I been livin' here darn near my whole life.
  • Use of (a-)fixin' to, with several spelling variants such as fixing to or fixinta,[62] to indicate immediate future action; in other words: intending to, preparing to, or about to.
    He's fixin' to eat.
    They're fixing to go for a hike.
It is not clear where the term comes from and when it was first used. According to dialect dictionaries, fixin' to is associated with Southern speech, most often defined as being a synonym of preparing to or intending to.[63] Some linguists, i.e. Marvin K. Ching, regard it as being a quasimodal rather than a verb followed by an infinitive.[64] It is a term used by all social groups, although more frequently by people with a lower social status than by members of the educated upper classes. Furthermore, it is more common in the speech of younger people than in that of older people.[63] Like much of the Southern dialect, the term is also more prevalent in rural areas than in urban areas.
    I'm fixin' to paint me a picture.
    He's gonna catch him a big one.
    This here's mine and that there is yours.
    It's one lady who lives in town.
    It is nothing more to say.

Standard English would prefer "existential there", as in "There's one lady who live's in town". This construction is used to say that something exists (rather than saying where it is located).[65] The construction can be found in Middle English as in Marlowe's Edward II: "Cousin, it is no dealing with him now".[65]

  • Use of ever in place of every.
    Ever'where's the same these days.
  • Using liketa to mean "almost"
    I liketa died[66]
    He liketa got hit by a car
Liketa is presumably a conjunction of "like to" or "like to have" coming from Appalachian English. It is most often seen as a synonym of almost. Accordingly, the phrase I like't'a died would be I almost died in Standard English. With this meaning, liketa can be seen as a verb modifier for actions that are on the verge of happening.[67] Furthermore, it is more often used in an exaggerative or violent figurative sense rather than literal sense.[68]

Multiple modals[edit]

Standard English has a strict word order. In the case of modal auxiliaries, standard English is restricted to a single modal per verb phrase. However, some Southern speakers use double or more modals in a row (might could, might should, might would, used to could, etc.--also called "modal stacking") and sometimes even triple modals that involve oughta (like might should oughta)

  • I might could climb to the top.
  • I used to could do that.

The origin of multiple modals is controversial; some say it is a development of Modern English, while others trace them back to Middle English and again others to Scots-Irish settlers.[63] There are different opinions on which class preferably uses the term. Atwood,[70] for example, finds that educated people try to avoid multiple modals, whereas Montgomery[71] suggests the opposite. In some Southern regions, multiple modals are quite widespread and not particularly stigmatized.[72] Possible multiple modals are:[73]

may could might could might supposed to
may can might oughta mighta used to
may will might can might woulda had oughta
may should might should oughta could
may supposed to might would better can
may need to might better should oughta
may used to might had better used to could
can might musta coulda
could might would better

As the table shows, there are only possible combinations of an epistemic modal followed by deontic modals in multiple modal constructions. Deontic modals express permissibility with a range from obligated to forbidden and are mostly used as markers of politeness in requests whereas epistemic modals refer to probabilities from certain to impossible.[63] Multiple modals combine these two modalities.

Conditional syntax and evidentiality[edit]

People from the South often make use of conditional or evidential syntaxes as shown below (italicized in the examples):[74]

Conditional syntax in requests:

I guess you could step out and git some toothpicks and a carton of Camel cigarettes, if you a mind to.
If you be good enough to take it, I believe I could stand me a taste.[74]

Conditional syntax in suggestions:

I wouldn't look for 'em to show up if I was you.
I'd think that whiskey would be a trifle hot.

Conditional syntax creates a distance between the speaker's claim and the hearer. It serves to soften obligations or suggestions, make criticisms less personal, and to overall express politeness, respect, or courtesy.[74]

Southerners also often use "evidential" predicates such as think, reckon, believe, guess, have the feeling, etc.:

You already said that once, I believe.
I wouldn't want to guess, but I have the feeling we'll know soon enough.
You reckon we oughta get help?
I don't believe I've ever known one.

Evidential predicates indicate an uncertainty of the knowledge asserted in the sentence. According to Johnston, evidential predicates nearly always hedge the assertions and allow the respondents to hedge theirs. They protect speakers from the social embarrassment that appears, in case the assertion turns out to be wrong. As is the case with conditional syntax, evidential predicates can also be used to soften criticisms and to afford courtesy or respect.[74]



  • Buggy to mean shopping cart
  • Carry to additionally mean escort or accompany[76]
  • Catty-corner to mean located or placed diagonally
  • Chill bumps as a synonym for goose bumps
  • Coke to mean any sweet, carbonated soft drink
  • Crawfish to mean crayfish
  • Fixin to to mean about to
  • Icing (preferred over frosting, in the confectionary sense)
  • Liketa to mean almost or nearly (particularly in Alabama and Appalachian English)[77]
  • Ordinary to mean disreputable[78]
  • Ornery to mean bad-tempered or surly (derived from ordinary)[79]
  • Powerful to mean great in number or amount (used as an adverb)[78]
  • Right to mean very or extremely (used as an adverb)[80]
  • Reckon to mean think, guess, or conclude[81]
  • Rolling to mean the prank of toilet papering
  • Slaw as a synonym for coleslaw
  • Toboggan to mean knit cap
  • Tote to mean carry[75]
  • Veranda to mean large, roofed porch[78]
  • Yonder to mean over there[75]

