Southern American English or Southern U.S. English is a regional dialect^[1][2] or collection of dialects of American English spoken throughout the Southern United States, though concentrated increasingly in more rural areas, and spoken primarily by White Southerners.^[3] In terms of accent, its most innovative forms include southern varieties of Appalachian English and certain varieties of Texan English.^[4] Popularly known in the United States as a Southern accent or simply Southern,^[5][6][7] Southern American English now comprises the largest American regional accent group by number of speakers.^[8] Formal, much more recent terms within American linguistics include Southern White Vernacular English and Rural White Southern English.^[9][10]

Speech example

An example of a Texas-raised male with a rhotic accent (George W. Bush).

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Speech example

An example of an Arkansan male with a rhotic accent (Bill Clinton).

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Speech example

An example of a Georgian male with a non-rhotic accent (Jimmy Carter).

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History

A diversity of earlier Southern dialects once existed: a consequence of the mix of English speakers from the British Isles (including largely English and Scots-Irish immigrants) who migrated to the American South in the 17th and 18th centuries, with particular 19th-century elements also borrowed from the London upper class and enslaved African-Americans. By the 19th century, this included distinct dialects in eastern Virginia, the greater Lowcountry area surrounding Charleston, the Appalachian upcountry region, the Black Belt plantation region, and secluded Atlantic coastal and island communities.

Following the American Civil War, as the South's economy and migration patterns fundamentally transformed, so did Southern dialect trends.^[11] Over the next few decades, Southerners moved increasingly to Appalachian mill towns, to Texan farms, or out of the South entirely.^[11] The main result, further intensified by later upheavals such as the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and perhaps World War II, is that a newer and more unified form of Southern American English consolidated, beginning around the last quarter of the 19th century, radiating outward from Texas and Appalachia through all the traditional Southern States until around World War II.^[12][13] This newer Southern dialect largely superseded the older and more diverse local Southern dialects, though it became quickly stigmatized in American popular culture. As a result, since around 1950, the notable features of this newer Southern accent have been in a gradual decline, particularly among younger and more urban Southerners, though less so among rural white Southerners.

Geography

Despite the slow decline of the modern Southern accent,^[16] it is still documented as widespread as of the 2006 Atlas of North American English. Specifically, the Atlas definitively documents a Southern accent in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina (though not in Charleston), Georgia (though not consistently in Atlanta), Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana (where it co-occurs with Cajun and New Orleans accents), southern West Virginia, the Springfield area of southern Missouri, the Jacksonville area of northern Florida, and much of Texas.^[17] Other 21st-century scholarship further includes southern and eastern Oklahoma, southern Maryland, central West Virginia, other parts of southern Missouri and northern Florida,^[18] and southeastern New Mexico.^[19] The Atlas documents a South Midland accent as sharing key features with the Southern accent, though to a weaker extent; these features extend across all of Texas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia as well as throughout eastern and central Kansas, southern Missouri, southern Indiana, southern Ohio, and possibly southern Illinois.^[20][18] African-American accents across the United States have many common points with Southern accents due to the strong historical ties of African Americans to the South.

Social perceptions

In the United States, there is a general negative stigma surrounding the Southern dialect. Non–Southern Americans tend to associate a Southern accent with lower social and economic status, cognitive and verbal slowness, lack of education, ignorance, bigotry, or religious or political conservatism,^[21] using common labels like "hick", "hillbilly",^[22] or "redneck accent".^[23] Meanwhile, Southerners themselves tend to have mixed judgments of their accent, some similarly negative but others positively associating it with a laid-back, plain, or humble attitude.^[24] The accent is also associated nationwide with the military, NASCAR, and country music. Furthermore, non–Southern American country singers typically imitate a Southern accent in their music.^[23] The sum of negative associations nationwide, however, is the main presumable cause of a gradual decline of Southern accent features, since the middle of the 20th century onwards, particularly among younger and more urban residents of the South.^[16]

Modern phonology

Most of the Southern United States underwent several major sound changes from the beginning to the middle of the 20th century, during which a more unified, region-wide sound system developed, markedly different from the sound systems of the 19th-century Southern dialects.

The South as a present-day dialect region generally includes all of the pronunciation features below, which are popularly recognized in the United States as making up a "Southern accent". The following phonological phenomena focus on the developing sound system of the 20th-century Southern dialects of the United States that altogether largely (though certainly not entirely) superseded the older Southern regional patterns. However, there is still variation in Southern speech regarding potential differences based on factors like a speaker's exact sub-region, age, ethnicity, etc.

