Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Thank you Lammius, this is exactly the tidewater accent that my grandfather, grandmother, aunt, father and myself to a degree (mine is tidewater/coastal south carolina mixed southern accent).
I felt like I was back in Tidewater 20 years ago at my grandparents house.
This is a perfect example of the ol' tidewater accent!!!
Exactly, this is what I should have titled the thread, Southside Tidewater Accent. I grew up on the Southside, and when I refer to Tidewater I am always talking about the Southside - Va. Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, P-town, and Suffolk.
Norfolk, and Newport News have a Tidewater accent. Maybe you guys don't hear it because you guys are from there. I certainly can hear it. Now in Virginia Beach since is "the beach" I don't hear it as much, but it is still there but not as much.
I have to revive an old thread...
I called a downtown souvenir shop in Charleston, SC today, where I live. The older gentleman on the phone sounded exactly like my grandfather from Norfolk, Va. and similar to my father from Norfolk, Va. too. Both my grandfather and father have passed away. I dearly miss my Father Earl C. Davis, Jr. from Norfolk, Va.
Anyway, I asked the man where he grew up and was from. He was from here, Charleston, Sc all his life. How could he sound so similar to my Grandfather, to where I thought he sounded exactly like him, with a southern older accent. I found this information online about Southern American English:
Older Southern American English was a set of American English dialects of the Southern United States, primarily spoken by White Southerners up until the American Civil War, moving towards a state of decline by the turn of the nineteenth century, further accelerated by World War II and again, finally, by the Civil Rights Movement.[SIZE=2][1][/SIZE] These dialects have since largely given way, on a larger regional level, to a more unified and younger Southern American English, notably recognized today by a highly unique vowel shift and certain other vocabulary and accent characteristics. Some features unique to older Southern U.S. English persist today, though typically in only very localized dialects or speakers.
This group of American English dialects evolved over a period of several hundred years, primarily from older varieties of British English spoken by those who initially settled the area. Given that language is an entity that is constantly changing,[SIZE=2][2][/SIZE] the English of the colonists was quite different from any variety of English being spoken today. The colonists who initially settled the Tidewater area spoke a variety of Early Modern English, which itself was very varied.[SIZE=2][3][/SIZE] The older Southern dialects thus originated in large part from a mix of immigrants from the British Isles, who moved to the South in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the creole or post-creole speech of African slaves. Atlantic Coast[edit]
The earliest English settlers of the colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts were mainly people from Southern England. However, Virginia received more colonists from the English West Country, bringing with them a distinctive dialect and vocabulary.[SIZE=2][citation needed[/SIZE][SIZE=2]][/SIZE]
The Boston, Massachusetts; Norfolk, Virginia; and Charleston, South Carolina areas maintained strong commercial and cultural ties to England. Thus, the colonists and their descendants defined "social class" according to England's connotations. As the upper class English dialect changed, the dialects of the upper class Americans in these areas changed. Two examples are the "r-dropping" (or non-rhoticity) of the late 18th and early 19th century, resulting in the similar r-dropping found in Boston and parts of Virginia during the cultural "Old South," as well as the trap–bath split, which came to define these same two areas (and other areas of the South that imitated this phenomenon) but virtually no other region of the United States.
Given that there are over 2.8 million people in the area,[SIZE=2][4][/SIZE] it is difficult to account for all variants of the local accent, which have largely been supplanted by newer Southern features. The area is home to several large military bases such as Naval Station Norfolk, Little Creek Amphibious Base, Oceana Naval Station, and Dam Neck Naval Base. Since a significant portion of the area's inhabitants are actually natives of other areas, there is constant linguistic exposure to other dialects. This exposure could be a reason why the younger generations do not exhibit most of the traditional features. Phonology[edit]
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.The phonologies of early Southern English in the United States were diverse. The following pronunciation features were very generally characteristic of the older Southern region as a whole:
A list of typical older Southern vowels[5][show]English diaphonemeOld Southern phonemeExample words/aɪ/[aɪ~æɛ~aæ]bride, prize, tie[ai~aæ]bright, price, tyke/æ/[æ] (or [æɛæ~ɐɛɐ], often before /d/)cat, trap, yak[æɛæ~eə]hand, man, slam[æɛ~æe]bath, can't, pass/ɑː/[ɑ] or [æ]father, laager, palm/ɑr/[ɒː] (non-rhotic) or
[ɒɻ] (rhotic)ark, heart, start/ɒ/[ɑ]bother, lot, wasp/eɪ/[ɛɪ~ɛi] or
[eː~iː] (plantation possibility)face, rein, play/ɛ/[ɛ] (or [eiə], often before /d/)dress, egg, head/ɜr/[ɜɪ~əɪ] or
[ɜː] (non-rhotic before a consonant) or
[ɜɚ] (non-rhotic elsewhere, or rhotic)nurse, search, worm/iː/[iː~ɪi]fleece, me, neat/ɪ/[ɪ]kit, mid, pickhappy, money, sari/oʊ/[ɔu~ɒu] (after late 1800s) or
[oː~uː] (plantation possibility)goat, no, throw/ɔ/[ɔo]thought, vault, yawncloth, lost, off/ɔɪ/[ɔoɪ] or
[oɛ~oə] (plantation possibility)choice, joy, loin/ʌ/[ɜ] or
[ʌ] (plantation possibility)strut, tough, won
Lack of Yod-dropping: Pairs like do and due, or toon and tune, were often distinct in these dialects because words like due, lute, new, etc. historically contained a diphthong similar to /juː/ (like the you sound in cute or puny).[SIZE=2][6][/SIZE] (as England's RP standard pronunciation still does), but Labov et al. report that the only Southern speakers who make a distinction today use a diphthong /ɪu/ in such words.[SIZE=2][7][/SIZE] They further report that speakers with the distinction are found primarily in North Carolina and northwest South Carolina, and in a corridor extending from Jackson to Tallahassee. For most of the South, this feature began disappearing after World War II.[SIZE=2][8][/SIZE]
Yod-coalescence: Words like dew were pronounced as "Jew", and Tuesday as "choose day."
