It always astonishes me just how many northerners I come across who are immovably convinced that there is only one dialect of southern speech, and that it is non-rhotic. The only extant southern non-rhotic accents I am aware of are in and around Atlanta, Georgia. I can go over Tennessee and hear at a minimum eight distinct variants of the accent, and of vocabulary shift, especially of idiomatic phrase. This generally can be said of all southern states to include Texas, just as New England presents drastic variation in accent and dialect. I am very glad someone posted this. Oh, and if I were to say all this out loud, it would have a pretty heavy drawl.
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