For a lot of Americans, unfortunately, the biggest exposure one gets to Southern Accents is from the fake, “dumb on purpose” caricature that defines country music stars and Larry The Cable Guy. I’m from Montana, and know several born-and-raised Montanans (and Oregonians, Washingtonians, even Californians) with completely inexplicable drawls (people decidedly not sharing any familial or otherwise relationship with the South) that lapse in and out of perceptibility based on circumstance.

It wasn’t until I had a research advisor who was verifiably not a dullard that I even had an option to consider anything to the contrary of the base American conception that a Southern accents indicates stupidity, laziness, pig-headedness, etc.

The death of the region accent really is a crying shame. Glad my folks still have their hokey Saskatchewanesque lilt.