Texan English

Texan Englishis the array ofAmerican Englishdialects spoken inTexas, primarily falling underSouthern U.S. English. As one nationwide study states, the typical Texan accent is a "Southern accent with a twist".The "twist" refers toinland Southern U.S.,older coastal Southern U.S., andSouth Midland U.S. accentsmixing together, due to Texas's settlement history, as well as some lexical (vocabulary) influences fromMexican Spanish.In fact, there is no single accent that covers all of Texas and few dialect features are unique to Texas alone. The newest and mostinnovativeSouthern U.S. accent features are best reported inLubbock,Odessa, somewhatHoustonand variablyDallas, though general features of this same dialect are found throughout the state, with several exceptions:Abileneand somewhatAustin,Corpus Christi, andEl Pasoappear to align more withMidland U.S. accentsthan Southern ones.
After Mexicogained independence in 1821,Mexican Texaslegally permitted an influx of American settlers mainly from theSouthern United States,who within a decade outnumbered Hispanics in Texas,making English as common as Spanish incentralandnorth Texas. AfterTexas became an independent republicin 1836, English, with its distinct Southern influences, became the predominant language. After theMexican Revolutionof 1910–1920, a great number of Spanish-speaking Mexicans immigrated to Texas,slowing down in the mid-20th century only to increase massively since 1990,driving the development of a young Spanish-influenced dialect of Texan English: Tejano English.
Some linguists draw dialect boundaries based uponphonological(sound-pattern) differences and others on lexical (word-usage) differences, leading to various views on how to classify dialects in Texas, often by dividing the state into an eastern versus a western dialect region.20th-century lexical research delimited Texas into two "layers": a southern Texas layer along the Mexican border with several Spanishloanwordsand a central Texas layer settled by speakers of German and otherEuropean languagesamidst a dominantAnglo-Americansettlement.21st-century phonological research reveals accents in Texas grouped in a way not easy to demarcate in terms of simple geographical boundaries,and ongoing research reveals an urban–rural divide within Texas becoming more significant than a region-wide divide.
Some linguists propose thaturbanization, geographic andsocial mobility, and themass mediahave homogenized the speech of the United States to a national norm.Due to rapid urbanization, increasing dominance ofhigh techindustries, and massive migrations, Texan speech has been reshaped as well, especially since 1990.The general tendency in the phonology of Texas English is that mergers expand at the expense of distinctions, although traditional Southern-style Texan English preserved older phonemic distinctions.Since much of the traditional regional vocabulary concerned farming and rural life, these terms are now disappearing or being replaced by technical terms.
As stated above, an internal rural–urban split is emerging within Texan English, meaning that most traditionally Southern (or stereotypically Texan) features remain strong in rural areas but tend to disappear in large urban areas and small cities.The urban-rural linguistic split mainly affects Southern-style phonological phenomena like thepen-pin merger, the loss of the offglide in /aɪ/, and upgliding diphthongs, all of which are now recessive in metropolitan areas.Meanwhile, some traditional grammatical features likey'allandfixin' toare expanding tonon-nativesin metropolitan areas as well as to the Hispanic population.
Essentially all Texas English phonologically falls under theSoutheastern super-dialect regionof the United States and often specifically theSouthern dialect region, though noticeably not the cities of El Paso, Abilene, and Austin, and not particularly Houston and Corpus Christi.Moreover, as of 21st-century research, the accents of Dallas show enormous variability.
Texas English may use many grammatical constructions typically associated with Southern U.S. English, includingfixin' to,multiple modalslikemight couldandshould oughta(reportedly used by every social class and, as of the 1980sLinguistic Atlas of the Gulf States, predominately in Upper and Lower East Texas), and plural verbal-sas inOur father and mother helpsused by both Black and (somewhat less commonly) white Texans.
Many of these lexical terms are shared with the Midland and Southern dialects generally:
Due to Spain's past influence in Texas, the vocabulary of Texas is much more influenced by Spanish than the vocabulary of other states. Some of the Texan terms that originated from Spanish are listed below.
Texan English frequently shows up in the media. In the 1950s and 1960s, manyHollywoodwestern movieslikeGiant,Hud, andThe Alamowere set in Texas. In those movies, Hollywood stars likeJames Dean,Rock Hudson,Dennis Hopper,Paul Newman, andPatricia Nealfirst had to learn how to speak Texan English and were instructed by native Texans. Also the famous TV seriesDallaswas often characterized by Texan English.
Texas Instrumentssometimes uses Texan English in its products. The TIFORM software for itsTI-990minicomputer sometimes displayed "Shut 'er Down Clancey She's a-Pumping Mud" as a humorous error message.
The Texan accent gained nationwide fame with the presidency of native TexanLyndon B. Johnson. A lifelong resident of theTexas Hill Country, Johnson's thick accent was a large part of his personality and brought attention and fame to the dialect.
The Texan dialect gained fame again whenGeorge W. Bushstarted to serve as president. He had moved toWest Texasat the age of two and has since retained the Texan dialect. In his speech, words like "America" sometimes sound like "Amur-kah" or even just like "Mur-kah".Former U.S. Secretary of StateRex Tillersonalso speaks with a distinctively Texan accent.
Due to hundreds of years ofSpanishand laterMexicanintermingling, around 6 million (ca. 29%) people in Texas speak Spanish as the first language.Recent data shows that Spanish is still increasing.Since there are so many Spanish speakers in Texas, Spanish has a high impact on theEnglish dialectspoken in Texas.ManyMexican Americansin Texas speak their own variety of English which has many Spanish features (terms, phonology, etc.),TejanoEnglish, aChicano Englishdialect mostly spoken by working-class Mexican Americans. A very distinctive feature of that dialect is the /-t,d/-deletion in words which contain a /t/ or /d/ in the final position.