Respect My Accent And I'll Respect Yours

Steven Holland
Engl 1101
Dr. Hughes
Blog 7

The Southern accent is often regarded with disrespect by people of other dialects. This may be caused by someone misunderstanding what the person has to say. Since the Southern accent is sometimes difficult to understand, there is a website that has the intention of helping people to understand the Southern accent. Ron Collins’ Southern Dialect Converter (http://vaiden.net/convert.html) explains various Southern phrases and translates them into more Standard English. Some Southerners might take offense to this website and say “he’s makin’ fun o’ the way we talk,” but he actually seems to respect the Southern accent. The main goal of the website is to explain what many common Southern phrases mean. Another website that does a very good job of this is the alphadictionary (http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/southernese.html). It basically serves the same purpose as the Southern Dialect Converter. It is not disrespecting the dialect; it is intended to help someone who doesn’t know many Southern phrases. Another part of the alphadictionary is the Rebel or Yankee Test (http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/yankeetest.html). This test is neutral towards respect of the different accents since all it is doing is determining what accent the user has. According to Rosina Lippi-Green, “There is a great deal of diversity in the South” (Liipi-Green 209). This suggests that the Southern accent is not a monolith. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_American_English) takes the same view on the subject. The fact that Wikipedia uses the term sub-regional dialects, with reference to the South, shows that the Southern accent is not a monolith. Wikipedia clearly states that “there is no single "Southern accent". Instead, there are a number of sub-regional dialects found across the Southern United States which are collectively known as Southern American English” (Wikipedia). The idea of a Southern dialect monolith seems nonexistent because the different regions of the South have their own dialects.