More on Southeast Texas Accents

I am afraid I may have offended some of my friends by what I wrote yesterday regarding the nasal twang of the Southeast Texas accent. I did a Google search to see if I could find anymore about the accent and to find some corroboration for my opinion. To my amazement I found that Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital here in Beaumont offers classes in accent reduction. When I read that, I thought the Southeast Texas accent must be more of a problem than I realized. Then I read a little more and found the classes are offered to people who speak English as a second language. Now I am really in trouble!

I found an interesting article on the PBS website: Texas English. This article says that the Texas accent is disappearing in the large metropolitan cities in Texas because of the migration into Texas. Another article on the subject: Texas twang: Fixin' to fade?. The reason this subject has been on my mind is that I spent three days on a tour bus with a group of senior citizens who were mostly natives of Southeast Texas. Their accents were very pronounced. This caused me to think about accents. Please do not be offended.