• Southern Vowel Shift (or Southern Shift): A chain shift regarding vowels is fully completed, or occurring, in most Southern dialects, especially 20th-century ones, and at the most advanced stage in the "Inland South" (i.e. away from the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts) as well as much of central and northern Texas. This 3-stage chain movement of vowels is first triggered by Stage 1 which dominates the entire Southern region, followed by Stage 2 which covers almost all of that area, and Stage 3 which is concentrated only in speakers of the two aforementioned core sub-regions. Stage 1 (defined below) may have begun in a minority of Southern accents as early as the first half of the 19th century with a glide weakening of /aɪ/ to [aɛ] or [aə]; however, it was still largely incomplete or absent in the mid-19th century, before expanding rapidly from the last quarter of the 19th into the middle of the 20th century;^[27] today, this glide weakening or even total glide deletion is the pronunciation norm throughout all of the Southern States.
  • Stage 1 (/aɪ/ → [aː]):
    • The starting point, or first stage, of the Southern Shift, is the transition of the diphthong /aɪ/ (listen^ⓘ) toward a "glideless" long vowel [aː] (listen^ⓘ), so that, for example, the word ride commonly approaches a sound that most other American English speakers would hear as rod or rad. Stage 1 is now complete for a majority of Southern dialects.^[28] Southern speakers particularly exhibit the Stage 1 shift at the ends of words and before voiced consonants, but not as commonly before voiceless consonants, where the diphthong instead may retain its glide, so that ride is [ɹaːd], but right is [ɹaɪt]. Inland (i.e. non-coastal) Southern speakers, however, indeed delete the glide of /aɪ/ in all contexts, as in the stereotyped pronunciation "nahs whaht rahss" for nice white rice; these most shift-advanced speakers are largely found today in an Appalachian area that comprises eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and northern Alabama, as well as in central Texas.^[29] Certain traditional East Coast Southern accents do not exhibit this Stage 1 glide deletion,^[30] particularly in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia (cities that are, at best, considered marginal to the modern Southern dialect region).
    • Somewhere in "the early stages of the Southern Shift",^[31] /æ/ (as in trap or bad) moves generally higher and fronter in the mouth (often also giving it a complex gliding quality, starting higher and then gliding lower); thus /æ/ can range variously away from its original position, with variants such as [æ(j)ə̯],^[31] [æɛ̯æ̯], [ɛ(j)ə̯], and possibly even [ɛ] for those born between the World Wars.^[32] An example is that, to other English speakers, the Southern pronunciation of yap sounds something like yeah-up. See "Southern vowel breaking" below for more information.
  • Stage 2 (/eɪ/ → [ɛɪ] and /ɛ/ → [e(j)ə]):
    • By removing the existence of [aɪ], Stage 1 leaves open a lower space for /eɪ/ (as in name and day) to occupy, causing Stage 2: the dragging of the diphthong /eɪ/ into a lower starting position, towards [ɛɪ] ^ⓘ or to a sound even lower or more retracted, or both.
    • At the same time, the pushing of /æ/ into the vicinity of /ɛ/ (as in red or belt), forces /ɛ/ itself into a higher and fronter position, occupying the [e] area (previously the vicinity of /eɪ/). /ɛ/ also often acquires an in-glide: thus, [e(j)ə]. An example is that, to other English speakers, the Southern pronunciation of yep sounds something like yay-up. Stage 2 is most common in heavily stressed syllables. Southern accents originating from cities that formerly had the greatest influence and wealth in the South (Richmond, Virginia; Charleston, South Carolina; Atlanta, Macon, and Savannah, Georgia; and all of Florida) do not traditionally participate in Stage 2.^[33]
  • Stage 3 (/i/ → [ɪi] and /ɪ/ → [iə]): By the same pushing and pulling domino effects described above, /ɪ/ (as in hit or lick) and /i/ (as in beam or meet) follow suit by both possibly becoming diphthongs whose nuclei switch positions. /ɪ/ may be pushed into a diphthong with a raised beginning, [iə], while /i/ may be pulled into a diphthong with a lowered beginning, [ɪi]. An example is that, to other English speakers, the Southern pronunciation of fin sounds something like fee-in, while meet sounds something like mih-eet. Like the other stages of the Southern shift, Stage 3 is most common in heavily stressed syllables and particularly among Inland Southern speakers.^[33]
  • Southern vowel breaking ("Southern drawl"): All three stages of the Southern Shift appear related to the short front pure vowels being "broken" into gliding vowels, making one-syllable words like pet and pit sound as if they might have two syllables (as something like pay-it and pee-it). This short front vowel gliding phenomenon is popularly recognized as the "Southern drawl". The "short a", "short e", and "short i" vowels are all affected, developing a glide up from their original starting position to [j], and then often back down to a schwa vowel: /æ/ → [æjə~ɛjə]; /ɛ/ → [ɛjə~ejə]; and /ɪ/ → [ɪjə~ijə], respectively. Appearing mostly after the mid-19th century, this phenomenon is on the decline, being most typical of Southern speakers born before 1960.^[32]
• Unstressed, word-final /ŋ/ → [n]: The phoneme /ŋ/ in an unstressed syllable at the end of a word fronts to [n], so that singing /ˈsɪŋɪŋ/ is sometimes written phonetically as singin [ˈsɪŋɪn].^[34] This is common in vernacular English dialects around the world.
• Lacking or transitioning cot–caught merger: The historical distinction between the two vowels sounds /ɔ/ and /ɑ/, in words like caught and cot or stalk and stock is mainly preserved,^[35] though the exact articulation is distinct from most other English dialects. In much of the South during the 20th century, there was a trend to lower the vowel found in words like stalk and caught, often with an upglide, so that the most common result is roughly the gliding vowel [ɑɒ]. However, the cot–caught merger is becoming increasingly common throughout the United States, affecting Southeastern and even some Southern dialects, towards a merged vowel [ɑ].^[36] In the South, this merger, or a transition towards this merger, is especially documented in central, northern, and (particularly) western Texas.^[37]

