(NewsNation) —Classic southern accents may be fading away, one recent study found.
A collaborative study between the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech revealed southern accents in the Peach State are shifting over time, with Generation X leading the change.
“We found that, here in Georgia, white English speakers’ accents have been shifting away from the traditional Southern pronunciation for the last few generations,” said Margaret Renwick, associate professor in UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of linguistics and lead on the study. “Today’s college students don’t sound like their parents, who didn’t sound like their own parents.”
Researchers used recordings of white individuals native to Georgia, born from the late 19th century to the early 2000s, for the study and focused on how people on the recordings pronounced their vowels. The University of Georgia said southern accents “fell off a cliff” with Generation X, or those born between 1965 and 1982.
“We had been listening to hundreds of hours of speech recorded in Georgia and we noticed that older speakers often had a thick Southern drawl, while current college students didn’t,” Renwick said. “We started asking, which generation of Georgians sounds the most Southern of all? We surmised that it was baby boomers, born around the mid-20th century. We were surprised to see how rapidly the Southern accent drops away starting with Gen X.”
According to the study, older Georgia residents pronounced the word “prize” as prahz and “face” as fuh-eece, while the youngest residents participating in the study said prah-eez and fayce.
“The demographics of the South have changed a lot with people moving into the area, especially post World War II,” said co-author Jon Forrest, UGA assistant professor in the department of linguistics.
Forrest added: “We are seeing similar shifts across many regions, and we might find people in California, Atlanta, Boston and Detroit that have similar speech characteristics.”
The University of Georgia said the study has reshaped the understanding of accent variations, but it also highlights a need for language research among diverse ethnic groups. The team of researchers is also reportedly pursuing a study of cross-generational accents among the Black population.
The study, titled “Boomer Peak or Gen X Cliff? From SVS to LBMS in Georgia English,” is published in the journal of Language Variation and Change.
