How to Do a Texas Accent | Accent Training

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Texas is big. So there are a lot of different kinds of accents in Texas.
We’re going to work on a general Texas accent. What’s the oral posture
of a general Texas accent? Well, there’s a lot of bunching in the back
of the tongue. The back of the tongue is braced up against the back
molars and the opening in the back of the throat is so small that
sometimes you get that nasal, twangy sound that you hear right now. And the lip corners are tense, so you don’t get a lot of opening in the mouth.

Let’s talk about ‘r’ coloring. Don’t be shy. Rachel runs errands for
her mother and father on Saturday. Have fun with them r’s y’all. And
hear how that ‘r’ coloring affects words like ‘her’. Rachel runs
errands for her mother and father on Saturday. Her becomes her. All
the way in the back of the throat like that. And the ‘a’ diphthong
becomes ‘a’. Play. Tay. That ‘e’ turns to an ‘i.’ So in words like sorry and library, you’ve got sorry, library. Sorry. Library. And the ‘i’, becomes a diphthong, so it becomes a two element vowel. ‘I’ in pin and thin becomes pin, thin. Do you hear those two elements? ‘ii’, ‘ii.’

Have fun with the liquid ‘u’ in your Texas accent, so tune and new. Tune and new become tune and new.

So what’s the musicality of this accent? You hear a little twang in the sound, it’s a little bit slower possibly. But don’t take my word for it. Go listen to some native Texan accents. There are as many accents in Texas as there are people, so have fun with it.