Modern UK accents do not sound as muck like accents from Victorian UK as modern Southern accents do. That really is not that hard to understand or surprising if you think about it. The people in the American South were Victorian Brits when they came over and being more isolated the their cousin back across the pond it is hardly surprising they have less drift.
View original postMy bad; I should stop overestimating people, but it will not happen again: Promise.
You would have to understand them to make any accurate estimate all.
View original postYou also said "the" Southern dialect is the "largest" English one, which is dubious at best. When that doubt was noted, you doubled down by switching the topic from dialect to ACCENT (which is a different thing) and saying the Southern accent (which ONE?!) is most like Victorian English and thus probably most like British English (good luck convincing anyone outside or even most WITHIN the US that the British speak "accented US English.)and modern Englishare : ONE Southern dialect.
Accent and dialect are similar with accent being a subgroup to dialect. Dialect would have been the correct term and the American southern dialect.
Just because a people don't like the idea makes it no less true. The modern British non-rhetoric accent did come about until it became fashionable in the 1800s. If you spoke to a Brit in 1750 he would have sounded different but he would have sound more like he was from North Carolina then Liverpool. These are simple facts but feel free to present facts to contradict me.
View original postView original postBut yes it does all come down to how you subdivide the accents and I went with what linguist say but you go with whatever makes you happy. Just treat it the same way you do politics and religion.
View original postWhen discussing "ya'll" v. "you guys" etc. it comes down to dialect; accent is a(n irrelevant) question of how to pronounce words like "tomato" that are spelled and used the same in all English dialects. It might be wise to consult Wikipedias authoritarian lingual scholars further before proceeding further here. Either way, while majorities on half of all continents use English as a native language (and the majority of a fourth speaks it,) "ya'll" is rarely found outside the Southern US (ironically, the biggest exception is in urban US areas, largely due to the Great Migration from the South.) In terms of accents (once again) only ONE of many Southern accents is even remotely like Victorian OR modern British English, and that particular "Southern" accent is closer to New Englands, Britains and South Africas than to ANY other Southern one.
View original postJust treat "dialect" and "accent" like "patriotism" and "proof," declaring them redefined however serves your preferred worldview.
Y'all is new creation that did not become commonly used until the 1800s so it is hardly surprising that is used mostly in the US but there is a lot more to the American southern dialect than that one contraction.