• Pin-pen merger: the vowel phonemes /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ now merge before nasal consonants, so that pen and pin, for instance, or hem and him, are pronounced the same, as pin or him, respectively.^[35] The merger, which is roughly towards the sound [ɪ], is still unreported among some vestigial varieties of the older South, and other geographically Southern U.S. varieties that have eluded the Southern Vowel Shift, such as the Yat dialect of New Orleans or the anomalous dialect of Savannah, Georgia.
• Rhoticity: The "dropping" of the r sound after vowels was historically widespread in the South, particularly in former plantation areas. This phenomenon, non-rhoticity, was considered prestigious before World War II, after which the social perception in the South reversed. Now, full rhoticity (sometimes called r-fulness), in which most or all r sounds are pronounced, is dominant throughout most of the South, and even "hyper-rhoticity" (articulation of a very distinctive /r/ sound),^[38] particularly among younger and female white Southerners. The sound quality of the Southern r is the "bunch-tongued r", produced by strongly constricting the root or the midsection of the tongue, or both.^[39] The only major exceptions are among African-American Southern English speakers and among some south Louisiana and Cajun speakers, who are variably non-rhotic.^[40]
• Pronunciation of ⟨wh⟩: Most of the U.S. has completed the wine–whine merger, but, in many Southern accents, particularly inland Southern accents, the phonemes /w/ and /hw/ remain distinct, so that pairs of words like wail and whale or wield and wheeled are not homophones.^[41]
• Lax and tense vowels often neutralize before /l/, making pairs like feel/fill and fail/fell homophones for speakers in some areas of the South. Some speakers may distinguish between the two sets of words by reversing the normal vowel sound, e.g., feel in Southern may sound like fill, and vice versa.^[42]
• The back vowel /u/ (in goose or true) is fronted in the mouth to the vicinity of [ʉ] or even farther forward, which is then followed by a slight gliding quality; different gliding qualities have been reported, including both backward and (especially in the eastern half of the South) forward glides.^[43]
• The back vowel /oʊ/ (in goat or toe) is fronted to the vicinity of [əʊ~əʉ], and perhaps even as far forward as [ɛʊ].^[44]
• Back Upglide (Chain) Shift: /aʊ/ shifts forward and upward to [æʊ] (also possibly realized, variously, as [æjə~æo~ɛɔ~eo]); thus allowing the back vowel /ɔ/ to fill an area similar to the former position of /aʊ/ in the mouth, becoming lowered and developing an upglide [ɑɒ]; this, in turn, allows (though only for the most advanced Southern speakers) the upgliding /ɔɪ/, before /l/, to lose its glide [ɔ] (for instance, causing the word boils to sound something like the British or New York City pronunciations of balls^ⓘ).^[45]
• The vowel /ʌ/, as in bug, luck, strut, etc., is realized as [ɜ], occasionally fronted to [ɛ̈] or raised in the mouth to [ə].^[46]
• /z/ becomes [d] before /n/, for example [ˈwʌdn̩t] wasn't, [ˈbɪdnɪs] business,^[47] but hasn't may keep the [z] to avoid merging with hadn't.
• Many nouns are stressed on the first syllable that is stressed on the second syllable in most other American accents,^[32] such as police, cement, Detroit, Thanksgiving, insurance, behind, display, hotel, motel, recycle, TV, guitar, July, and umbrella. Today, younger Southerners tend to keep this initial stress only for a more reduced set of words, perhaps including only insurance, defense, Thanksgiving, and umbrella.^[48][49]
• Phonemic incidence is sometimes unique in the South, so that:^[49]
  • Florida is typically pronounced /ˈflɑrɪdə/ (particularly along the East Coast) rather than General American /ˈflɔrɪdə/, and lawyer is /ˈlɔ.jər/ rather than General American /ˈlɔɪ.ər/ (i.e., the first syllable of lawyer sounds like law, not loy).
  • The suffixed, unstressed -day in words like Monday and Sunday is commonly /di/.
• Lacking or incomplete happy tensing: unstressed, word-final /ɪ/ (the second vowel sound in words like happy, money, Chelsea, etc.) may continue to be lax, unlike the tensed (higher and fronter) vowel [i] typical throughout rest of the United States. The South maintains a sound not always tensed: [ɪ] or [ɪ~i].^[50]
• Certain words ending in unstressed /oʊ/ (especially with the spelling ⟨ow⟩) may be pronounced as [ə] or [ʊ],^[51] making yellow sound like yella or tomorrow like tomorra.
• Variable horse–hoarse merger: the merger of the phonemes /ɔr/ (as in morning) and /oʊr/ (as in mourning) is common, as in most English dialects, though a distinction is still preserved especially in Southern accents along the Gulf Coast, plus scatterings elsewhere;^[52] thus, morning [ˈmɒɹnɪn] versus mourning [ˈmouɹnɪn].

