12-05-2025
How the US lost its southern accent
At the beginning of 1979 millions of Americans began following the adventures of two young men with quite convincing southern drawls as they outran and outwitted, in weekly TV episodes, a villainous county commissioner named Boss Hogg.
Occasionally it was noted that the two actors were from New York and Wisconsin but they said 'he done' instead of 'he has' and you could be double dang sure that when they wished to do something, they would declare they were 'fixin' to' do it.
It now appears that The Dukes of Hazzard was not just a hymn to moonshine and good ol' boys but marked, more or less, a high point in southern speech, in which 'prize' is pronounced with an 'ah' in the middle and
