Language is always primarily related to Literature, writing, and communications. But once you bring in dialects and accents, things start to change; now we are talking about geography, and possibly some history. The English language and American English in particular has changed a bit since I was young…all languages do. They are organic things. In my life I have seen that while there is always foment in how we express things and communicate, there has been some amazing amounts of homogenization too.
It used to be that you were marked by how you spoke, this usually signified where you came from. Now, with the aid of modern technology (Radio, TV, movies, and the real time connectivity of the internet) there has been a winnowing down of some of these regional differences. Now a southern accent is only a nuanced thing…that is, unless you still live in some distant cultural backwater. It is this was with all of the various differences in how we express things to each other. The twangs are less twangy, the drawls have gotten less molasses laden, and the hard R’s have started to soften and even to get swallowed in some places.
There are reasons for this. TV news readers have an incredible impact upon how we all speak, to the degree that regional differences are slowly merging with the mean.
I can only imagine that linguistic historians are having more and more difficulty in finding places where people speak regional patois in a truly authentic manner.
The American Dialect Homepage
http://www.evolpub.com/Americandialects/AmDialhome.html
Map of American English dialects
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGxlxOcS-tE
Which American accent do you have?
http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?action=go_detail&sub_action=take&obj_id=9827
North American English Dialects
http://www.aschmann.net/AmEng
Linguistic Geography of the Mainland United States
http://www.evolpub.com/Americandialects/AmDialMap.html