Inland South and Texas

William Labov et al. identify the "Inland South" as a large linguistic sub-region of the South located mostly in southern Appalachia (specifically naming the cities of Greenville, South Carolina, Asheville, North Carolina, Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Birmingham and Linden, Alabama), inland from both the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts, and the originating region of the Southern Vowel Shift. The Inland South, along with the "Texas South" (an urban core of central Texas: Dallas, Lubbock, Odessa, and San Antonio)^[4] are considered the two major locations in which the Southern regional sound system is the most highly developed, and therefore the core areas of the current-day South as a dialect region.^[53]

The accents of Texas are diverse, for example with important Spanish influences on its vocabulary;^[54] however, much of the state is still an unambiguous region of modern rhotic Southern speech, strongest in the cities of Dallas, Lubbock, Odessa, and San Antonio,^[4] which all firmly demonstrate the first stage of the Southern Shift, if not also further stages of the shift.^[55] Texan cities that are noticeably "non-Southern" dialectally are Abilene and Austin; only marginally Southern are Houston, El Paso, and Corpus Christi.^[4] In western and northern Texas, the cot–caught merger is very close to completed.^[45]

Distinct phonologies

Some sub-regions of the South, and perhaps even a majority of the biggest cities, are showing a gradual shift away from the Southern accent (toward a more Midland or General American accent) since the second half of the 20th century to the present. Such well-studied cities include Houston, Texas, and Raleigh, North Carolina; in Raleigh, for example, this retreat from the accent appears to have begun around 1950.^[16] Other sub-regions are unique in that their inhabitants have never spoken with the Southern regional accent, instead having their distinct accents.

Atlanta, Charleston, and Savannah

The Atlas of North American English identified Atlanta, Georgia, as a dialectal "island of non-Southern speech",^[56] Charleston, South Carolina, likewise as "not markedly Southern in character", and the traditional local accent of Savannah, Georgia, as "giving way to regional [Midland] patterns",^[57] despite these being three prominent Southern cities. The dialect features of Atlanta are best described today as sporadic from speaker to speaker, with such variation increased due to a huge movement of non-Southerners into the area during the 1990s.^[58] Modern-day Charleston speakers have leveled in the direction of a more generalized Midland accent (and speakers in other Southern cities too like Greenville, Richmond, and Norfolk),^[59] away from the city's now-defunct, traditional Charleston accent, whose features were "diametrically opposed to the Southern Shift... and differ in many other respects from the main body of Southern dialects".^[60] The Savannah accent is also becoming more Midland-like. The following vowel sounds of Atlanta, Charleston, and Savannah have been unaffected by typical Southern phenomena like the Southern drawl and Southern Vowel Shift:^[58]

• /æ/ as in bad (the "default" General American nasal short-a system is in use, in which /æ/ is tensed only before /n/ or /m/).^[61]
• /aɪ/ as in bide (however, some Atlanta and Savannah speakers do variably show Southern /aɪ/ glide weakening).
• /eɪ/ as in bait.
• /ɛ/ as in bed.
• /ɪ/ as in bid.
• /i/ as in bead.
• /ɔ/ as in bought (which is lowered, as in most of the U.S., and approaches [ɒ~ɑ]; the cot–caught merger is mostly at a transitional stage in these cities).

