The Accent Thread

[WildHearted]

Originally Posted by louielouie2000

The Scarlet O'Hara accent is a Lowcountry accent, which is really only native to the area between Charleston, SC & Savannah, GA (and it only stretches maybe 50 miles inland from the Atlantic). So the funny thing is, if Scarlet O'Hara were a real person, she would NOT have sounded the way Vivien Leigh did in Gone With The Wind. Being a lifelong Southerner, whenever I hear the Lowcountry accent used in TV shows & movies for every Southerner from Texas to Virginia, I get pretty annoyed. Southern accents vary pretty wildly, even within any given Southern state.

People in Augusta, GA also have the accent, or did at one point. That's where my Grandparents are from and they and their families (though not her children) had it heavily.

That said, I lived in Savannah for 5 years, and I VERY rarely heard anyone speak with a Lowcountry accent. If I did, they were middle aged or older, which leads me to think it's perhaps dying out a bit. There are plenty of people with thick country accents, but it's closer to what I heard living around Atlanta than what I would consider the Scarlett accent.

Also, to the people who are saying they don't know what it sounds like: have you ever seen The Golden Girls? It's the way Blanche (played by Rue McLanahan) talks.