Can southerners in the US easily tell their accents apart? Like Carolinas strom thurmond vs Georgia george wallace? I can't. (I'm from Iowa and live in California - Iowa the famous neutral zone like harry reasoner or johnny carson)
###
That’s a great question — and you’re right that for most outsiders, Southern accents tend to blend together. But yes, native Southerners can often tell them apart with surprising precision — much as a Londoner can distinguish Yorkshire from Liverpool or an Italian can hear the difference between Florence and Naples.
Here’s a rough guide to how they’d sort them:
1. South Carolina / Charleston / Thurmond area
-
Sound: Smooth, somewhat aristocratic, often called the Lowcountry accent or “Charleston English.”
-
Traits: Drawn-out vowels, soft r’s, almost British in rhythm — think “heaah” for “here.”
-
Historical note: Influenced by coastal English and Gullah (Creole) speech patterns.
-
Cultural stereotype: Old-money plantation families, coastal genteel.
2. Georgia / Wallace-type accent (though Wallace was from Alabama)
-
Sound: More rural, twangier, more nasal.
-
Traits: Harder r’s, shorter vowels, and a sing-song melody. “Ah’m fixin’ to go” is common across Georgia and Alabama.
-
Sub-flavors:
-
Atlanta: Milder and more “TV neutral.”
-
South Georgia: Thicker and slower, closer to Alabama and the Florida panhandle.
-
3. What Southerners notice
They can often peg not only the state but the county or social class. For example:
-
An educated Charleston speaker sounds different from a Columbia (inland) South Carolinian.
-
North Alabama speech differs from south Alabama by rhythm and vowel shift.
-
Mississippi accents have more drawl, while eastern Tennessee has a Scotch-Irish lilt.
4. Why outsiders can’t hear it
To a Midwesterner — and you’re right, Iowa is the “neutral zone,” the land of newscaster English — the vowel shifts are subtle and in a different direction. You hear a Southern “drawl,” but locals hear dozens of distinct patterns: vowel diphthongs, intonation contours, and even which syllable gets stress.
So in short: yes, they can tell, easily. But to you, it’s like trying to tell the difference between a person from Malmö and one from Gothenburg — faint until your ear’s tuned for it.
##
Northern Iowa was influenced by Minnesotan - that Swedish flavor, you betcha, or "Fargo" - and Southern Iowa blends into Missouri, a distinctively Southern flavor starts to appear.
##
Exactly right — Iowa sits at a fascinating crossroads of dialect geography. Linguists sometimes describe it as part of the Midland dialect zone, but it’s really a transitional region between three major speech areas:
1. Northern Iowa – Upper Midwest / Scandinavian influence
-
The “Swedish flavor” you mention is real — northern Iowa was settled heavily by Norwegians, Swedes, and Germans, much like southern Minnesota and Wisconsin.
-
Traits: Rounded vowels, “Minnesota nice” intonation, and that faint sing-song rhythm. Words like boat and coat can sound slightly elongated — booat, cooat.
-
Culturally and linguistically, this aligns with the Inland North / Upper Midwest dialect area.
2. Central Iowa – The “Network Standard”
-
Des Moines and Ames sit in the heart of what’s often called the Midland “Standard American” zone — the accent that Midwestern newscasters like Harry Reasoner, Tom Brokaw, and Johnny Carson (Nebraska, but same region) made famous.
-
Traits: Fairly flat vowels, minimal regional markers, and no strong “Northern Cities Shift.”
-
This became the broadcast standard because it was perceived as neutral and clear.
3. Southern Iowa – Missouri transition zone
-
South of I-80, things subtly shift: the vowel in ride starts to flatten toward rahd, and pen/pin can merge — a hallmark of Southern speech.
-
There’s a softer rhythm, a bit more drawl, and certain lexical items (y’all, fixin’ to) begin to appear.
-
This zone blends into Ozark / Southern Midland speech, common in northern Missouri.
In short, you’re dead on: Iowa acts like a linguistic hinge between Scandinavian-flavored Northern English and drawly Southern English. The middle — Reasoner and Carson country — became the baseline for what Americans think of as “no accent.”
