My job is to sell clothes to middle aged American women over the telephone. I never realized how prevalent some stereotypical American accents are.

The southern accent is huge, as is the Orleans accent, or as I call it: "Sassy Fat Black Lady"

Lots of drawl

You've also got the people who pronounce the word "pen" as "peeen" Or basically any "en" sound as "een"

Ten is teeen, den is deeen, when is weeen! It's actually crazy. But basically the two most frequent accents I hear are the Southern Drawl and SFBL.

Americans also use a lot of bad slang like the 'word' "y'all"

I've also noticed that speakers of SFBL use a lot of ebonics grammar like "now that don't make no sense" "no that don't work" "y'all don't do this do y'all"

Also sometimes I ask people what color they want their item, and they reply with the size. And vice versa.

I ask American's - do you experience this kind of thing with any Canadians? Because we've got those people too, but I'm not sure your exposure to them would be near our exposure to you. I had one woman ask me where I was from, and was shocked when I told her Nova Scotia because I didn't "sound Canadian! A lot of you guys have french accents!"

A lot of youth from the East Coast are in fact losing the East Coast accent (small town accent I suppose.)

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I think I know what you're talking aboot with the Canadian stuff.

The Southeast is a great place to think about when you want to feel better about yourself as a person. My entire family speaks with a thin-to-middle Southern accent with me being the exception. We live right next to a bunch of people with a ridiculously thick accent. I doubt you've heard anyone speak the really thick accent because I'm sure you would think they were drunk and mumbling and just hang up after trying to understand them for about twenty seconds.

Our community is fairly sheltered, as is most of America. We're very focused inward and I have to say it's not really all our faults. Our government, media, and education systems are a big part of it. The fact is, we don't know about most of the world, and we probably never will. There are always people who like to understand how the rest of the world works and acts and we break away from our communities for a more ambiguous lifestyle, but in this region you'll hardly find any of those people.

There are many people who say "irregardless", "supposebly", and "used to could" that don't know the right thing to say and more importantly have no desire to learn. We're probably about 99% fundamentalist Baptist Christians that don't trust what anyone says unless it's coming out of the mouth of a far right Republican.

Every region will always have its little quirks and we're undoubtedly the most infamous. There are people like me that wish they could have a bit more pride about where they were born. I lost my accent by the age of ten and my religious burdens by eighteen. A lot of people from my generation are adapting; at least in the city I live in. Middle aged women are definitely representing the last of a very long and embarrassing era.

I agree with this. Not even going to lie, I say a lot of southern things like "used to could" all the time. I know it's not proper grammar, but I was raised around it and don't really care.

I have a pretty large southern accent that I don't even notice, but when I'm recorded I can hear it way better then.

Also, y'all is totally a contraction for "you all" ;p

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Drywall

Well for the most part I'm sure that nobody cares about an accent. I know several people that find it kind of sexy. As long as you're getting your point across and it's not for something strictly academic there's never anything to worry about. It's not wrong; it's just different. Well actually, used to could, supposebly and irregardless can be pretty bad, but the way you say the right things should never matter in a casual setting. Sometimes you can not mean to say it but they tend to leak out anyway because our parents say it and all of our friends say it. I'm mainly speaking to everyone who isn't from the South:

Southern accents are by no means an indicator of poor education; being American is.

kayso I'm going to be ignorant I guess and ask what 'used to could' means?

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KATE.

If someone says they 'used to could' do something, they mean that they used to be able to do it.

haha i was equally confused

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So we're talking like "I used to could do 15 backflips, but now I can't do any"?

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KATE.

That is correct.

wow how did that even happen? Who's in charge of language down there? the circus maybe? perhaps the traveling variety? I can appreciate terms like "y'all" but used to could doesn't even sound like it ever made sense. Why haven't I come across this one yet on the internet?

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Prescriptivism is bad...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription

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L2Language. It's a dialect and accent and not a sideshow attraction, now roll your tongue up and shut your jaw and stop acting like it's the first time you realized there are different cultures in the world other than your own. OK? Thanks.

Of course. I consider myself a very intelligent person, it's just what I was raised around.



Well, in general, look at the South. I hate to bust our on balls, but as a whole the South is fucking retarded. We are years behind every other regions in most things, if not everything. Racism is still a big thing down here depending on which city or even part of the city you're in, and from what I can tell, other regions don't have near as big as a problem with it. I know the thread isn't about that, but as an example, it takes years and years for things to change down here.

The Bible Belt is full of people who are close minded as fuck, and are scared / intimidated by anything they know nothing about. I fucking hate it here so bad, but I also love it with an equal strength.

Northern accents and sayings are weird to us too. You'll never here ANYBODY down here say "I want a soda pop" and if you do, you automatically know they aren't from here. There's a lot of words that northerners use that we don't that we find very weird when used in everyday speak.

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Drywall

We're pretty much the people backing the Republican Menace. I think it's more our parents' generation and their's. I mean, parents really try to make their kids exactly like them. My abusive father was abused by his father on and on. We just have to break the cycle of shit. We're not really behind on all that much, at least in Georgia. Everything is just smaller over here. We don't have a lot of controversial or liberal things, but that's to be expected. We just need one generation to change things, and at least around here, I'm pretty sure it's going to happen in the next few.

I mean, you can't blame the cultists for their leader's programming, especially if they were indoctrinated at birth.

woah chill out man, I'm obviously joking around. I just sincerely don't get the combination of the words "used to could", it seems like "used to be able" would be easier to think of mentally and so I didn't see how "used to could" would evolve.

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