Don't assume intelligence based on accent.


Can you tell the difference in meaning between these two sentences?

(1) It makes the speaker sound like an idiot.
(2) It betrays the fact that the speaker is an idiot.

I said (1), not (2).

As pertains your previously assumed Southern Accent == Stupid Person assumption, that was (is?) such a commonly held belief that my best friend of 40 years who has lived his entire life in the South worked very hard not to betray that he came from the South through his pronunciation. When we met in our early twenties in rural North Carolina, I could not detect even the slightest hint of a Southern drawl in any of his speech. I asked him about that and he told me that he'd made the conscious decision to remove any hint of a Southern accent at around the age of seven. He did so because at that young age he was already familiar with the commonly held belief that a Southern accent betrayed a lack of intellect.