| Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993. |
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| SOUTHERN REGIONAL DIALECT |
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| What most people think of as “the Southern drawl” characteristic of natives of the lower right-hand quarter of the continental United States is actually two regional dialects, Southern and South Midland. They share many features of sound, word forms, syntax, and vocabulary, but each also has features that distinguish it from the other. Most noticeable to the listener from another part of the country is that Southern, like Eastern New England and Metropolitan New York City dialects, loses its r’s except before vowels, so that swimmer in Southern sounds like swimmuh to many Northerners. Southern dialect is spoken in the coastal savanna and Piedmont areas from Maryland south, in some of Florida, and in the lowlands and coastal areas of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and eastern Texas—essentially in all the old cotton plantation country that was the first part of the South the Europeans settled. | 1 |
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| | | The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Copyright © 1993 Columbia University Press. |
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