Today, the accents of Atlanta, Charleston, and Savannah are most similar to Midland regional accents or at least Southeastern super-regional accents.^[58][62] In all three cities, some speakers (though most consistently documented in Charleston and least consistently in Savannah) demonstrate the Southeastern fronting of /oʊ/ and the status of the pin–pen merger is highly variable.^[62] Non-rhoticity (r-dropping) is now rare in these cities, yet still documented in some speakers.^[63]

Cajun English

Most of southern Louisiana constitutes Acadiana, a cultural region dominated for hundreds of years by monolingual speakers of Cajun French,^[64] which combines elements of Acadian French with other French and Spanish words. Today, this French dialect is spoken by many older Cajun ethnic group members and is said to be dying out. A related language, Louisiana Creole French, also exists. Since the early 1900s, Cajuns additionally began to develop their vernacular dialect of English, which retains some influences and words from French, such as "cher" (dear) or "nonc" (uncle). This dialect fell out of fashion after World War II but experienced a renewal among primarily male speakers born since the 1970s, who have been the most attracted by, and the biggest attractors of, a successful Cajun cultural renaissance.^[64] The accent includes:^[65]

• variable non-rhoticity (or r-dropping)
• high nasalization (including in vowels before nasal consonants)
• deletion of any word's final consonant(s) (hand becomes [hæ̃], food becomes [fu], rent becomes [ɹɪ̃], New York becomes [nuˈjɔə], etc.)
• a potential for glide weakening in all gliding vowels; for example, /oʊ/ (as in Joe), /eɪ/ (as in Jay), and /ɔɪ/ (as in Joy) have glides ([oː], [eː], and [ɔː], respectively)
• the cot–caught merger toward [ɑ̈]

New Orleans

A separate historical English dialect from the above Cajun one, spoken only by those raised in the Greater New Orleans area, is traditionally non-rhotic and noticeably shares more pronunciation commonalities with a New York accent than with other Southern accents, due to commercial ties and cultural migration between the two cities. Since at least the 1980s, this local New Orleans dialect has popularly been called "Yat", from the common local greeting "Where you at?". Some features that the New York accent shares with the Yat accent include:^[58]

• non-rhoticity, a short-a split system (so that bad and back, for example, have different vowels)
• /ɔ/ as high gliding [ɔə̯]
• /ɑr/ as rounded [ɒ~ɔ]
• the coil–curl merger (traditionally, though now in decline).
• Canadian raising of both /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ (mainly among younger speakers)^[66]

Yat also lacks the typical vowel changes of the Southern Shift and the pin–pen merger that is commonly heard elsewhere throughout the South. Yat is associated with the working and lower-middle classes, and a spectrum of speech patterns with fewer notable Yat features is often heard among those of higher socioeconomic status; such New Orleans affluence is associated with the New Orleans Uptown and the Garden District, whose speech patterns are sometimes considered distinct from the lower-class Yat dialect.^[67]

Older phonologies

Before becoming a phonologically unified dialect region, the South was once home to an array of much more diverse accents at the local level. Features of the deeper interior Appalachian South largely became the basis for the newer Southern regional dialect; thus, older Southern American English primarily refers to the English spoken outside of Appalachia: the coastal and former plantation areas of the South, best documented before the Civil War, on the decline during the early 1900s, and non-existent in speakers born since the civil rights movement.^[68]

Little unified these older Southern dialects since they never formed a single homogeneous dialect region to begin with. Some older Southern accents were rhotic (most strongly in Appalachia and west of the Mississippi), while the majority were non-rhotic (most strongly in plantation areas); however, wide variation existed. Some older Southern accents showed (or approximated) Stage 1 of the Southern Vowel Shift—namely, the glide weakening of /aɪ/—however, it is virtually unreported before the very late 1800s.^[69] In general, the older Southern dialects lacked the Mary–marry–merry, cot–caught, horse–hoarse, wine–whine, full–fool, fill–feel, and do–dew mergers, all of which are now common to, or encroaching on, all varieties of present-day Southern American English. Older Southern sound systems included those local to the:^[10]

