TEXAS – Accents and expressions are deeply rooted in language.
Texas talk, accent, and dialect is perhaps one of the most iconic in the United States. But has it left Houston? Where is the Texas twang these days?
“Y’all”, “Sir”, “Ma’am”, “Howdy” and “Fixin” screams Texas, right?!
“The identity as Texans is not really clearly Southern or Western. So, some people will say, we’re West, we’re cowboys, we’re ranch, Right? Or some people say, ‘No, we’re Southern, we’re Confederate,’ you know?” explained the Associate Professor Department Chair of Linguistics at Rice University, Nancy Niedzielski. “It’s been a little bit different from the rest of the South because of the fact that it always has been a little bit more influenced by these Western dialects.”
Languages are constantly changing and new dialects are always forming.
“Younger people in Houston, Texas, are sounding markedly different from their parents. So it is, in fact, the case that the way their parents would have sounded would have used what you just described as the Texas twang, but in fact, their kids aren’t using them. We don’t sort of stay stationary like we used to in the past,” Niedzielski said. “As we move into these big urban centers, we bring all the different language systems, language varieties that we had in the other places and then they sort of mix. One of the things that’s happening then in these big cities is the southern systems that used to sort of characterize South Carolina, Alabama, Texas, etc., are being replaced by these dialects that are moving from the West Coast. There are 13 vowels in my dialect in the northern cities, that Western shift that I was talking about. One of the things that’s happening is one vowel is going completely away. So, the only 12 vowels in Western dialects that are moving across younger Houston, Anglo, Houstonians. It’s very different if we look at the African-American population or even the Latin, the Latino population, Asian populations.”
Travel outside of Houston and Texan English is still very much alive.
Is there a way to preserve Texas Twang?
“So, right now in our country, race is huge. And so we have big differences between the way African Americans and European Americans talk. And that just says something about this social category being such a huge thing in the United States age, social class, religion, sexuality. All kinds of different things go into different social groups that we put ourselves into. And often we end up with language varieties associated with that,” explained Niedzielski.
Another influence on language... your attitude.
“So much depends on an individual, because if you jump into your new city and you say, ‘I’m happy to be a Houstonian,’ you’re going to show really different patterns in your speech versus somebody who says, ‘I hate Houston, I want to go back to Michigan. I hate this. I want to get out of here,’” Niedzielski said.
