re: Does your Southern Accent Come and Go?

absolutely, I started losing mine when I began traveling a lot for work after graduation and more so when I moved out West. But it comes back when I'm back in the South visiting family. I've also told clients that are all from the South on web meetings that if my accent comes back I'm not mocking them or doing the mirror effect, it just comes and goes sometimes.

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I try to control mine.

Ppl tend to believe a Southern accent = lack of education.

Libs started that shite.

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I think it's more than that. Any regional accent tends to lead others to view you as a caricature and slightly ignorant. I found that to be the case when I moved to Texas and found myself in a job that put me in frequent contact with people from all over the US. So I worked on pronouncing words the way they are spelled rather than the way I learned to mimic others.

The lack of education association is also a reasonable conclusion. What other conclusion are they supposed to reach when they hear words pronounced in a way that contradicts the spelling of ordinary words. Worcestshire for example is a common word to hear variations in pronunciations.

Conclusions of ignorance come from additional syllables that don't exist or pronunciations that don't match letters:

oil - url
get - git
tire - tar
boil - bawl or bol

Even a common one syllable name like Tim becimes Tee-yum. Or hill becomes hee-yul.

Why do southerners pronounce Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, ... as Sundee, Mondee, Tuesdee, but Today is pronounced correctly?

WTF honkeys? How are normal people supposed to not think that's ignorance?

I find in kind of slide into the accents of whatever group I'm talking to, overall

I moved to DFW, traveled the world for business, and now have a completely different accent. When I return to Louisiana, now, everyone sounds like southern country goober. When I return to DFW, after a week in Louisiana with family, my wife tells me I sound like I just like them.

I sound like a coonass all the time. Although not as tick as it used to be. Sha

Fuk dat

Work in oil & gas. When I say “oil”, there’s no hiding where I’m from…Geaux Tigers!!!

I typically have a “Southern Drawl”, but when hangin’ out w/my buds from Marksville, and a ‘lil alcohol, the heavy “CoonAss” dialect shows up…

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pronunciations that don't match letters:

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Knife?

Know?

Through?

Write?

Etc

My parents moved when I was young to a non southern accent state, but my mom was from as rural Arkansas as rural Arkansas gets.

Her accent always came on the strongest on the phone. She could be getting after us like hell, the phone would ring, and she’d answer with the full fledged proper southern lady routine.