From The Atlantic.

Annie Joy Williams was raised in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, near Nashville, “where the accents
grow stronger with each mile you travel from the city,” she writes. “My dad has always had a southern accent: His words fall out of his mouth the way molasses would sound if it could speak, thick and slow.”

Growing up, Williams watched people snicker at redneck characters on television. “I knew what the accent was supposed to convey: sweet but simpleminded … I was always clear on one fact: I wasn’t going to have a southern accent when I grew up.”

Recent studies suggest she’s part of a trend: Young people are losing their southern accents. But if this keeps up, Williams writes, “by the end of my life, there may be no one left who speaks like my father outside the hollers and the one-horse towns.”

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