Sounds Like the South Is Alive and Well-Spoken

All y’all who wanted to do somethin’ ‘bout that Southern drawl, forget it.

After a four-year run, Greenville Technical College here has canceled its course titled “How to Control a Southern Accent.”

The course earned the two-year school a lot of publicity--and some hate mail--but in the end it died for lack of interest. Only two people signed up for the spring semester.

School official Anne Richardson said the course began when she heard people complain that their accents interfered with business.

“Instead of listening to what you’re saying, they’re passing the phone around the office saying, ‘Listen to this little honey from South Carolina.’ It’s self-defeating. It’s annoying. It’s humiliating.”

Instructor David Pence helped folks say Ann instead of A-yun and ice instead of aice. Students included a former Miss South Carolina who wanted to sound like the other Miss America contestants, an actress who wanted to play roles other than Southerners and a doctor who wanted to tone down his accent while making Rotary speeches.

But some people saw the course as a slap in the face to an entire culture. A Los Angeles man wrote that he would rather hear a Southern woman reading from the phone book than listen to Beethoven. A Greenvillian suggested that Pence go back to Arkansas. And a matron here recommended that Pence be shot for heresy.

So why did interest die out? With tongue firmly in cheek, Richardson offered three possible reasons: Everybody’s cured. Everybody thinks the rest of the world talks funny. Or, in a country that now has a Southern President and vice president, maybe nobody much cares any more.