Texas’ regional accents are a source of fascination. Trying to study them is difficult, probably even for an English professor.
If you’ve read my missives more than occasionally, you know I love Texas, I love Texans and I love Texas lingo.
When encountering a different sound than one you hear every day, it pays to listen. If you can identify it and reveal that to the speaker, it will often amaze them. It’s also a great door opener with a new acquaintance.
For purposes of this bit of examination, a couple of things need to be established. First, I’m no expert. Second, the designations here would probably not be “approved” by a professional linguist. Ooookay.
My own family offers some differences, though slight they may be. While I grew up in east Central Texas, experts would’ve probably identified my parents as East Texas.
Lifemate Julie grew up in Baytown but her mother is from north central Louisiana and her father from northeast Texas. Now, there’s a mix for you. Those factors plus education, teaching school for years in a predominantly Hispanic area, becoming a journalist plus a little travel have amalgamated her speech UNTIL she gets with someone with a real north Louisiana accent, then she says things like Duh-ridduh (DeRidder).
Son Weston spent most of his growing up time in Jasper in East Texas so you might expect him to speak in that “tongue.” However, his considerable musical and dramatic training provide him with an almost unidentifiable accent.
Although it is my contention that if you’re born in a certain Texas region and spend your life there, the chances are almost 100 percent that your accent will be identifiable with that area.
In my thinking, East Texas, where I’ve spent considerable time, is more Southern United States than it is anywhere else. Migration patterns and census information would probably lend some credence to that statement. So, East Texans sound more Southern than any other region in the state.
Northeast Texas, where my late father-in-law was raised, features rapid speech, very different from any other segment of the Lone Star State. Sometimes, I had to ask him to repeat something, because I didn’t understand it. “LissentuhmeWillis.”
Panhandle Texas is less familiar to me than other areas in the state, but it seems that we get more a mix of Texas, Oklahoma and, say, Kansas, particularly if you live in the northernmost portion. The only Panhandle Texan I talk to on a regular basis is Laurie Ezzell Brown of Canadian, who is an intellectual, well-read, brilliant person. She offers the only measure of the region’s vocal bent accent to which I can speak.
South Texas and the entire Rio Grande region west through El Paso has a definite Hispanic flavor carved into the speech. While I regrettably do not speak Spanish, or any language other than English, I love listening to longtime residents of that area to get the flavor of how they speak Texan.
West Texas’ accent is a drawl, both easy to understand and enjoy, that is if you don’t nod off waiting for them to finish a sentence. I’m teasing. The accent is probably more identified throughout the rest of the country as how real Texans (and everyone thinks we’re all cowboys) talk.
Houston provides some contrast as well (and I suspect other Texas metro areas do). That Gulf Coast city has seen such an influx from almost every state, particularly north of the Mason-Dixon Line, that the speech there is an amalgamation. So, you hear things such as “y’all guys.” It may be more “Yankee” than any other region.
I went to school and worked in Houston beginning in 1958. I lived there or within an hour of it until 1982, so I often had people from East Texas, where I grew up, ask me where I was from. Some even thought I was from Yankeeland. Gasp!
Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher of more than 50 years experience.
