Just wanted to say a bit about the leads southern accent. Actually, it's just about right. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in the south talks like Foghorn Leghorn. I feel as if I'm listening to one'a the guys down at the store talk about deer huntin' when I hear Cullen talk. Very real, not overdone like one hears a lot of time on film when someone is emulating someone from the south.
Lot's of the other, I'm having a good time learning from you guys about what 'might be kinda incorrect or is kinda right.'
I really enjoy the show. I believe the depth of the characters will grow as it progresses.
MD
Marshall,
The comments about accent are so right. There is no “common” Southern accent, they all have a some of the Celtic burr and brogue with a bit more drawl. There are other influences from Spanish, French and probably some African dialect as well. Southerners sound alike to most Yankees, but to us they are very different. Just like the differences between Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis and so forth.
Having family from the South East to Texas I can tell you the accents vary a lot. In fact in Texas alone there must be 4 or 5 strong regional accents. The Eastern Texans sometimes have that Fog Horn Leg Horn buzz saw sound. Strangely enough the women in Dallas often have heavy accents and the men there have very neutral ones.
My father is from South Central Tennessee, we have family in Lawrence, Giles, Davidson and Loudon Counties in Tennesee; Lauderdale and Madison counties in Alabama; Warren and Laurel Counties in Kentucky; Cherokee and Buncombe counties in North Carolina. My mother’s family settled in Texas primarily in Columbus county with the earliest traveling from Pennsylvania just prior to the War between the states, the majority of them all moved from Lancaster county Pennsylvania about 1897 with a few families moving prior to WW I. Her family is scattered from Fort Bend, Uvalde, Dimmit, Hays, Tom Greene and Midland Counties. I’ve grown up hearing a lot of Southern Accents.
My Father had a definite South Central Tennessee lilt, and one of my sisters picked it up. My mother had undertones of German in hers because some of the family still spoke German even though the family had been in the U.S. since 1775 (that’s correct… 1775) My father’s family (family name) traces the earliest recorded birth in the U.S. to 1773 in North Carolina, that ancestor is buried in Giles county Tenn. At one time Tennessee was the Western wilderness part of NC just as Kentucky was the same for Virginia.
My father’s family on both sides was almost exclusively Scottish, my mother’s was almost exclusively German. I sometimes joke I am always at war with myself for that reason. I guess it is also why a lot of the family on both sides are engineers, machinists and technicians. The women on both sides have almost always been school teachers. I know that accents are picked up in one generation and they are evolving.
I actually have three accents, my daughters sometimes joke about it. I have my normal family accent which is a minor Southern accent, I have my very neutral military accent and I have a heavier drawl I switch into when I am around friends in the little town I technically call home. I don’t even realize I switch, they point it out and tease me about it. I actually slow my speech down when I get in that mode.
Cullen’s accent is a medium brogue, it probably fits the time period fairly well. I hadn’t realized how much of a brogue it was until I spent about half a year in Yonkers converting a defense manufacturer to a commercial company. The company was Israeli owned and the work force was primarily Eastern European and former Soviet states, except for the tooling shop. Every man in that shop was a young 20s or 30s man from Sligo county Ireland. I hadn’t realized a large area where the Bronx and Yonkers came together was primarily an Irish ghetto (in the good sense). Almost everyone there seemed to be a very young first generation Irish émigrés. I spent a lot of time with them because they were very warm and invited me to their homes. It was the women who pointed out they could understand me better than the other “Americans.” It seems my Southern accent “fit” their ear better, and I noticed I felt the same with them.
I later read up on it and found the brogue connection with the Southern accent. I have heard a lot of theories about the influence but having travelled quite a bit in Scotland and Ireland I would say they majority of the accent is from those two countries.
~Mako