• Plantation South (excluding the Lowcountry): phonologically characterized by /aɪ/ glide weakening, non-rhoticity (for some accents, including a coil–curl merger), and the Southern trap–bath split (a version of the trap–bath split unique to older Southern U.S. speech that causes words like lass [læs~læɛ̯æ̯s] not to rhyme with words like pass [pæe̯s]).
  • Eastern and central Virginia (often identified as the "Tidewater accent"): further characterized by Canadian raising and some vestigial resistance to the vein–vain merger.
• Lowcountry (of South Carolina and Georgia; often identified as the traditional "Charleston accent"): characterized by no /aɪ/ glide weakening, non-rhoticity (including the coil-curl merger), the Southern trap–bath split, Canadian raising, the cheer–chair merger, /eɪ/ pronounced as [e(ə̯)], and /oʊ/ pronounced as [o(ə̯)].
• Outer Banks and Chesapeake Bay (often identified as the "Hoi Toider accent"): characterized by no /aɪ/ glide weakening (with the on-glide strongly backed, unlike any other U.S. dialect), the card–cord merger, /aʊ/ pronounced as [aʊ̯~äɪ̯], and up-gliding of pure vowels especially before /ʃ/ (making fish sound almost like feesh and ash like aysh). It is the only dialect of the older South still extant on the East Coast, due to being passed on through generations of geographically isolated islanders.
• Appalachian and Ozark Mountains: characterized by strong rhoticity and a tor–tore–tour merger (which still exists in that region), the Southern trap–bath split, plus the original and most advanced instances of the Southern Vowel Shift now defining the whole South.

Grammar

These grammatical features are characteristic of both older and newer Southern American English.

• Use of done as an auxiliary verb between the subject and verb in sentences conveying the past tense.

  I done told you before.

• Use of done (instead of did) as the past simple form of do, and similar uses of the past participle in place of the past simple, such as seen replacing saw as past simple form of see.

  I only done what you done told me.

  I seen her first.

• Use of other non-standard preterites, Such as drownded as the past tense of drown, knowed as the past tense of know, choosed as the past tense of choose, degradated as the past tense of degrade.

  I knowed you for a fool soon as I seen you.

• Use of been instead of have been in perfect constructions.

  I been livin' here darn near my whole life.

• Use of (a-) fixin' to, with several spelling variants such as fixing to or fixinta,^[70] to indicate immediate future action; in other words: intending to, preparing to, or about to.

  He's fixin' to eat.

  They're fixing to go for a hike.

It is not clear where the term comes from and when it was first used. According to dialect dictionaries, fixin' to is associated with Southern speech, most often defined as being a synonym of preparing to or intending to.^[71] Some linguists, e.g. Marvin K. Ching, regard it as being a quasimodal rather than a verb followed by an infinitive.^[72] It is a term used by all social groups, although more frequently by people with a lower social status than by members of the educated upper classes. Furthermore, it is more common in the speech of younger people than in that of older people.^[71] Like much of the Southern dialect, the term is also more prevalent in rural areas than in urban areas.

• Preservation of older English me, him, etc. as reflexive datives.

  I'm fixin' to paint me a picture.

  He's gonna catch him a big one.

• Saying this here in place of this or this one, and that there in place of that or that one.

  This here's mine and that there is yours.

• Existential it, a feature dating from Middle English which can be explained as by substituting it for there when there refers to no physical location, but only to the existence of something.

  It's one lady who lives in town.

  It is nothing more to say.

Standard English would prefer "existential there", as in "There's one lady who lives in town". This construction is used to say that something exists (rather than saying where it is located).^[73] The construction can be found in Middle English as in Marlowe's Edward II: "Cousin, it is no dealing with him now".^[73]

• Use of ever in place of every.

  Ever'where's the same these days.

• Using liketa (sometimes spelled as liked to or like to^[74]) to mean "almost".

  I liketa died.^[75]

  He liketa got hit by a car.

Liketa is presumably a conjunction of "like to" or "like to have" coming from Appalachian English. It is most often seen as a synonym for almost. Accordingly, the phrase I like't'a died would be I almost died in Standard English. With this meaning, liketa can be seen as a verb modifier for actions that are on the verge of happening.^[76] Furthermore, it is more often used in an exaggerated or violent figurative sense rather than a literal sense.^[74]

• Use of the distal demonstrative "yonder," archaic in most dialects of English, to indicate a third, larger degree of distance beyond both "here" and "there" (thus relegating "there" to a medial demonstrative as in some other languages), indicating that something is a longer way away, and to a lesser extent, in a wide or loosely defined expanse, as in the church hymn "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder". A typical example is the use of "over yonder" in place of "over there" or "in or at that indicated place", especially to refer to a particularly different spot, such as in "the house over yonder".^[77]
• Compared to General American English, when contracting a negated auxiliary verb, Southern American English has an increased preference for contracting the subject and the auxiliary than the auxiliary and "not", e.g. the first of the following pairs:

  He's not here. / He isn't here.

  I've not been there. / I haven't been there.^[78]

Multiple modals

Standard English has a strict word order. In the case of modal auxiliaries, standard English is restricted to a single modal per verb phrase. However, some Southern speakers use double or more modals in a row (might could, might should, might would, used to could, etc.--also called "modal stacking") and sometimes even triple modals that involve oughta (like might should oughta)

• I might could climb to the top.
• I used to could do that.

