MACON, Ga. — Bless their hearts; the younger generation is losing their Southern drawl. The University of Georgia and Georgia Tech research shows the number of people with a traditional accent is dropping.
"I just talk country. I'm a Georgia Peach. Everywhere I go, they know where I'm from," Mildred Mimbs said.
Home to Mimbs is a place they call "your Southern home" in Cochran, Georgia.
"They call me the mouth of the South," Mimbs says.
She has lived in Cochran for the last 50 years but grew up in Hawkinsville.
That Southern drawl carries for Cochran natives. Temper Meadows says she'd rate the strength of her Southern accent an eight. Meaning she thinks it's pretty strong.
Shareia Wright Spivey is from Hawkinsville. She says she thinks she has somewhat of an accent, but because of her many moves around Georgia, her accent isn't as strong as her peers from home.
"Totally different ball game," she describes.
Over Yonder in Hancock County, we saw some similarities.
"I was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1961," Patrice Griffin said.
He moved to the county when he was 10 years old.
"I talk basically like I did when I left Michigan," Griffin said.
When talking around town, he notices the difference, "Every day, how people pronounce words. Vocabulary. That kind of thing.
"I wonder, am I supposed to speak like that," Nicoya Green asked.
Green grew up in Milledgeville and now is in Hancock County.
"I really don't hear my Southern accent because I grew up with English teachers as Godparents, so the Southern accent dissipated over the years," she said.
She says she's learned to realize her accent is a product of her environment.
"Sometimes when you grow up in a town more so than other people, It becomes engrained in you that this is how you're supposed to talk," Green shared.
According to research done by Professor Margaret Renwick, she is right.
"Once kids go to school they are in amongst their peers, they start talking like the other kids around them," she said.
That means the Southern accent is fading in many areas. However, this study was conducted in the Metro Atlanta area. However, you can expect this more in Generation Z. She describes their accent as pan-regional.
Renwick says the leading cause for the shift in accent is more people moving to Georgia from across the United States. She says by the 1980s, Georgia was one of the top states for migration.
"Population movements mean that Georgia speakers, growing up after the 1960s, were in a very different linguistic environment," she says.
Growing up in a rural versus an urban area can also impact your accent. The research does not dive into socio-economic status.
We continued to test the difference in accent by having people read two sentences.
1. We saw eight tiny icicles below our roof.
2. Don't ask me to carry an oily rag like that.
You can hear all the sentences here:
However, the South is still strong in the young people.
29-year-old Dublin native Sebastian Wilbanks says while he doesn't believe he has a Southern accent, he's been told that he does when he travels.
"I do not hear it, but if I go up north, I kind of have one. I kind of don't," Wilbanks said.
23-year-old Terrence Phelps also doesn't believe he has a Southern accent.
"I feel like I don't finish words. I say 'i-ain or you-ain or we-ain,'" he said.
Renwick says that the accent and our language will continue to change with time.
More on the study:
Renwick says the study analyzed the voices of 135 native Georgians born between 1880 and 2003. It spans seven generations in the Metro-Atlanta area. They are now interested in collecting data from Black voices. They expect to find some differences in pattern from the original study.