Having grown up in rural northeast Alabama, I was exposed to a variety of accents. Of course, there was “Basic Southern,” in which a customer at my parents’ country store would come in and say “Howdy,” before buying some “washing powder” (laundry detergent), taters, and a box of “bakin’ sodie.”
There was also the “We moved here from somewhere else” accent. This was spoken by newcomers who referred to soft drinks as “pop.” They would walk in looking confused and ask me, “Where’s your pop?” I would reply, “He’s back in the kitchen, fixin’ to have lunch.”
And there was my favorite, “The Full Gomer,” named in honor of native Alabamian Jim Nabors, whose portrayal of Mayberry gas jockey Gomer Pyle seemed normal to me. Nabors didn’t talk that way in real life, but he must have grown up among those who did. On the Andy Griffith Show, Gomer was famous for adding at least five syllables to “Golly,” and badgering Deputy Barney Fife with his threats of a “citizens’ array-est.”
To this day, I find it comforting to hear a student in a Southern school with a deep accent, or using phrases from decades ago. When they talk about “chester drawers” or wearing “over-hauls,” they were likely raised by their Papaw and Granny. Since I chose broadcasting as a career, I have had to clean up my dialect, but I still enjoy hearing the sounds of my youth.
That’s why a recent AP newspaper article made me sad. The headline reads, “Southern Accents are Disappearing.” The story cites several examples of Southern talk “fading in some areas of the South as people migrate to the region from other parts of the U.S. and around the world.”
Almost six million people have relocated to the South so far in the 2020s, far more than the combined total of the nation’s other regions. At the same time, many of the practitioners of my beloved Southern twang are no longer among us. But I can still hear them asking, “What in the Sam Hill is goin’ on here?”
No doubt some party poopers are cheered by this linguistic transition, associating a Southern accent with a lack of education, a negative stereotype that has persisted for generations. Maybe so, but I knew some good ol’ boys who could put a rattle-trap “Shiv-a-lay” pickup truck on a grease rack and have it running faster than a scalded dog within minutes.
On a hopeful note, the article goes on to say “the Southern accent is unlikely to disappear completely.” Certainly, today’s younger people have far more influences at their fingertips than children of my generation. Along with our family members and classmates, the voices we heard were mostly from the radio and TV shows of the era.
Sure, we heard the flawless elocution of Paul Harvey, Walter Cronkite, Dick Clark, Bob Barker, Carol Burnett, and Johnny Carson. Their accents seemed to be region-neutral. Some might say they spoke “American.”
But we also noticed that Dinah Shore, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Jimmy Dean, baseball announcer Mel Allen, Minnie Pearl, Pat Boone and even Elvis Presley sounded like the people we grew up with. They didn’t try to hide their grits ‘n gravy background.
Some day after you and I are gone, what we know as the Southern accent may be a thing of the past. No one will be described as “drunker than Cooter Brown,” or “as dumb as a box of rocks.”
People will be too busy to sit around piddling, loafering, or dilly-dallying. Nobody will enjoy fresh “okree” or “squarsh” at the supper table. Will anyone at the local church still holler “Hall-uh-loo-yer!” and “A-man!” before heading outside for “dinner on the ground?”
Will future Southerners avoid saying forbidden words by substituting “Shoot-far,” “Dad-blame it,” and “What in tarnation is that?”
As a kid, when I was dragging my feet, my dad would tell me to “shake a leg.” I later used that line on my sons, and I hope they use it on my future grandkids. It’s one way to keep that Southern heritage alive.
We’ll get together again next week, good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.
