My View From the cheap seats

I have always been proud of my Southern accent, mostly because it came free with birth and didn’t require orthodontia or a student loan. It showed up early, stuck around faithfully, and only embarrasses me when I hear myself on voicemail and wonder who let that man use my phone.

For a while there, it looked like accents such as mine were headed for extinction. Linguists warned that the internet and mass media would smooth us all into one pleasant, flavorless “General American” voice, like verbal margarine. Everybody would sound like a cable news anchor from nowhere in particular, delivering sentences that had been sanded down for your protection.

But the kids have ruined that plan, bless them.

According to a recent article in The Washington Post, regional accents are making a comeback online, particularly on social media platforms where young people record themselves explaining recipes, arguments, and why they are right and you are wrong. Instead of flattening their voices, they’re leaning into them. Thick Boston Rs. Appalachian vowels you could swim in. Southern drawls that take so long to finish a sentence you can run to the kitchen and back before the verb shows up.

Apparently, after decades of being told to “sound more professional,” people have decided they’d rather sound like where they’re from. This is encouraging news for anyone who has ever been asked, “Where are you from?” immediately after saying “y’all.”

Research has always shown that the Southern accent is favored by most people as the best accent. That’s comforting until you consider the New York accent is one of the other options. This means the Southern accent wins not because it is universally beloved, but because it is less likely to make you sound like you’re yelling directions at a taxi.

I don’t think I have much of a Southern accent anymore. I say this confidently until I’m talking with someone who most certainly does not have a Southern accent. Then suddenly I sound like Gomer Pyle announcing the weather. Sha-zam! Words stretch out, vowels recline, and syllables wander off like they’ve got nowhere else to be.

For years, people code-switched to survive. You talked one way at home and another way at work, as if your accent were something you needed to hang up in the break room next to your coat. The goal was to sound neutral, competent, and inoffensive, which is also how drywall sounds when it talks.

So it wasn’t surprising that Southern accents seemed to be fading, especially in Southern cities that have filled up with people from colder places. We used to call them Yankees, but now we call them neighbors who complain loudly about the humidity. They arrived fleeing snow and ice, only to discover that summer here lasts eleven months and argues with you the whole time.

Out in rural places, though, accents never went anywhere. In my hometown of Blakely, everyone still sounds like they just stepped off the set of Designing Women. Nobody is trying to sound national. They’re trying to sound like themselves, which turns out to be much easier.

The internet hasn’t erased our differences. It’s handed us a microphone and dared us to use it. And now people are discovering that sounding like home is not something to be ashamed of. It’s something to be shared. Which is good news for me, because whether I like it or not, my accent is always packed and ready. I may not hear it most days, but trust me, it hears me just fine.