Southern Accents for Dummy Freelancers

Different Southern Dialects

The Antisocial Network's researchers come across some pretty cockamamie statements as they wander the 'net looking for freelance dumbassery. A lot of what they bring up at staff meetings bogus "facts," incorrect "instructions," the occasional idiotic conspiracy theory, and just plain old stupidity. We think today's DotD nominee falls in a couple of categories: it's mostly bogus facts, but it has a pretty strong stench of plain old stupidity. Feast your eyes, y'all, on the Edward Ngureco post at HubPages.com, "Accent and Dialect: Formation of Dialects - and Why Southerners Have Accents."

Why Ngureco (probably really Edward Ngure, a stock trader from Kenya) decided to educate his readers about the American South is a mystery. Given his opening statement, however, it's a safe bet he has never been there and may have never heard a "southern drawl":

"'All y'all' as in, I know you all, is a pronunciation for 'all you all' as used in Southern American English..."

Let us disabuse you of that notion immediately, Eddy: "All y'all" isn't standard "southern American dialect" – the word you want is "y'all" (sometimes misspelled "ya'll" by northerners and illiterate southerners). In the Yankee dialect, its equivalent is "you guys" or even "youse guys," and represents second-person plural. "All y'all" is an intensification of y'all, in the same way that Yankees might say "all youse" or "all you guys"; it's also used as second-person plural by people who use y'all as second-person singular.

Whatever. Why a Kenyan biz-type would attempt to explain some mythical southern USA dialect remains unfathomable. We're pretty sure he's hazy on US geography, based on this comment:

"Southern American English is an English dialect that is spoken in the Southern region of the United States, from Maryland, throughout to West Virginia, Kentucky, GulfCoast, [sic] Atlantic coast, Texas and to Oklahoma."

Since Maryland and West Virginia share several hundred miles of border, "Maryland, throughout to West Virginia" seems rather understated to us. Ed makes no mention of the Carolinas, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas... all of which boast regional sub-dialects of the southern dialect. What puts the lip gloss on this particular pig of a post, though, is Ngureco's claim that,

"[Why do] Southerners [speak] the Southern dialect, is a common question underlying a very sensitive statement. The myth is that they speak in the Southern dialect because they consume lots of grits."

Uh, yeah, that's why: grits. Well, maybe sweet tea has something to do with it, or Moon Pies, or Dr. Pepper?

Never mind the rest of Eddy's post, which is as much about his native Kenya as about the southern USA. Never mind that he appears to have reworded a magazine article (National Geographic, perhaps) about dialects, his failure to understand the area and people he claims to be writing about is proof positive that Ngureco is well-qualified as our Dumbass of the Day. It helps that at Hubpages ngureco claims to be female, but uses the same bio with masculine pronouns at twitter. Y'all get that?

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