A sweet lady recently wrote to me that she was happy to have a son with a proper, solid, two-syllable Texas name. “His name is Ben,” she wrote.
That delighted me. We do that, don’t we? At least many of us do. There are 30 million Texans, so there are plenty of dialects. But in the traditional or classic Texas dialect, we tend to turn one-syllable words into two-syllable ones. Ben becomes “Bey-uhn.” Jet becomes “Jay-ut.” Mess is “May-us.” I call that the Texas diphthong.
And believe it or not, some of us are so talented that we can turn a one-syllable word into a triphthong. We can squeeze three into one. Ham becomes “Ha-uh-um.” Television evangelists have particularly mastered this skill, and they really like to stretch out the vowels in words like “hell,” which becomes “hay-uhl-ah.” It sounds scarier that way. When they say it like that, it sounds no different from hail falling from the sky—so I’m not sure whether they’re talking about fire or ice.
And that’s something typical of us Texans. We don’t distinguish between certain sounds that people up north consider very different. We don’t distinguish between the pen we write with and the pin we wear on our jacket. Up north, they say “Bic pen” with a short e and “flag pin” with a short i. We say both Bic pen and flag pin the same way, with a short i. A perfect rhyme. Up north, they pronounce “beer” and “bear” differently. Some Texans don’t distinguish between the bear they run from and the beer they drink to celebrate getting away.
I got many of these examples from my friend Dr. Lars Hinrichs, who is a professor of linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin—a word doctor. He has been studying Texas English for years, and he tells me that we are seeing accent leveling in the I-35 corridor (the area along Interstate 35, which runs through central Texas from north to south). That means the mixing of all the newcomers’ accents with ours is creating phonetic hybrids. So the classic Texas dialect in the corridor is not as strong as it was 20 years ago. It’s evolving. Compared with the corridor, however, East and West Texas are leveling at a glacial pace. You’ll also be glad to know that, according to Dr. Hinrichs, “y’all” is not losing ground. It may even be spreading because it is so grammatically efficient. All you newcomers are picking it up. Some linguists say that even Californians and New Yorkers have started using it.
Hollywood has trouble with the Texas accent and often hires dialogue coaches for authenticity. When Michael Caine came to Texas to film Secondhand Lions, he had trouble mastering the Texas accent. His dialogue coach reportedly told him that Texans let their words lean on one another. Caine said he realized that British English is concise, crisp, and precise, while Texas English is relaxed: Each word leans on the next and just lets things flow smoothly. He learned to stretch out the vowels and let the consonants lean on one another. That’s it. That’s the secret. I won’t say he mastered it perfectly, but I will say that Secondhand Lions was a great Texas movie.
So the Texas accent is in no danger of dying out. But I think we should try to keep it from becoming endangered. We wouldn’t want to have to establish the Foundation for the Endangered Texas Accent (FETA). We can prevent that if all y’all use “y’all” a dozen times a day and are always fixing to do something. Loosen up with your language. Let your words lean on one another. And be sure to use your Texas diphthong every chance you “gee-ut.”