The origin of multiple modals is controversial; some say it is a development of Modern English, while others trace them back to Middle English and others to Scots-Irish settlers.^[71] There are different opinions on which class preferably uses the term. Atwood (1953) for example, finds that educated people try to avoid multiple modals, whereas Montgomery (1998) suggests the opposite. In some Southern regions, multiple modals are quite widespread and not particularly stigmatized.^[79] Possible multiple modals are:^[80]

As the table shows, there are only possible combinations of an epistemic modal followed by deontic modals in multiple modal constructions. Deontic modals express permissibility with a range from obligated to forbidden and are mostly used as markers of politeness in requests whereas epistemic modals refer to probabilities from certain to impossible.^[71] Multiple modals combine these two modalities.

Conditional syntax and evidentiality

People from the South often make use of conditional or evidential syntaxes as shown below (italicized in the examples):^[81]

Conditional syntax in requests:

I guess you could step out and git some toothpicks and a carton of Camel cigarettes if you a mind to.

If you be good enough to take it, I believe I could stand me a taste.^[81]

Conditional syntax in suggestions:

I wouldn't look for 'em to show up if I was you.

I'd think that whiskey would be a trifle hot.

Conditional syntax creates a distance between the speaker's claim and the hearer. It serves to soften obligations or suggestions, make criticisms less personal, and to overall express politeness, respect, or courtesy.^[81]

Southerners also often use "evidential" predicates such as think, reckon, believe, guess, have the feeling, etc.:

You already said that once, I believe.

I wouldn't want to guess, but I have the feeling we'll know soon enough.

You reckon we oughta get help?

I don't believe I've ever known one.

Evidential predicates indicate an uncertainty of the knowledge asserted in the sentence. According to Johnston (2003), evidential predicates nearly always hedge the assertions and allow the respondents to hedge theirs. They protect speakers from the social embarrassment that appears, in case the assertion turns out to be wrong. As is the case with conditional syntax, evidential predicates can also be used to soften criticisms and to afford courtesy or respect.^[81]

Vocabulary

In the United States, the following vocabulary is mostly unique to, or best associated with, Southern U.S. English:^[49]

• Ain't to mean am not, is not, are not, have not, has not, etc.^[82]
• Bless your heart to express sympathy or concern to the addressee; often, now used sarcastically^[83]
• Buggy to mean shopping cart^[84]
• Carry to additionally mean escort or accompany^[85]
• Catty-corner to mean located or placed diagonally
• Chill bumps as a synonym for goose bumps
• Coke to mean any sweet, carbonated soft drink
• Crawfish to mean crayfish
• Cut on/off/out to mean turn on/off/out^[86]
• Devil's beating his wife to describe the weather phenomenon of a sunshower
• Fixin' to to mean about to
• Icing (preferred over frosting in the confectionary sense)
• Liketa to mean almost or nearly (in Alabama and Appalachian English)^[74]
• Ordinary to mean disreputable^[87]
• Ornery to mean bad-tempered or surly (derived from ordinary)^[88]
• Powerful to mean great in number or amount (used as an adverb)^[87]
• Right to mean very or extremely (used as an adverb)^[89]
• Reckon to mean think, guess, or conclude^[90]
• Rolling to mean the prank of toilet papering
• Slaw as a synonym for coleslaw
• Taters to mean potatoes
• Toboggan to mean knit cap
• Tote to mean carry^[82]
• Tump to mean tip or turn over as an intransitive verb^[91] (in the western South, including Texas and Louisiana)
• Ugly to mean rude^[92]
• Varmint to mean vermin or an undesirable animal or person^[93][87]
• Veranda to mean large, roofed porch^[87]
• Yonder to mean over there^[82]

Unique words can occur as Southern nonstandard past-tense forms of verbs, particularly in the Southern highlands and Piney Woods, as in yesterday they riz up, come outside, drawed, and drownded, as well as participle forms like they have took it, rode it, blowed it up, and swimmed away.^[82] Drug is traditionally both the past tense and participle form of the verb drag.^[82]

Y'all

Y'all is a second-person plural pronoun and the usual Southern plural form of the word you.^[95] It is originally a contraction – you all – which is used less frequently.^[96] This term was popularized in modern Southern dialects and was rarely used in older Southern dialects.^[97]

• When addressing a group, y'all in general (I know y'all) is used to address the group as a whole, whereas all y'all is used to emphasize the specificity of every member of the group ("I know all y'all.") The possessive form of Y'all is created by adding the standard "-'s".

