Whoa, now: The PIEDMONT accent may be closest to Received Pronunciation, but is not the whole South - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 28/07/2015 12:38:36 AM
View original postWiki only list it as the most common in the US but since the UK is divided into as many accent groups as the US with a smaller population and same is true for Canada especially considering a large number speak French. Australia's population is smaller than Texas. Can you name that is more common?
That raises another critical point: The "Southern" accent is itself subdivided into several others, including but not limited to the Piedmont, Appalachian, Deep South and Texas varieties. The Texas twang is especially distinctive, best approximated as a mix of Southern drawl and the nasal Midwestern accent, and found nowhere else (to my knowledge) except Oklahoma (i.e. northern North Texas.)
A large part of QUEBEC speaks French; most of Canada speaks English with its own accent, which is closest to Midwestern or New England accents (the latter at least as close to RP as Virginia Piedmont accent) in the same way the multiple Southern accents are closer to each other than to ANY other. Once we start considering RPs proximity to both Green Mountain and Piedmont accents which geography widely separates from each other, then the closely related English accents found in Canada and half of Africa, any claim Southern accentS have to be the most common English one becomes dubious.