I have a muddled North Carolina/KY accent. I still have people in KY ask me where I am from sometimes, though it's much more rare now a days than it was 20+ years or so ago.

 

We have a strong pretty distinct accent in the area I grew up in NC, which is near the Southern boarder of VA. If you have ever heard anyone talk who was from the mountains of Southern VA (race car driver Ward Burton for instance) then you know the similar drawl I grew up with. Most of that is gone, but I still have a tad bit of it.

I have an eastern Kentucky accent. I've always been proud of it.

The late Prof Cratis Williams book "Southern Appalachian Dialect" states that eastern Kentucky has the oldest spoken English language in the world, including the United Kingdom. He points out that it's the oldest due to the many years of isolation of the region's inhabitants in eastern Kentucky and other sections of Appalachia. The rest of the English speaking world changed but Appalachian kept many of the same words, phrases, and pronunciations that their ancestors brought with them from the the old country.

 

Dr. Williams was a Harvard educated native of Lawrence County and taught Appalachian culture and language for many years at Appalachia State University.

 

Thanks for the input.

 

What you are saying here is pretty interesting stuff and has prompted me to dig a bit deeper into Wikipedia articles related to Appalachian English and its origins.

I think there are two different twangs in KY, one that says you are from the mountains and another that is more southern (central KY to WKY, Then those of you from NKY, where there isnt any twang whatsoever. Lol )

 

With my CKY and WKY roots, put me in that group. I have it and proud of it.

 

When I was younger, I'd try to cover it up and blend in with my surroundings, especially if up north. I don't anymore. If anything, I'll exaggerate it.

 

My sister moved to NKY about 5 years ago when she married her husband who is from there (Florence). She was as CKY/SKY/WKY as it gets in her accent. Not anymore though. Haha. I wear her out about it, too. All in good fun of course.

I was born in eastern KY, but grew up in northern OH. So my formative years I was not around it, except my dad and all of his cousins. All of whom, moved to Ohio for work.

 

I moved back to KY at 18 and went to UK, so I was around all different dialects. Since graduating from UK, I have lived in at least a dozen states for 6 months. However I have been back in the Bluegrass since 1993.

 

 

People from here don't think I sound southern. People from everywhere else think I sound southern.

 

 

I have known a lot of people who concider the southern "drawl" as sounding uneducated, but only on guys. On women, they concider it to be charming.

How my daughters twang and slang has change since being at UK for 4 years is crazy. With her and my family growing up inside the 275 loop in NKY, it's easy to find twang and heavy twang as close as Erlanger. You may not think it, but it's there. I can even find it in Villa Hills. Maybe those people have migrated there, but when you get to Florence area and south, yeah, that's some twang for us city folk. And my kin is from Stanton Ky.

I like the "adapt to the current geography" style of speech. While in Vietnam, there were a few Australian servicemen who would hang around AFVN in the evenings and I picked up a few of their verbal mannerisms.

On R&R in Sydney, I was walking from a theater to my hotel one night and greeted a couple of guys on the street.

One of them said, "You're from up North, aren't ya?"

And I said, "Well, yeh...near Chicago."

There was a pause and then, "OH! Are you a G.I.?!"

Northerners cannot seem to agree if I have an accent or not. Some say it is very obvious, others say they only notice it with a few words such as when I pronounce get like "git".

I think there are two different twangs in KY,

 

Heck, you can find two or more accents in just Louisville. Someone from the East End generally will not have near as strong of an accent as someone from the South or South West End.

Heck, you can find two or more accents in just Louisville. Someone from the East End generally will not have near as strong of an accent as someone from the South or South West End.

 

Id almost put the east end w parts of NKY. In the little or no category..at least what those like myself in WKY/SCKY and the mountains would consider "twang".