Wine–whine distinction: distinction between "w" and "wh" in words like "wine" and "whine", "witch and "which", etc.
Horse–hoarse distinction: distinction between pairs of words like "horse" and "hoarse", "for" and "four", etc.
Rhoticity and non-rhoticity: The pronunciation of the r sound only before or between vowels, but not after vowels, is known as "non-rhoticity" and was historically associated with the major plantation regions of the South: specifically, the entire Piedmont and most of the South's Atlantic Coast in a band going west towards the Mississippi River, as well as all of the Mississippi Embayment and some of the western Gulf Coastal Plain. This was presumably influenced by the non-rhotic East Anglia and London England pronunciation. Additionally, some older Southern dialects were even "variably non-rhotic in intra-word intervocalic contexts, as in carry [kʰæi]."[SIZE=2][9][/SIZE] Rhotic accents of the older Southern dialects, which fully pronounce all historical r sounds, were somewhat rarer and primarily spoken in Appalachia, the eastern Gulf Coastal Plain, and the areas west of the Mississippi Embayment.[SIZE=2][10][/SIZE]
Palatalization of /k/ and /g/ before /ɑr/: Especially in the older South along the Atlantic Coast, the consonants /k/ (as in key or coo) and /ɡ/ (as in guy or go), when before the sound /ɑːr/ (as in car or barn), were often pronounced with the tongue fronted towards the hard palate. Thus, for example, garden in older Southern was something like "gyah(r)den" [ˈgjɑː(ɹ)dən] and "cart" like "kyah(r)t" [cʰjɑː(ɹ)t]. This pronunciation feature was in decline by the late 1800s.[SIZE=2][8][/SIZE]
Lack or near-lack of /aɪ/ glide weakening: The gliding vowel in words like prize (but less commonly in price or other situations of this vowel appearing before a voiceless consonant) commonly has a "weakened" glide today in the South; however, this only became a documented feature since the last quarter of the 1800s and was otherwise absent or inconsistent in earlier Southern dialects. Today, the lack of glide weakening persists in the High Tider and updated Lowcountry accents. Full weakening has become a defining feature only of the modern Southern dialects, particularly the most advanced sub-varieties.[SIZE=2][11][/SIZE]
Mary–marry–merry distinction: Unlike most of the U.S. and modern Southern, older Southern did not merge the following three vowels before /r/: [e~eə] (as in Mary), [æ] (as in marry), and [ɛ] (as in merry). Although the three are now merging or merged in modern Southern English, the "marry" class of words remains the least likely among modern Southerners to merge with the other two.[SIZE=2][12][/SIZE]
Clear /l/ between front vowels: Unlike modern Southern and General American English's universally "dark" /l/ sound (often represented as [ɫ]), older Southern pronunciation had a "clear" (i.e. non-velarized) /l/ sound whenever /l/ appears between front vowels, as in the words silly, mealy, Nellie, etc.[SIZE=2][8][/SIZE]
Was, what and of pronounced with [ɑ]: The stressed word what, for example, rhymed with cot (not with cut, as it does elsewhere in the U.S.).[SIZE=2][13][/SIZE]
No happy-tensing: The final vowel of words like happy, silly, monkey, parties, etc. were not tensed as they are in newer Southern and other U.S. dialects, meaning that this vowel sounded more like the [ɪ] of fit than the of feet.
