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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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The Southern US accent, especially in the more rural areas, has a pronounced softening of the "s" wherever this sound appears, so that, for instance, ice cream becomes aish cream. And folks I know who were from the South, or whose families were originally from the South, and had lost all trace of their Southern accent, still retained a hint of that soft "s" so that one might think they had a slight lisp or slight speech impediment. Where did this transformation of the "s" sound come from in the US South? Why does it linger on after all other traces of the accent disappear? Why is it stronger in certain words and phrases than others?...for instance, an "sl" softens more into "schl" than an "s" softens alone at the beginning of a word? Any of our Southren linguaphiles know? Anyone else?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Well my parents are from Alabama and Tennessee, I grew up in Kentucky, and I also lived in North Carolina for four years, and I have never heard this phenomenon. Where did you hear this (or hear of it)?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Well my parents are from Alabama and Tennessee, I grew up in Kentucky, and I also lived in North Carolina for four years, and I have never heard this phenomenon. Where did you hear this (or hear of it)?
In vino veritash, perhaps?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Alex, it's not every "s" but it's very evident to a Yankee ear, at least to this Yankee's ear. Maybe you don't pick it up because you're so used to hearing it. I've had many friends, and lady friends, from the South, and this aspect of their accent varied, but it was always there to some degree, The least noticeable was a friend from Richmond. A lot of the re-enacters I converse with from the South, especially areas with the thickest accents, are very evident in this respect. And if you listen, for instance, to the actors depicting the Confederate officers and soldiers in the movie "Gettysburg" who were not Southerners and so were trained by the dialect coach in the accent, the s'es in certain words are consciously pronounced in that manner. The actor playing Gen. Hood from Texas, for instance, makes vivid use of this device. Many Elvis impersonators are careful to use this in their dialogues as well. In fact, it was an Elvis impersonation on a radio commercial that pronounced aish-cream today, and got me to thinking about this again. It seems like the "s" is pronounced farther back off the roof of the mouth in certain words and places, and not crispened through the teeth as usual. Much like some of the hard "T"s are softened in the same manner in Southern dialect, like "right here" becoming "rai'chere". In some instances it's almost as if the "h" is just tapped upon after the "s", not a full "sh" sound....like in across. "Acrossh the bridge".
Could it be something in the original Scotch and Irish, which had a large part in giving rise to the Southern accent, that helped soften some of these hard consonants?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Don't know if this is relevant or not, but in Indonesian the /sh/ sound is spelled si or sy.
Obviously there is no Indonesian influence on a Southern US accent, but perhaps there is something about the position of s and i in the mouth that make a conversion to sh likely.
Bingley
Bingley
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Maybe you're right -- it's so pervasive that I don't even notice. As to the cause, it's probably the humidity.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Here's another Kentuckian who has never heard ish cream, or any other s regularly changed like that, and I grew up listening not only to KY accents but that of my Tennessee relatives. This use of Southern kind of makes me think of (erstwhile) Vixy's problem with the use of the word classical: there are MANY "Southern" accents, and possibly how one says the s sound may have to do with something more than just being from the South. For example, some people say worsh for wash, and I suspect that has more to do with the educational level the speaker comes from.
I will concede that--maybe--I've heard s softening towards almost a z, as in eyez cream. But no h. Definitely no sh sound.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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As Jackie wrote, there are many Southern accents. The North Carolina heavy drawl completely changes into the ri-vuh accent of Richmond here in Virginia which has little resemblance to Dinwiddie Southern just south of Richmond that sounds completely different from, say, the accents I've heard come up from Mississippi and that sounds nothing like Alabama ... and so on.
Now this 'ish' sound: I haven't heard this particular one, but I haven't heard every Southern accent. It could be a distinctive sound from one region in the South. I have heard the 'eyezz' cream of which Jackie has written--but I can't remember where. We do enunciate our s's as s's or z's, but I'll start to listen very carefully for that 'sh' to see whether I hear it.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I was thinkin' today at work that the sound actually was not a true "sh" but a bit harder or sharper, more like a "zh", so thank you ladies for pointing that out.
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