Fwd: 16.1469, Sum: American Dialects

[Jim Parish]

Laurence Horn forwarded (with much snippage):
> 2) A related reason given was that there is a "hillbilly accent". This
>     hillbilly accent has been around TV since the Beverly Hillbillies, and
>     has been very successful in sitcoms.

"The Real McCoys", with a somewhat similar premise (West Virginia
family moves to California), predates "The Beverly Hillbillies" by quite a
few years (1957 vs. 1962). (Of course, the "hillbilly accent" has been a
staple of comedy in film for much longer; cf., e.g., "Murder, He Says"
(1945).)

Jim Parish