/oʊ/, as in goat, toe, robe, etc., kept a back starting place (unlike most Southern since World War II, but like most Northern U.S. dialects today); this became an opener [ɔu~ɒu] in the early 1900s.[SIZE=2][13][/SIZE] The modern fronted form of the Atlantic South started as far back as the 1800s in northeastern North Carolina, in the form [ɜy], but only spread slowly, until accelerating after World War II.[SIZE=2][14][/SIZE]
/ʃr/ pronounced as [sɹ] (e.g. causing shrimp, shrub, etc. to sound like srimp, srub, etc.); this feature was reported earliest in Virginia.[SIZE=2][15][/SIZE]
The Black Belt in dark purple approximates the Plantation Southern dialect region, excluding the Lowcountry (the Atlantic coast of South Carolina and Georgia).
Non-rhoticity: R-dropping historically occurred in the greater central sections of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, and in coastal Texas and some other coastal communities of the Gulf states. Rhoticity (or r-fulness) was more likely outside of the Black Belt proper, in the southernmost sections of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, as well as in northern Florida, western Louisiana, and eastern Texas.[SIZE=2][16][/SIZE]
Trap–bath split: Words like bath, dance, and ask, used a different vowel ([æ̈ɛ~æ̈e]) than words like trap, cat, and rag ([æ~æ̈ɛæ̈]).[SIZE=2][17][/SIZE] A similarly-organized (though different-sounding) split occurs in Standard British English.
Main article: Appalachian English Due to the former isolation of some regions of the Appalachian South, the Appalachian accent may be difficult for some outsiders to understand. This dialect is also rhotic, meaning speakers pronounce Rs wherever they appear in words, and sometimes when they do not (for example, "worsh" or "warsh" for "wash"). Because of the extensive length of the mountain chain, noticeable variation also exists within this subdialect. The Southern Appalachian dialect can be heard, as its name implies, in north Georgia, north Alabama, east Tennessee, northwestern South Carolina, western North Carolina, eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia, western Maryland, and West Virginia. Southern Appalachian speech patterns, however, are not entirely confined to the mountain regions previously listed. Almost always, the common thread in the areas of the South where a rhotic version of the dialect is heard is a traceable line of descent from Scots or Scots-Irish ancestors amongst its speakers. The dialect is also not devoid of early influence from Welsh settlers, the dialect retaining the Welsh English tendency to pronounce words beginning with the letter "h" as though the "h" were silent; for instance "humble" often is rendered "umble". Researchers have noted that the dialect retains a lot of vocabulary with roots in Scottish "Elizabethan English" owing to the make-up of the early European settlers to the area.[SIZE=2][22][/SIZE] Charleston[edit]
The Lowcountry, most famously centering on the cities of Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, once constituted its own entirely unique English dialect region. Traditionally often recognized as a Charleston accent, it included these additional features, most of which no longer exist today:[SIZE=2][23][/SIZE]
The "Down East" Outer Banks coastal region of Carteret County, North Carolina, and adjacent Pamlico Sound, including Ocracoke and Harkers Island, are known for additional features, some of which are still spoken today by generations-long residents of its unincorporated coastal and island communities, which have largely been geographically and economically isolated from the rest of North Carolina and the South since their first settlement by English-speaking Europeans. The same is true for the very similar dialect area of the Delmarva (Delaware–Maryland–Virginia) Peninsula and neighboring islands in the Chesapeake Bay, such as Tangier and Smith Island. These two regions historically share many common pronunciation features, sometimes collectively called a High Tider (or "Hoi Toider") accent, including:
Rhoticity (or r-fulness, like in most U.S. English, but unlike in most other older Atlantic Southern dialects)
/aɪ/, such as the vowel in the words high tide, retaining its glide and being pronounced beginning further back in the mouth, as [ɑe] or even rounded [ɒe~ɐɒe], often stereotyped as sounding like "hoi toid," giving Pamlico Sound's residents the name "High Tiders."[SIZE=2][30][/SIZE]
/æ/ is raised to [ɛ] (so cattle sounds like kettle); /ɛ/ is raised to [e~ɪ] (so that mess sounds like miss); and, most prominently, /ɪ/ is raised to (so fish sounds like feesh).[SIZE=2][31][/SIZE] This mirrors the second and third stages of the Southern Vowel Shift (see under "Newer phonology"), despite this particular accent never participating in the very first stage of the shift.
/ɔː/ pronounced as [ɔ~o], similar to modern Australian or London English.
/aʊ/, as in loud, town, scrounge, etc., pronounced with a fronted glide as [aɵ~aø~aε].[SIZE=2][24][/SIZE] Before a voiceless consonant, this same phoneme is [ɜʉ~ɜy].[SIZE=2][25][/SIZE]
The major central (Piedmont) and eastern (Tidewater) regions of Virginia, excluding Virginia's Eastern Shore, once spoke in a way long associated with the upper or aristocraticplantation class in the Old South, often known as a Tidewater accent. Additional phonological features of this Atlantic Southern variety included:
Non-rhoticity (or r-dropping).
