San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1897-12-27
THE SOUTHERN ACcENT.

citicises the attempts of the n0thern
actors to initiate Southern accent in
plays puiporting to represent southern
| types. "Southerner' SAYS;
"nhe southerner does not say sab
He does not say sub. He says sir, with
the II ended when Just begun.
1T should always be remembered
that the dialect of the negro is, as il
we're, an African speaking broken
nglish. but the accent of the white
utherners is that of an Englishman
lose tongue has changed under the
AS; of evolution, some of which |
ave. mentioned. The Englishmen in
sistfalil and Cape Colony do not talk
precisely like, Englishmen in England,
nor like each, other, although Cape
Colonisrs and australians do not de-
part SO far from the English of Eng
land as. do the English of the south,
/ simply because the c0lonists have
never been left so completely alone
| by the English of England as have
been the English of the south.
.'Southerners and New Englanders
speak English more correctly than
people in other parts of the Union. l
| believe that southerners pronounce
| the yowels more nearly according to
| the dictionaries than any other people
| in the Union except the New England
| ers. Dictionaries, however, are for,
of and by New Englanders. l am
particularly happy to say that south
erners, although they might slight the
| r, yet they do not seize upon it with
| Teutonic ayidity, and vent sound
very much like one choking over an
eigh-ounce. oyster. That is what is
done TO the Il in the greater portion
of the north and west"
| The Washington Post heartily
| agrees with ,''Sourherner," and takes
up the cudgel against Thespian misrep-
reservations of the southern accent
and manners. ''The Suns corespon-
dent" says the Post. Estates the case
very fairly for the south ar large, and
he is supported in this by very high
English authority. Lawrence the au-
thor of Guy Livingstone and other
stories of the kind, who had great
vogue some thirty years or more ago,
visited this country during our war;
He spent several months ON this side,
and was on both side of the line, and
sojourned in Baltimore quite a long
land he wrote book called Border
and Bastile,' in which he recounted
his adventures, his experiences and
his impressions. and in this
| book he stated that in Bal
timore and among the better class of
southerners he encountered in the con-
federacy he heard the only near APP
proach to the accent and pronunci-
alton of cultivated Englishmen which
had greeted him in America South
ern character, manners and dialect
have frequently been misconstrued
and misrepresented not only by play
wrights and actors, but by northern
fiction writer's. Such eXagerations
have never been seriously regared by
the southern people, though southern
ers in the north may feel resentful of
them now and then. The Post, pub
lished in a city whose social life was
for many years ruled by southern
standards, has doubtless oberved in
il contact with southern statesmen
that southern people compare very
well in all the essentials of culture
and intelligence with the people of
other sections. The south has its pro-
vincialisms, and so have other sec
tons, but il is also a fact that the
white people of the southern states re-
| tain more generally the customs and
accent of Americas English ancestry,
for the reason that immigration from
continental Europe has not located to
any considerable extent in the south-
ern states, and marriages between ma
tives and people of continental ances-
try have been rare. Hence the south
erners have lost less of the original ac-
cent than have people of those sections
which have received the bulk of con-
tinental emigration. The Post con-
cludes its observations with this bit
| of tart rebuke: Some day we should
| like to see careful and Informed an
alysis of the stage and newspaper
| conference.-the black mustached,
scowling, staggering rutfian, in long
| tailed broadcloth coat and high-heeled
boots, prolific of bad English and look
| ing always for scrap-the Kind of
creature who says 'sah' to everything,
and carries revolver and chew or
| tobacco into drawing-roOms, and new
| er understands the simplest question
of good society. This preposterous and
absurd caricature has become fatigu-
| ing. He appears, treated in a Serio-
comic way, in the extravaganzas of
Hoyt. and in the more pretentiOus but
equally grotesque comedies of Angus
tus Thomas. The high-class south
erners greet this mountebank with
| good humored cotempt, but for the
sake of history and truth, why should
such nonsensical enormities be per-
| petrated? Why should not someone
competent and qualified for effective
| speaking. take hold of this tiresome
humbug and turn it wrong side out?
The stage version of the sorthern ac-
cent is fantastic enough. The stage
version of the southerner himself, his
dress. manner and speech, is intOler-
ably outrageous. Why can not we
have southern play with real south
erners and accurate local color in it?
The experiment, intelligently conduct
ed. would be profitable"
AN ;rNtrNkITIJy TRAnE