Drawls are disappearing in NC. Are we hiding our Southern accents?
Like most people in Raleigh, I trace my beginnings to another state — specifically California, which means I speak with all the cadence of a TV weatherman.
I grew up mostly in Maryland, just outside a flyspeck town called Pomonkey, where sentences came seasoned with y’all and the state’s name got pronounced like a famous wizard: Merlin.
But I moved here 30 years ago and found myself awash in Southern speak: one-syllable words stretched into three, vowel sounds drawn out for five seconds apiece, perfect strangers who struck up friendly conversations in the Walmart parking lot using foreign terms like “sir” and “ma’am.”
Though sometimes puzzled, I embraced this musical form of expression, so much livelier than what I’d known, and bumbled along through the awkward moments.
“Man, I’m wide open,” a rural sheriff once told me.
“Uh ... good?” I replied, hoping for the best.
Now, to my horror, I learn that North Carolina’s drawl is disappearing from everyday talk, fading from the culture like Watergate salad. So says this survey from The Word Finder, which questioned more than 3,000 people.
I suspect the good people at Word Finder mean Southern accents in general rather than a “drawl,” an exaggerated inflection most commonly associated with Foghorn Leghorn.
But they note that people fluent in Southern tend to self-edit in social settings, dialing back their lilts and twangs unless safely surrounded by like-speaking folk.
“What emerged is a portrait of a country that still loves its regional voices but increasingly treats them like heirlooms rather than everyday tools,” the study concludes. “The more distinctive the sound, the more likely people are to tuck it away unless they are with family or among locals.”
Soon, we’ll all sound like the voice mail lady
Southern accents are just one tone people report being desperate to hide.
The study also includes voices from:
- Appalachia
- Louisiana
- Boston
- Southern California, and
- Baltimore, where locals go “downy ocean” rather than to the beach.
This is disturbing news.
It is of course true that whenever Hollywood wishes to create dim-witted characters, it will inevitably have them talk like Gomer Pyle.
Forrest Gump, after all, did not live in Connecticut.
(A happy exception to this rule is Daniel Craig’s excellent Benoit Blanc voice from the “Knives Out” series, which may be the greatest drawl ever concocted by a non-Southerner.)
But a generic Southern accent scarcely exists, no more than a generic Southerner — a truth proven anytime you put someone from Wilmington in the same room with someone from Boone.
There are hundreds of delightful variations on the theme, far too many to form a stereotype. William Faulkner sounds nothing like Boss Hogg. Jesse Jackson sounds nothing like Aaron Neville. Dolly Parton sounds nothing like Eartha Kitt of “Catwoman” fame.
Raleigh is increasingly made up of people from somewhere else, as is North Carolina, where 47% of the population comes from another state.
Speaking as someone with no discernable accent, a flavorless tone, a voice made for newspapers, I implore all of you to let your beautiful identities come dancing out of your mouths.
Wide open.
For recent arrivals, the sheriff was saying he was busy — too busy to deal with a reporter.
This story was originally published March 2, 2026 at 5:50 AM with the headline "Drawls are disappearing in NC. Are we hiding our Southern accents?."