English spoken the southern way | Bangkok Post: learning

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Here's a great example of the US southern dialect, familiar to anyone who likes US country music.

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The southern drawl

Arkansas is in the southern United States where people speak someone differently than they do in other parts of the country. This southern dialect will be familiar to anyone who likes US country music and it has also been made famous by two recent US presidents, Bill Clinton and George Bush. One of its most distinctive features is the drawl in which vowels tend to be longer than in other dialects. Here is an example sent to us from Chatchawan Chawengkul, a Thai native who moved to Arkansas many years ago. The man speaking is John Moore, one of his office co-workers.

drawl –  a slow way of speaking, with long vowel sounds  การพูดเนิบๆ, การพูดลากเสียง
dialect – a form of a language that people speak in a particular part of a country, containing some different words and grammar, etc ภาษาท้องถิ่น
distinctive - easy to recognise because of being different from other things พิเศษ, มีลักษณะเฉพาะ
feature – an important part or aspect of something  มีส่วนสำคัญใน

Watch the short video and listen carefully to Mr Moore’s pronunciation. You can see what he said below.

"Howdy.  My name is John Moore. I live in Bryant Arkansas, USA. I work in Little Rock Arkansas at Modern Image Systems which is a business office supply company. I’ve travelled the whole world but I’ve never been to Thailand. I would like to go there someday. My co-worker Josh who is from Thailand tells me many interesting stories about the people and places there.

Arkansas is located in the southern United States. The people there – the people in this country say that the people from the South speak with a southern drawl which is a dialect. I don’t think it sounds funny but a lot people do, but anyway, this is an example of it. So, you all come see us some time."

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