I blame Ted Turner.
Cable television has become the great equalizer, chipping away at the beautiful and interesting dialects used throughout this country. Since I travel a lot nationwide I can tell you very little difference exists anymore between the English pronounced in Seattle and the English pronounced in San Diego, San Antonio, and San Marco. Until you reach the South (Southern Texas and Floridian peninsula excluded).
The Southern Drawl is not one accent. It actually consists of numerous accent groups originating from immigrants the England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, Canada, the western coast of Africa, and all the islands of the Caribbean. Cajun is more French-Canadian. Creole is more Caribbean. But the classic, honey-laced Southern Drawl is derived most directly from the Virginia Piedmont dialect where the “R” is only pronounced if it directly precedes a vowel, dawlin’. Or the “R” sound is added where there isn’t an “R” present… like on warsh day when you warsh your clothes in the warshing machine.
A drawl literally means to speak slowly and draw out your words, which the Southern Drawl does, including adding letters and/or syllables where there ar-en’t supposed to be any. But in many cases I hear Southern Drawls contracting words or dropping letters or syllables, so the mutated version heard today is difficult to define. Besides “R”s, “L”s get dropped at random. (Ex. If you tawk the tawk, you must wawk the wawk.) "Horse" has one syllable. "Hoarse" has two. "For" has one syllable. "Four" has two. (Fo-were eggs were in the market basket.)
In the Southern Drawl, the first syllable typically gets stressed in certain words, including cement, insurance, display, TV, umbrella, aren’t. But in other words the second syllable gets the punch, ex. Harass. Southerners would never hair-us anyone. And you might as well forget “G” in an “ing” ending. We don’t use ending “G”s, dawlin’.
Some words and phrases are unique below the Mason-Dixon line, most notably “Ya’ll,” “Liked to” and “Fixin’.” Ya’ll is the second person pronoun and is always plural. Ya’ll’s is plural possessive. All Ya’ll means every last one of you individually in this group. And “All Ya’ll’s” is individually possessive still belonging to a common group. For example, “All ya’ll’s fannies are gonna get whooped if ya don’t get to bed this minute!”
“Like to” and “Liked to” both mean nearly, and both are in the past tense. “When the snake raised its beady-eyed head from my flower pot, I liked to have died.”
“Fixin’” just means you are getting ready to do something. You may have been procrastinating, but it’s still on your radar. “We’re fixin’ to go to bed, Momma.”
And then sometimes we just make up words… dove is past tense for dive, drug is past tense for drag, and drunk is past tense for… well many things.
A “Coke” is any carbonated soft drink. “CoCola” is nectar of the gods!
