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?