  "I've got y'all's assignments here." /jɔlz/

• Y'all is distinctly separate from the singular you. The statement "I gave y'all my truck payment last week," is more precise than "I gave you my truck payment last week." You (if interpreted as singular) could imply the payment was given directly to the person being spoken to – when that may not be the case.
• "All y'all" is used to specify that all members of the second person plural (i.e., all persons currently being addressed and/or all members of a group represented by an addressee) are included; that is, it operates in contradistinction to "some of y'all", thereby functioning similarly to "all of you" in standard English.
• In rural southern Appalachia an "n" is added to pronouns indicating "one" "his'n" "his one" "her'n" "her one" "Yor'n" "your one" i.e. "his, her, and your". Another example is yernses. It may be substituted for the 2nd person plural possessive yours.

  "That book is yernses." /ˈjɜrnzəz/

Southern Louisiana

Southern Louisiana English especially is known for some unique vocabulary: long sandwiches are often called poor boys or po' boys, woodlice/roly-polies called doodle bugs, the end of a bread loaf called a nose, pedestrian islands and median strips alike called neutral ground,^[49] and sidewalks called banquettes.^[98]

Relationship to African-American English

Discussion of "Southern dialect" in the United States sometimes focuses on those English varieties spoken by white Southerners;^[10] However, because "Southern" is a geographic term, "Southern dialect" may also encompass dialects developed among other social or ethnic groups in the South. The most prominent of these dialects is African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), a fairly unified variety of English spoken by working and middle-class African-Americans throughout the United States. AAVE exhibits a relationship with both older and newer Southern dialects, though there is not yet a broad consensus on the exact nature of this relationship.^[99]

The historical context of race and slavery in the United States is a central factor in the development of AAVE. From the 16th to 19th centuries, many Africans speaking a diversity of West African languages were captured, brought to the United States, and sold into slavery. Over many generations, these Africans and their African-American descendants picked up English to communicate with their white enslavers and the white servants that they sometimes worked alongside, and they also used English as a bridge language to communicate with each other in the absence of another common language. There were also some African Americans living as free people in the United States, though the majority lived outside of the South due to Southern state laws which enabled white enslavers to "recapture" anyone not perceived as white and force them into slavery.

Following the American Civil War – and the subsequent national abolition of explicitly racial slavery in the 19th century – many newly freed African Americans and their families remained in the United States. Some stayed in the South, while others moved to join communities of African-American free people living outside of the South. Soon, racial segregation laws followed by decades of cultural, sociological, economic, and technological changes such as WWII and the increasing prevalence of mass media further complicated the relationship between AAVE and all other English dialects.

Modern AAVE retains similarities to older speech patterns spoken among white Southerners. Many features suggest that it largely developed from nonstandard dialects of colonial English as spoken by white Southern planters and British indentured servants, plus a more minor influence from the creoles and pidgins spoken by Black Caribbeans.^[100] There is also evidence of some influence of West African languages on the vocabulary and grammar of AAVE.

It is uncertain to what extent current white Southern English borrowed elements from early AAVE, and vice versa. Like many white accents of English once spoken in Southern plantation areas—namely, the Lowcountry, the Virginia Piedmont, Tidewater, and the lower Mississippi Valley—the modern-day AAVE accent is mostly non-rhotic (or "r-dropping"). The presence of non-rhoticity in both AAVE and old Southern English is not merely coincidence, though, again, which dialect influenced which is unknown. It is better documented, however, that white Southerners borrowed some morphological processes from Black Southerners.

Many grammatical features were used alike by white speakers of old Southern English and early AAVE, more so than by contemporary speakers of the same two varieties. Even so, contemporary speakers of both continue to share these unique grammatical features: "existential it", the word y'all, double negatives, was to mean were, deletion of had and have, them to mean those, the term fixin' to, stressing the first syllable of words like hotel or guitar, and many others.^[101] Both dialects also continue to share these same pronunciation features: /ɪ/ tensing, /ʌ/ raising, upgliding /ɔ/, the pin–pen merger, and the most defining sound of the current Southern accent (though rarely documented in older Southern accents): the glide weakening of /aɪ/. However, while this glide weakening has triggered among white Southerners a complicated "Southern Vowel Shift", African-American speakers in the South and elsewhere are "not participating or barely participating" in much of this shift.^[102] AAVE speakers also do not front the vowel starting positions of /oʊ/ and /u/, thus aligning these characteristics more with the speech of 19th-century white Southerners than 20th-century white Southerners.^[68]

Another possible influence on the divergence of AAVE and white Southern American English (i.e., the disappearance of older Southern American English) is that historical and contemporary civil rights struggles have over time caused the two racial groups "to stigmatize linguistic variables associated with the other group".^[68] This may explain some of the differences outlined above, including why most traditionally non-rhotic white Southern accents have shifted to become intensely rhotic.^[39]