Audra McDonald Quotes

The authentic Gullah dialect is actually very clipped, and so it would sound almost Jamaican and be very odd to an American audience's ears. It's not the typical Southern dialect that we're used to. It has a much more percussive rhythm to it.

What I do onstage, there's maybe .0001 percent of the population that acts like that. I talk like that because it makes me laugh, and because I know a couple of people that talk like that. They're really that Southern. And they do funny things. I love 'em; they're awesome. They're good people.

The East Texas accent is a famously difficult accent to do.

I have cousins in North Carolina who talk in that old Southern style of 'yakking,' if you will. All the black men in my life when I was a boy talked that way, and I love that kind of talk.

I had family in Carolina who were very hood and talked differently in this sort of Southern cadence.

For one, the 'countryness' is pretty much in my blood. I'm from Georgia, down south. That voice just lives in me.

The average Southerner has the speech patterns of someone slipping in and out of consciousness. I can change my shoes and socks faster than most people in Mississippi can speak a sentence.

Black English is simpler than standard English in some ways; for example, it often gets by with just 'be' and drops 'am,' 'is,' and 'are.' That's because black English arose when adult African slaves learned the language.

I think anything sounds good with a Southern accent.

Tell me the truth - do you think I've lost my Southern accent? I feel it comes back to me only when I'm shouting at fights or at baseball games.

What you hear is southern Michigan, not a drawl, but a halting kind of speech where you leave spaces when there shouldn't be any. We take a breath anywhere.

English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.

You can't do Shakespeare with a Southern accent, honey.

I know the cadence of the language and the voice of Atlanta because I've lived here for so long.

I'm from the South, and there's a different understanding of how to chop. There's a syllable play. It's a delicate art. Your accent has a lot to do with it. If you're from a certain area, words don't roll of your tongue as slick.

Y'all are so cute and y'all talk so proper over here. I love England.

Next to fried foods, the South has suffered most from oratory.

There's something about Southern characters.

I'm really drawn to comedy. I grew up in the South, so I'm drawn to all things southern, so my role in 'Getting On' has been fun for me to play something southern - I always feel like I understand those characters more because of where I was raised.

The fact that I have a Southern accent and write about a lot of rural things leads people to put me in the country category.

I went to NYU drama school, so I was a very serious actress. I used to do monologues with a Southern accent, and I was really into drama and drama school. And then, in my last year of drama school, I did a comedy show, and the show became a big hit on campus.

Even when a Geordie is trying to be nasty, it doesn't sound that threatening.

I bring a lot of 'y'all' up to New York with me.

Can I play a southern character? You betcha. Can I do the voice of Tourist Dad and Carnival Barker? Ya betcha. Can I do Fix-It Felix? Ya betcha. But I don't want to just play southern characters, so I hide it; I bury it. I tamp it down like a secret. Like a dirty little secret.

When you say, 'Southern,' or you speak about a southern accent, there's always that drawl, and usually from white people. That's what people associate with the South. But we're all different. The black southern accent is different.