But You Don't Sound Southern

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But You Don't Sound Southern

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1Taphophile13
Ago 13, 2015, 12:18 pm

The residents of Raleigh, North Carolina are losing their southern accent:

https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=135770&org=NSF

2PhaedraB
Ago 13, 2015, 2:50 pm

Having lived there, I"m not surprised in the least. The 2000 census showed that 50% of the population of Wake County where Raleigh is located, were not only not originally from Wake County, they were not from North Carolina.

It's certainly true that kids don't get their accents from their parents. My grandparents, as well as the grandparents of most of the kids I grew up, with were immigrants who often had heavy accents (or sometimes didn't speak English at all). Yet none of our parents had those accents.

3MarthaJeanne
Ago 13, 2015, 3:37 pm

I know two young men who were brought up in Vienna. The parents are from New Zealand and Australia. The sons have English as their first language, but their education was in German, so they are bilingual. Their English has a stronger 'down under' accent than either parent.

4elenchus
Ago 13, 2015, 3:50 pm

>3 MarthaJeanne:

That's a fun example! I can think of any number of contributing influences (media such as movies or TV, minimal exposure to English-speakers apart from their parents, confounding influence from typical English accent as spoken by non-English natives in Vienna) ... but regardless, that's an interesting case. More typical to hear of the accent softening.

5MarthaJeanne
Modificato: Ago 13, 2015, 4:00 pm

>4 elenchus: They were at English language church every week, where none of the other families were from Australia or NZ. Media are certainly possible. They had a lot of Australian children's books, so possibly also videos.