An integral part of what makes the American South unique – its iconic drawl – is quickly fading in Georgia, according to collaborative research led by the University of Georgia and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The change began largely with Generation X, or those born between 1965 and 1982, the findings uncovered, as the MTV generation sharply contrasted from the speech patterns of their baby boomer parents or, more specifically, those born between 1943 and 1964.
“We found that, here in Georgia, White English speakers’ accents have been shifting away from the traditional Southern pronunciation for the last few generations,” Dr. Margaret Renwick, an associate professor of linguistics at UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and lead on the study, said, per university news outlet UGA Today.
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“Today’s college students don’t sound like their parents, who didn’t sound like their own parents,” she continued.
Using statistical modeling developed by former UGA graduate student and current Brigham Young University professor Joseph A. Stanley, the research focused on voice recordings of 135 White Georgia natives born between the late 19th century to the early 2000s and emphasized vowel pronunciation. Findings indicated a sharp contrast between the way older Georgians articulated certain words compared to their younger counterparts.
“The team found that older Georgians pronounced the word “prize” as prahz and “face” as fuh-eece, but the youngest speakers use prah-eez and fayce,” the outlet reported.
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Renwick said one of the “oldest characteristic pronunciation[s]” of southern speech came from changes to the diphthong, or the sound spoken when two vowels are in the same syllable and the speaker’s voice glides between from one vowel’s sound to the next, in the word “prize.”
“The…
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