Colonial South

[LadyShea]

So Frankie observed that the Georgia accent is quite different from other Southern accents (noted from a waiter in Tifton). I, for some reason, have a good ear for accents and told him that each Southern state has a slightly different way of talkin'.

So, the question of course is "why"? I assume regional accents are based on the languages spoken by the majority of early settlers, but may be wrong in that. If I am right, who settled Georgia and how were they different than the early Alabamans or North Carolinians or Mississippians?

[Ymir's blood]

If I remember correctly, Georgia was initially settled as a penal colony. Not sure about the other southern states, but a large percentage of NC's colonists were of Scottish origin, including my paternal ancestors.

Edited to add this link (http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/Our_Country_Vol_1/historyco_fj.html)

Skimming the page, it appears that it wasn't a penal colony in the usual sense but a colony for inmates of debtor's prisons.

[livius drusus]

I thought the way it worked was immigrant group X, composed of a variety of accents, settles area Y. Group X's children speak with a new amalgated accent which as they intermarry and reproduce comes to characterize area Y. So the south is peppered with all kinds of accents, not just overall Georgia or Alabama accents, but many subsets of each.

I don't really know, though, so don't take my word for it.

[wildernesse]

So Frankie observed that the Georgia accent is quite different from other Southern accents (noted from a waiter in Tifton). I, for some reason, have a good ear for accents and told him that each Southern state has a slightly different way of talkin'.

So, the question of course is "why"? I assume regional accents are based on the languages spoken by the majority of early settlers, but may be wrong in that. If I am right, who settled Georgia and how were they different than the early Alabamans or North Carolinians or Mississippians?

Well, you were below the fall line in Georgia--which means you were getting a full-on South Georgia accent. Most people north of the fall line don't have an accent anywhere close to that in Georgia (and it's not just because ATL is full of Yankee transplants either :wink: ). I'm really not sure why that is--but at UGA, most of us real native non-south Georgians (as in our parents didn't move here from somewhere else) spoke the same and those people from south Georgia--well, they sounded like they were from Waycross. ha. Seriously, I can't think of one of my friends who is from south Georgia who doesn't have a rather pronounced southern accent.

(The fall line separates the Coastal Plain and Piedmont geographical areas--it is where the rapids stop in the rivers and the land becomes flatter south of it. Up to the fall line, the land was in ancient times covered by the ocean.)

[Godless Dave]

Speech changes over time. So even if Georgia and, say, South Carolina were settled by people who spoke English exactly the same way, the accents would diverge eventually.

[LadyShea]

Speech changes over time. So even if Georgia and, say, South Carolina were settled by people who spoke English exactly the same way, the accents would diverge eventually.

I guess I am asking what causes the accent divergence?

[LadyShea]

I thought the way it worked was immigrant group X, composed of a variety of accents, settles area Y. Group X's children speak with a new amalgated accent which as they intermarry and reproduce comes to characterize area Y. So the south is peppered with all kinds of accents, not just overall Georgia or Alabama accents, but many subsets of each.

I don't really know, though, so don't take my word for it.

I agree, and that's how I thought it worked too. That's why we thought maybe area A was mostly settled by people from X, or something.

[Godless Dave]

Speech changes over time. So even if Georgia and, say, South Carolina were settled by people who spoke English exactly the same way, the accents would diverge eventually.

I guess I am asking what causes the accent divergence?

I don't think anyone knows. At least no one knew in 1992, which is the last time I read any linguistics literature. But it's sort of like biological evolution: isolate two populations, and they'll drift apart. Your kids' generation pronounces things slightly differently than yours does, their kids slightly differently than them, on down the line.

The languages spoken by the original immigrants is part of the picture, of course. I think Georgia, like Virginia and the Carolinas, was settled mostly by English and Scotch-Irish (that is, Scottish) people, New England was settled by English, southeastern New York by Dutch and English, and Pennsylvania by English and Germans. One thing that happened in the South is that affluent white people had slave nannies who spoke English very differently from their owners - the original slaves had to learn English as adults under the whip - so their kids would pick up elements of Black English.

I checked the history of Georgia and South Carolina in Wikipedia. All it said about the first settlers it that in South Carolina they were English and Scotch-Irish and Georgia started off as a penal colony. But that doesn't tell us much; there were (and are) a huge variety of accents and dialects just in England, not even counting Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall.

Ever read The Story of English? It's a great layperson's guide to the history of English.

[LadyShea]

there were (and are) a huge variety of accents and dialects just in England, not even counting Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall.

Good point. I was astonished that a place so tiny could have so many different accents/dialects.