Southern American English is a group of dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from the southern extremities of Maryland, as well as most of West Virginia and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the Atlantic coast to most of Texas and Oklahoma. The Southern dialects make up the largest accent group in the United States. Southern American English can be divided into several regional sub-dialects. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) has common points with Southern dialects due to the strong historical ties of African Americans to the region.
Read more about Southern American English: Overview of Southern Dialects, Dialects
Famous quotes containing the words southern, american and/or english:
“No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from every sensible Englishman, that glare and glitter, gimcracks and gewgaws, are not indispensable to domestic solacement.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“English audiences of working people are like an instrument that responds to the player. Thought ripples up and down them, and if in some heart the speaker strikes a dissonance there is a swift answer. Always the voice speaks from gallery or pit, the terrible voice which detaches itself in every English crowd, full of caustic wit, full of irony or, maybe, approval.”
—Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)