Trap–bath split: pronunciation of the bath set of words as [æ̈ɛ~æ̈e], different from the trap set of words as [æ~æ̈ɛæ̈].[SIZE=2][17][/SIZE]
Southern Louisiana, as well as some of southeast Texas (Houston to Beaumont), and coastal Mississippi, feature a number of dialects influenced by other languages beyond English. Most of southern Louisiana constitutes Acadiana, dominated for hundreds of years by monolingual speakers of Cajun French,[SIZE=2][32][/SIZE] which combines elements of Acadian French with other French and Spanish words. This French dialect is spoken by many of the older members of the Cajun ethnic group and is said to be dying out. A related language called Louisiana Creole also exists. The older English of Southern Louisiana did not participate in certain general older Southern English phenomena, for example lacking the Plantation South's trap–bath split and the fronting of /aʊ/.[SIZE=2][33][/SIZE] New Orleans English was likely developing in the early 1900s, in large part due to dialect influence from New York City immigrants in New Orleans. Grammar and vocabulary[edit]
Zero copula in third person plural and second person. This is historically a consequence of R-dropping, with e.g. you're merging with you. You [Ø] taller than Louise.They [Ø] gonna leave today (Cukor-Avila, 2003).
Use of the circumfix a- . . . -in' in progressive tenses. He was a-hootin' and a-hollerin'.The wind was a-howlin'.
The use of like to to mean nearly; liked to merging into like to I like to had a heart attack. (I nearly had a heart attack)
The use of the simple past infinitive vs present perfect infinitive. I like to had. vs I like to have had.We were supposed to went. vs We were supposed to have gone.
Use of "yonder" as a locative in addition to its more widely attested use as an adjective. They done gathered a mess of raspberries in them woods down yonder.
A project devised by Old Dominion University Assistant Professor Dr. Bridget Anderson entitled Tidewater Voices: Conversations in Southeastern Virginia was initiated in late 2008.[SIZE=2][34][/SIZE] In collecting oral histories from natives of the area, this study offers insight to not only specific history of the region, but also to linguistic phonetic variants native to the area as well. This linguistic survey is the first of its kind in nearly forty years.[SIZE=2][35][/SIZE] The two variants being analyzed the most closely in this study are the /aʊ/ diphthong as in house or brown and post-vocalic r-lessness as in /ˈfɑːðə/ for /ˈfɑːðər/. References[edit]
I don't know anyone under the age of 50 who has that old Tidewater accent. Some younger Tidewater natives have a bit of southern accent..
example, a really old native might live in "Naw-f**k" but most younger natives would call it "Nor-fick" the non-rhoticity is all but gone..
Yeah, this is a good summation of the fault line.. where the old Tidewater accent started to fade out. And the pronunciation of Norfolk is a perfect gauge; when u hear Naw ***, that's native, old school Tidewater. Seems like Tidewaterians born after the 6os have converted to NoR ***.. & have generally (but not completely) lost a native Southern accent.
I think it's a shame when a unique, provincial accent dies off. I wonder what the cause was in this case (?) Just exposure to growing mass media overwhelming a homegrown accent (?), or influx of transplanted military overwhelming the teaching & usage of local Southern accent.. thoughts ?
I gotta believe it is the influx of all the transplants from Ohio, New York, and the military. I bet if you go to some areas that are still mostly local and ol school people that lived there in generations for close to 100 years, you will hear the old Southern accent. Hickory, Southern Chesapeake, Colonial Place, Norfolk, Pockets of Va. Beach?
^That's gotta be part of the issue, but really, this is a national trend. Find a millennial native Philadelphian who says "wooder" and "Iggles" or a millennial in Massachusetts who thinks kids at Hahvad are wicked smaht. They're out there, but increasingly hard to find.
I gotta believe it is the influx of all the transplants from Ohio, New York, and the military. I bet if you go to some areas that are still mostly local and ol school people that lived there in generations for close to 100 years, you will hear the old Southern accent. Hickory, Southern Chesapeake, Colonial Place, Norfolk, Pockets of Va. Beach?
I loved reading this thread. I agree that you can find it if you look for it. I grew up in Portsmouth or Porch-muth as the older folks called it. I still hear this accent with my family there. I live in Georgia now, but I went to a dinner gathering of several of my father's friends and it was like a time warp. Nearly everyone there (60s and 70s age) was a native of Portsmouth and they all had that Tidewater accent. Because I am not around that accent anymore, it was very noticeable. Portsmouth in many ways (probably due to its small size and outside perceptions) has been more isolated from the more transient ways of much of Hampton Roads. I go back to the area now and I barely recognize Norfolk and the Beach, but Portsmouth is very much the same place which is probably not good for economics and progress, but the Tidewater accent is alive because of it.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
