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American Southern: Soft-R Accent
Southern: Soft-R is a classic accent that is not as common today, with the R-sound dropped after vowels. It's what you often hear in plays by Tennessee Williams and others - and Hollywood gets it wrong all the time!
American Southern: Soft-R Accent Learning Materials
- The Soft-R Southern materials include recordings of AccentHelp coaches Kate DeVore & Jim Johnson guiding you through learning the accent, using the text, as well as a number of recordings of native speakers. Coach Jim Johnson gathered most of these recordings during numerous trips all over the south - bringing the experience back to you in this download.
- You'll get four versions of the written materials: a PDF file to print or read on a standard computer, a large-format PDF for portable reading devices, and MOBI for Kindle and EPUB for other portable readers.
- This accent is appropriate for productions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Driving Miss Daisy, Crimes of the Heart and lots of other plays. You also hear it in films like In the Heat of the Night and from people like Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.
- This download includes BONUS tracks of Jim Johnson leading you through a practice monologue in this Soft-R American Southern accent.
- In addition to this Soft-R "non-rhotic" Southern accent, AccentHelp also offers the "rhotic" American Southern: Hard-R accent. This Hard-R Southern is a more common accent in the South today, and since it covers such a large geographical area, we also have Hard-R Southern Volume 2 and Hard-R Southern Volume 3 available. (Get all four at a special discount!) You might also want to look at the Texas accent Vol. 1 and Texan Vol. 2.
Audio files (122.7MB, 124 minutes)
- Introduction to Sound Placement, Intonation, and Helpful Hints to acting with the accent (4:55)
- Consonant sound changes for learning a Soft-R American Southern accent (7:40)
- Vowel changes in a Soft-R American Southern accent (6:07)
- changes in Diphthongs for this classic Southern accent (2:52)
- Alternate Pronunciations for words in American Southern (1:18)
- Wrap up of the principles for learning a Southern accent (1:01)
- Female from Georgia reading (1:23)
- + her conversation (2:59)
- second Female from Georgia reading (1:13)
- + her conversation (2:55)
- Male from Savannah Georgia reading (1:01)
- + his conversation (2:43)
- Male from Mississippi reading (1:31)
- + his conversation (4:10)
- Female from Biloxi Mississippi reading (1:14)
- + her conversation (4:47)
- Female from Bay St. Louis Mississippi reading (1:08)
- + her conversation (3:00)
- Female from Norlina North Carolina reading (1:11)
- + her conversation (1:52)
- Female from Lexington South Carolina reading (1:47)
- + her conversation (4:14)
- Male from Lexington South Carolina conversation (5:15)
- Female from Charlotte North Carolina reading (1:10)
- + her conversation (6:13)
- Millard Fuller interview (4:44)
- Charleston South Carolina Male reading (2:05)
- + conversation with Charleston Male & Femaile (5:08)
- Charleston South Carolina Female reading (2:21)
- + her conversation (9:35)
- BONUS Text Practice (14:31)
- BONUS Text Intonation (10:19)
- BONUS Text Example (1:25)
Most of these recordings are made "in the field" so you will hear such things as birds, cars or other people in the background. A transcription of the conversations is included to help you follow along.
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