Unique words can occur as Southern nonstandard past-tense forms of verbs, particularly in the Southern highlands and Piney Woods, as in yesterday they riz up, come outside, drawed, and drownded, as well as participle forms like they have took it, rode it, blowed it up, and swimmed away.[75] Drug is traditionally both the past tense and participle form of the verb drag.[75]



Y'all is a second person plural pronoun and the usual Southern plural form of the word you.[83] It is originally a contraction – you all – which is used less frequently.[84] This term originated with the modern Southern dialect region and is not found in older Southern dialects.

    "I've got y'all's assignments here." /jɔlz/
    "That book is yernses." /ˈjɜrnzəz/

Southern Louisiana[edit]

Southern Louisiana English especially is known for some unique vocabulary: long sandwiches are often called poor boys or po' boys, woodlice/roly-polies called doodle bugs, the end of a bread loaf called a nose, pedestrian islands and median strips alike called neutral ground,[41] and sidewalks called banquettes.[85]

Relationship to African-American English[edit]

Discussion of "Southern dialect" in the United States popularly refers to those English varieties spoken by white Southerners;[8] however, as a geographic term, it may also encompass the dialects developed among other social or ethnic groups in the South, most prominently including African Americans. Today, African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a fairly unified variety of English spoken by working- and middle-class African Americans throughout the United States. AAVE exhibits an evident relationship with both older and newer Southern dialects, though the exact nature of this relationship is poorly understood.[86] It is clear that AAVE was influenced by older speech patterns of the Southern United States, where Africans and African Americans were held as slaves until the American Civil War. These slaves originally spoke a diversity of indigenous African languages but picked up English to communicate with one another, their white masters, and the white servants and laborers they often closely worked alongside. Many features of AAVE suggest that it largely developed from nonstandard dialects of colonial English (with some features of AAVE absent from other modern American dialects, yet still existing in certain modern British dialects). However, there is also evidence of the influence of West African languages on AAE vocabulary and grammar.

It is uncertain to what extent early white Southern English borrowed elements from early African-American Vernacular English versus the other way around. Like many white accents of English once spoken in Southern plantation areas—namely, the Lowcountry, Virginia Piedmont and Tidewater, lower Mississippi Valley, and western Black Belt—the modern-day AAVE accent is mostly non-rhotic (or "r-dropping" ). The presence of non-rhoticity in both black English and older white Southern English is not merely coincidence, though, again, which dialect influenced which is unknown. It is better documented, however, that white Southerners borrowed some morphological processes from black Southerners.

Many grammatical features were used alike by older speakers of white Southern English and African-American Vernacular English more so than by contemporary speakers of the same two varieties. Even so, contemporary speakers of both continue to share these unique grammatical features: "existential it", the word y'all, double negatives, was to mean were, deletion of had and have, them to mean those, the term fixin' to, stressing the first syllable of words like hotel or guitar, and many others.[87] Both dialects also continue to share these same pronunciation features: /ɪ/ tensing, /ʌ/ raising, upgliding /ɔ/, the pin–pen merger, and the most defining sound of the current Southern accent (though rarely documented in older Southern accents): the glide weakening of /aɪ/. However, while this glide weakening has triggered among white Southerners a complicated "Southern Vowel Shift", black speakers in the South and elsewhere on the other hand are "not participating or barely participating" in much of this shift.[88] AAVE speakers also do not front the vowel starting positions of /oʊ/ and /u/, thus aligning these characteristics more with the speech of nineteenth-century white Southerners than twentieth-century white Southerners.[89]

One strong possibility for the divergence of black American English and white Southern American English (i.e., the disappearance of older Southern American English) is that the civil rights struggles caused these two racial groups "to stigmatize linguistic variables associated with the other group".[89] This may explain some of the differences outlined above, including why most traditionally non-rhotic white Southern accents have shifted to now becoming intensely rhotic.[32]

Social perceptions[edit]

In the United States, there is a general negative stigma surrounding the Southern dialect. Non-Southern Americans tend to associate a Southern accent with cognitive and verbal slowness, lack of education, ignorance, bigotry, or religious and political conservatism,[90] using common labels like "hick", "hillbilly",[91] or "redneck" accent.[92] The accent is also associated nationwide with the military, NASCAR, and country music; in fact, even non-Southern American country singers typically imitate a Southern accent in their music.[92] Meanwhile, Southerners themselves tend to have mixed judgments of their own accent, some similarly negative but others positively associating it with a laid-back, plain, or humble attitude.[93] The sum negative associations nationwide, however, are the main presumable cause of a gradual decline of Southern accent features, since the middle of the twentieth century onwards, among younger and more urban residents of the South.[50]

