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Southern American accent

buttercupbitchh
Where can I look up transcriptions of common English words in this accent? I know the IPA but I only took British English classes in uni (I study Anglistics) and I‘d really like to learn how to do this accent. I know TV shows etc can help a lot but I find it really helpful to learn with transcriptions as well. Is there anything like that? (I know there are several different „Southern“ accents. I‘m not trying to perfect one, I just want to know the basics of how they work in general.)

3 comments

mjkjio2015
This might be a little off topic, but when I turned 18 I moved from Indiana to North Carolina. I found out that I spoke way too fast for them to understand. I had to figure out how to talk at a slower speed for them to understand me. It was a culture shock for sure.
Comfortable-Study-69
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_American_English There’s the Southern American English Wikipedia page that goes into some depth on deviations in pronunciation, vocabulary, and conjugation differences from General American English. I don’t know of any comprehensive IPA pronunciation guides for Southern accents, though. It also isn’t really one singular accent. Someone from Shreveport, LA sounds very different from someone from Cumberland Gap, TN. I’d just use General American as a starting point and learn more region-specific pronunciation and slang later.
StuffedSquash
Just fyi that if you do this in casual conversation (vs for an acting gig or something) it could easily be seen as mocking Southern people.