Kevin Spacey grew up in California, but in House of Cards, he plays a politician from
South Carolina. "As we used to say in Gaffney..." The first thing you'll notice about Spacey's
accent when he's playing Frank Underwood is what happens to a lot of his Rs. "Money is
the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after 10 years. Power..." This is called
r-dropping, and it's a feature of several well-known dialects. "He would rather the
poor were poorer." "The greatest wilderness on Earth." "In the tradition of bipartisanship."
"Metropolitan Museum of Art." But it's also associated with the upper class of the plantation
South. "This war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring." R-dropping emerged
as kind of an affectation among posh people in southern Britain in the 18th century -- the
English didn't always talk that way. And then it spread to elites on the East Coast of the
US. At the same time, r-dropping was a feature of the creole and West African languages spoken
by some of the slaves in the South and their descendants. But after World War II, new generations
of white Southerners essentially abandoned r-dropping, so today you'll see it mostly
in the very oldest generation, or more frequently with African-American speakers from the South.
Take Lindsey Graham as an example. Like Kevin Spacey's character, Graham is from the northern
part of South Carolina, and his Rs are largely intact. "going to sell the oil to another
customer." And that may be because language in the Southern Appalachian areas was influenced
by settlers from Ireland, where people aren't exactly shy with their Rs. "Seriously. Serious.
How close does that sound to the Kentucky accent where they talk like that and I'm talking
like this?" Regardless, R-dropping probably can't be the shortcut that white actors use
to sound Southern in the future. Instead, the main feature that unites Southern dialects
is something called /ay/-ungliding. For people outside the South, this vowel has two parts.
You can probably feel your tongue shifting as you say the word "buy." But in Southern
speech, /ay/ is a one-part vowel in many cases, sounding more like ah than ay. "Five" "and
livelihoods" "terrified." But there's an important distinction here that Northerners might not
be aware of. Most Southerners only do ay-ungliding before what's called voiced consonants, or
at the end of a word. The difference between voiced and voiceless consonants is whether
your vocal chords vibrate when you say them, and ay-ungliding before voiceless consonants
is stereotyped in the South as a less-educated way of speaking. "But I don't want your life."
Ay-ungliding triggers a shift in the vowels, or in the space in the mouth where the vowels
are formed. The ey-sound shifts lower in the mouth. "And then blame somebody else." The
eh-sound moves forward to the front of the mouth. "Just as strong and opinionated as
men." As do the vowels pronounced in the back of the mouth like go and boot. "Thank you."
These vowel shifts occur to different degrees in different parts of the South, and they're
certainly fading in cities where there's a lot of migration and generational change.
But if you're an actor from the North or the West, the vowels are really the key
to sounding Southern.