I recently encountered a woman who has the perfect Southern accent. She's a Savannah, Georgia native and, with impressive finesse, drops the letter "r" in any word possible. Love it!
My own accent lacks the sugary sweetness of hers. When I say "bless your heart" people assume I'm being rude (which usually isn't a bad assumption), but when she says "bless your heart" people assume she's being sincere (although I'm not sure they should).
I've made many friends in Savannah who aren't from the South and I always have to give the high country versus low country talk. Most people genuinely don't realize there is a difference in dialect and accent.
Wrong.
I managed to find a couple YouTube videos to demonstrate the difference. The first one is a girl potentially from my own hometown in North Carolina. Her accent is genuine and very representative of our accent.
The second video is of a woman giving tips on how to do a deep southern accent (think Scarlett O'Hara). I apologize in advance because she sounds like an idiot and her accent is clearly fake. However, after much searching and little reward, this is the best I could find. You'll get the gist of it.
If you didn't know the difference in accents, then bless your heart I hope you learned something today. And yes, your assumption is correct -- I meant that "bless your heart" to be snarky.
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