The distinct drawls and twangs that dominate America's Southeast as we know it may be dying off, new research suggests.
A North Carolina State University study has noted a gradual shift away from the drawn-out vowel pronunciations widely associated with Southern speech, which experts say is 'disappearing'.
Linguists say upper and middle classes in the state capital of Raleigh have adopted a distinctly 'less Southern' drawl in recent years, and it's a trend that will continue.
Robin Dodsworth, an associate linguistics professor at North Carolina State University, who collected hours of recordings of people native to the capital of Raleigh, states that 'the Southern accent the way we think of it now is different than the way people in the South talked 50 years ago, 100 years ago, and so forth.'
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