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Clopper, Cynthia G; Pisoni, David B (2006). "The Nationwide Speech Project: A new corpus of American English dialects". Speech communication vol. 48,6: 633-644.
  2. ^ Labov, William (1998). The three dialects of English. In: Linn MD, editor. Handbook of Dialects and Language Variation. Academic; San Diego. 1998. pp. 39–81
  3. ^ Thomas (2009:3)
  4. ^ Stephen J. Nagle; Sara L. Sanders (2003). English in the Southern United States. Cambridge University Press. p. 35. ISBN 9781139436786[This page differentiates between "Traditional Southern" and "New Southern"]
  8. ^ a b (Thomas (2006)
  9. ^ A Handbook of Varieties of English: Volume 1, p. 329
  10. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:241)
  13. ^ Map from the Telsur Project. Retrieved 2009-08-03.
  15. ^ Thomas (2006:3)
  16. ^ "ASA 147th Meeting Lay Language Papers - The Nationwide Speech Project". 2004-05-27. Archived from the original on 2014-01-08. Retrieved 2012-11-08.
  17. ^ "Map".
  18. ^ Thomas (2006:1–2)
  21. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:244)
  22. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:245)
  25. ^ a b Thomas (2006:5)
  27. ^ a b Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:137)
  28. ^ Thomas (2006:9)
  29. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:61)
  31. ^ Thomas (2006:16)
  32. ^ a b Thomas (2006:15)
  33. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:50)
  34. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:69–73)
  35. ^ Thomas (2006:10)
  36. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:105)
  37. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:254)
  38. ^ Thomas (2006:7)
  39. ^ Wolfram (2004:55)
  40. ^ A Handbook of Varieties of English: Volume 1, p. 331.
  43. ^ Wells (1988:167)
  44. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:52)
  45. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:148, 150)
  47. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:69)
  48. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:131)
  49. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:254)
  50. ^ a b Dodsworth, Robin (2013) "Retreat from the Southern Vowel Shift in Raleigh, NC: Social Factors," University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 19 : Iss. 2, Article 5. Available at:
  51. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:181)
  52. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:304)
  54. ^ a b Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:259–260)
  55. ^ a b Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:68)
  56. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:48)
  60. ^ Thomas (2006:4)
  61. ^ Thomas (2006:6)
  63. ^ a b c d Bernstein, Cynthia. "Grammatical features of southern speech: y'all, might could, and fixin' to." English in the Southern United States. Eds. Stephen J. Nagel and Sara L. Sanders, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 106-119.
  64. ^ Ching, Marvin K. L. "How Fixed Is Fixin' to?" American Speech, 62.4 (1987): 332-345.
  65. ^ a b "Existential it." Online Dictionary of Language Terminology. 4 Oct 2012
  66. ^ Bailey, Guy, and Jan Tillery. "The Persistence of Southern American English." Journal of English Linguistics, 24.4 (1996): 308-321.
  67. ^ Wolfram, Walt; Schilling-Estes, Natalie (2015). American English: Dialects and Variation. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 48, 380.
  68. ^ "Liketa". Yale Grammatical Diversity Project. Yale University. 2019.
  69. ^ Regional Note from The Free Dictionary
  70. ^ Atwood, E. Bagby. A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1953.
  71. ^ Montgomery, Michael. "Multiple Modals In LAGS and LAMSAS". From the Gulf States and Beyond: the legacy of Lee Pederson and LAGS. Eds. Michael Montgomery & Thomas E. Nunnaly, Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1998.
  72. ^ Wolfram, Walt; Schilling-Estes, Natalie (2015). American English: Dialects and Variation. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. p. 379.
  73. ^ Di Paolo, Marianna. "Double Modals as Single Lexical Items." American Speech, 64.3 (1989): 195-224.
  74. ^ a b c d Johnston, Barbara. "Features and Uses of Southern Style". English in the Southern United States. Eds. Stephen J. Nagle and Sara L. Sanders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 189-205.
  77. ^ "Liketa". Yale Grammatical Diversity Project. Yale University. 2018.
  79. ^ Berrey, Lester V. (1940). "Southern Mountain Dialect". American Speech, vol. 15, no. 1. p. 47.
  82. ^ a b "Dialect Survey Results".
  83. ^ "Harvard Dialect Survey - word use: a group of two or more people".
  86. ^ Thomas (2006:19)
  88. ^ Thomas (2006:19–20)
  89. ^ a b Thomas (2006:4)
  91. ^ Hayes, 2013, p. 51.
  92. ^ a b Fought, John G. (2005). "American Varieties: R-ful Southern". Do You Speak American? MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.
  93. ^ Hayes, 2013, p. 39.


  • Bernstein, Cynthia (2003). "Grammatical features of southern speech". In Stephen J. Nagel; Sara L. Sanders (eds.). English in the Southern United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82264-0.
  • Crystal, David (2000). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82348-7.
  • Cukor-Avila, Patricia (2003). "The complex grammatical history of African-American and white vernaculars in the South". In In Stephen J. Nagel and Sara L. Sanders (ed.). English in the Southern United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82264-0.
  • Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006), The Atlas of North American English, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-016746-7
  • Hazen, Kirk & Fluharty, Ellen (2004). "Defining Appalachian English". In Bender, Margaret (ed.). Linguistic Diversity in the South. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-2586-6.

External links[edit]