You Can Learn to Talk Like a Texan

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I’ve noticed that a lot of my foreign friends—those from places like Michigan and Connecticut—just do not fully understand the language of Texas. So I decided to do something about that.

I can’t make you fully fluent, of course. That would take being from here. But I can help prevent some of the more embarassing misunderstandings.

The first lesson is that Texas is huge and was settled by people from a lot of different places. They would arrive, make a town, and then all talk mostly just to each other for generations, so they kept their foreign accents—and sometimes their original languages.

I’m not talking about the original Texans. They unfortunately all died, left, were exiled to Oklahoma, or went undercover. More on that another time.

I’m not talking about the original European settlers. Their descendants are still here, and many of them still speak Spanish. In certain places, like El Paso, even the Anglos who’ve grown up there have a touch of Spanish accent.

I’m not talking about the Spanish conquistadors who wandered through, looking for gold, or the French pirates who made Galveston their base of operations.

I’m talking about the European and American settlers who invaded Texas during the 19th century and made themselves at home. Some were illegal immigrants into Mexico, when Texas was still part of it. My ancestors were among them.

Central Texas is dotted with wonderful small towns where many people still speak German, Czech, or whatever their ancestors spoke when they got here. When they talk, even when they’re speaking English, you can detect that in their accent.

South Texas is still home to many, many native Spanish speakers. My friend Juan was born in Brownsville, and he spoke mostly Spanish growing up, as everyone else in his neighborhood did. People who don’t know him think he’s from Mexico.

North Texas includes the southern part of the Great Plains—ranchers and farmers, a lot like West Texas, but the accents are slightly different. Dallas doesn’t count. It’s a big city, like Houston.

West Texas is what many outsiders expect all of Texas to be like—miles and miles of mostly flat plains and desert land. Most people out there are ranchers or farmers, and they speak more the way you expect westerners to speak—very softspoken and somewhat laconic.

In contrast, East Texas was settled mainly by people from the southern United States. The accents tend to reflect that, too. People from some parts of East Texas sound like people from Tennessee. Houston, of course, is a big melting pot. It’s a port, and not really part of East Texas at all.

And that just scratches the surface. When I was growing up, every little town had a different accent. People from Huntsville, 90 minutes north of Houston, sounded nothing at all like people from Madisonville, just 30 minutes farther north.

OK, that’s enough for today. Next time we’ll begin with that bane of non-Texans and non-Southerners, the dreaded “y’all”.