Overview of Southern dialects
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The variety of Southern dialects generally includes the Confederate states that seceded from the United States during the American Civil War, plus those that were divided by the conflict. Southern dialects substantally originated from immigrants from the British Isles who moved to the South in the 17th and 18th centuries, of whom most were of European Celtic origins (according to an 1860 census, "three-quarters of white Southerners had surnames that were Scottish, Irish or Welsh in origin." [1]). Some of these immigrants brought with them very distinct styles of Gaelic influenced English, and usually settled inland. Others with mostly English roots, and usually settled along the Atlantic coast. Both strains combined with the African influences from the African Americans who were at this time enslaved in the South. Others brought accents from other cultural and linguistic traditions and this diversity combined with the South's geographic separation, and longtime use and familiarity with the King James Version of the Bible in religious life, to produce a unique American dialect.
Southern dialects in some form can be found chiefly in the States of Alabama,Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, and the Ozark and Little Dixie areas in Missouri. The dialect found in the remaining rural areas of tidewater Maryland is similar to the dialect found in Virginia, and some experts have also suggested that the dialect found in two of Delaware's three counties is related to Southern. There are also places in Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona, where the prevailing dialect is Southern in character, due to historical settlement by Southerners. Also, the speech patterns in the rural areas of the southernmost counties of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois - all originally settled by Southerners - can also be considered Southern.
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