I was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas and now live in Crowley, Texas which is right next to Forth Worth (I work in Fort Worth). I grew up in the suburbs, so it wasn't a hick town or prarie or anything like that where I live, and I don't have an accent. When I go out, though, I will come across people, sometimes, who grew up in that sort of area, and they'll have a pretty heavy accent, and when you go out to town, you may even see some people in plaid shirts, cowboy boots, and ten gallon hats. Most of the area where I grew up looks like any other state. I don't wear any (to be honest, I really don't like them) but you see a lot of people in cowboy boots here and that's pretty much everywhere. The only time I see rodeos or any stereotypical Texas stuff is when I go out to the city. Of course, when you're riding through the back roads, though, you see wide acres and ranges, cows, horses, that sort of thing. And you might see some "cowboy wear" shops or something like that but not much. Your character may not have an accent. Like I said, I don't have one, and most the people I know don't have one. I imagine if she grew up in a more "country" area (if you know what I mean) then she'd have one, but if she grew up in a suburban area or an apartment, townhouse, or anything like that, she likely wouldn't have one. You could just make her like anyone else, really, unless you're going for a sort of "country girl" thing.
This. To paraphrase* columnist Lynn Ashby, formerly of the late lamented Houston Post: July in Houston, Texas, when dogs run mad and God looks down on us all and says, "Ten lousy little rules and ya'll couldn't even keep 'em. For that you get July in Houston, Texas." [It's paraphrased because while I know I've saved the clipping somewhere (the column is from 1971 or 1972), I can't find it. My family are all native Midwesterners but most of them migrated down to Texas over the years and stayed there. I spent those two summers there, and that's all.] The pin-pen thing is very Midwestern, and shows how far south that linguistic influence extends. But how you could show it I don't know, since everybody knows by context what you're talking about. If you want a super-oily (not in the petrol-producing sense; just unctuous) male Houston accent, try the ever-popular Joel Osteen. Listening to his wife Victoria won't help you much, since she's originally from Alabama. Which is too Suthun for your needs. Osteen's sound wouldn't fit your character, but hey, she'll have other people around her, right? You mentioned a tornado. Farther north they may or may not have basements to run to. Good chance they don't, due to the composition of the soil. They'd have a storm cellar instead. We hope. In Houston they definitely don't have basements. I was down there visiting a year ago when a bad storm hit and the TV was nattering on about tornado warnings and everybody take cover!!!! Like heck I will, not until you can tell me about an actual funnel cloud on the ground and can give me its speed and trajectory. Taking shelter would have meant five full-sized adults cramming themselves into the cubbyhole under the stairs, accessible only through a hatch in the rear of the pantry. The fine old art of telephone booth stuffing would have been nothing to it. This one works better spoken than spelled out, since it's essentially a pun. As in "dotting the i's."
Born and raised in Texas here! The most southern I get would be knocking the g's and n's off the end of my words and I use y'all (instead of you all for a group of people). Everything is bigger in Texas Here is a fun FB page for those who live in Texas or are just interested in Texas in general. Hope this helps! As far as culture goes.... I am from East Texas. I lived in Amarillo for a while (loved the constant breeze and the smell of the long grass on the wind) and Amarillo culture is far more typical of what people of as when the words Texas and Texan are brought up. Cowboy churches? Yep. Ride your horse on in, corral them and attend church. Steak? Oh yeah! Some of the best steak ever! Also there are rattlesnake round-ups where we cull the population down at certain times to help prevent them from being out-of-control and provide the venom to local hospitals- yes we do barbeque them and no, they don't taste like chicken. Sweet tea is cold. Hospitality is a must. We value ourselves for our hospitality and welcomes. Love this page! It is pretty accurate on some parts and just flat out goofy for others. Hope it helps! https://www.facebook.com/texashumor/
I'm going to have to be anal and point out that everyone has an accent. It might be an unoffensive, general British/American accent, but everyone has one.
I have to chime in here, as my family is from there, and I was raised in Lawton OK about 75 miles from Wichita Falls TX. I have never heard of a North Texas, it was East or West or near the borders. Okies were a low class nemesis to Texans when I was growing up, and still may be. You can practice the Texas accent at home. If it is West Texas just keep your teeth tight and say, "Steak n eggs." If it is East Texas just throw your bottom jaw forward and open wide at each vowel and say, "Steak n eggs."
I'm going to be more anal than you and say that that there's no such thing as either a General American or General British accent. There's the American "Newscaster Accent" - which is actually only natural in a really small area of the Midwest (I want to say it's like the Kansas/Iowa) border - but became the television standard because it sounds relatively neutral and flat (and the idea that it should be the standard is new - until at least the 1950s the Transatlantic Accent was the American media standard - although that one is almost totally extinct in the wild now). British "Received Pronunciation" is (I believe) basically an early 19th Century fad that caught on because people thought it sounded posh (American English still has rhotic Rs because it broke off before RP developed). *And no, I didn't double check any of those facts, so I may be misremembering.
There is such a thing as a very broad approximation of an American or British accent. American accents tend toward voicing intervocalis /t/, whereas British accents generally swap it for a glottal stop; American accents tend to be rhotic, whereas British accents aren't. I won't bother with American examples because I'm English, but there's a huge swath of the population of England that speaks a very neutral, southern accent (non-rhotic, trap-bath split, foot-strut split, etc.) that I'd be hard placed to pinpoint to any one town. It's just omnipresent. That's what I'd call the General accent; the one which, upon hearing it, doesn't make you think the speaker is from anywhere specific.
Maybe this is just my own personal neurosis but I personally recoil at the idea of calling the most spoken accent in a country the General accent or neutral. That makes it sound like other accents are either deviant or non standard, or that everything else is a variation on the General (which is definitely not the case with British RP - it's historically very young compared to other British accents). The reality is that dominant accents, while widespread and often encouraged by the government education system, do tend to have regional components. You said yourself the the "General" British accent is primarily associated with Southern England, and if I hear that accent it's pretty easy to nail down roughly what region of England the speaker is from and probably their social class (or at least to eliminate the entire North of England, the far Southwest, and large swathes of London). It might be the most spoken accent in the country but that doesn't make it more or less normal than a Scouse accent or a Cornish accent.
I wouldn't dream of suggesting that some accents are more normal or correct than others, that's one of the opinions I loathe most in people. There are accents, though, that transcend individual regions and that are inoffensive to everyone. You won't meet people who struggle to understand that general psuedo-southern accent, and you'll find speakers of said accent all up and down the country. You will find people who struggle with Geordie, though, and that's infinitely more concentrated.
