South Midland
The South Midland dialect region follows the Ohio River in a generally southwesterly direction, moving across from Kentucky, Southern Indiana, and Southern Illinois to southern Missouri, Arkansas, southern Kansas, and Oklahoma, west of the Mississippi river. Although historically more closely related to the North Midland speech, this region shows dialectal features that are now more similar to the rest of the South than the Midland, most noticeably the smoothing of the diphthong /aɪ/ to, and the second person plural pronoun "you-all" or "y'all." Unlike the coastal South, however, the South Midland has always been a rhotic dialect, pronouncing /r/ wherever it has historically occurred. South Indiana is the northernmost extent of the South Midland region, forming what dialectologists refer to as the "Hoosier Apex" of the South Midland; the accent is locally known there as the "Hoosier Twang" where Interstate 64 is usually referred to as Sixty-For or U.S. 41 is casually referred to as Forty-One.
The phonology of the South Midland is discussed in greater detail in Southern American English.
Read more about this topic: Midland American English
Famous quotes containing the word south:
“Mormon colonization south of this point in early times was characterized as “going over the Rim,” and in colloquial usage the same phrase came to connote violent death.”
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)