Just my two cents for y'all who ain't from the south, I don't care how much Dukes of Hazzard, In the Heat of the Night, Designing Women, Nashville, Walking Dead or True Blood (South Louisiana is it's own culture altogether) you've watched, you're never going to get is so perfectly right that you can pass yourself off as a native. You just can't. Take for example "hello." Think "hey y'all," or even worse "howdy" is correct? Think again. It would be "howsyourmommanem." Not only is it already a tongue-twister, you have to say it in a way that compresses five grammatically incorrect words into one, no easy feat.
Or maybe you've lived in Atlanta, Nashville or Raleigh for four years and think yourself appropriately southern-ized. Let me ask you this: I went to college in Chicago for four years. What do you think would happen to me if I walked into some shitty Southside bar and started talking like Bill Swerski? If you answered "you'd get curbstomped by some 350 pound guy who actually does sound like Bill Swerski," you are correct.
Hell, we're not even one, two or even three cultures. Rufus from Demopolis, Alabama "in the pines," is going to have very little in common with Elrod from the upland south (Appalachian Plateau and Mountains) and they both might as well be from the moon to Legare from Charleston, South Carolina. And don't even get me started on the Ozark people over in Arkansas. They might as well be from outside the asteroid belt to me, and I grew up only one state over. And I feel the need to address the people who say "Well Florida isn't really the south." Let me see what you think after I take you on a scenic outing to Bottle Caps Bar in Bithlo, Florida, just 15 miles from the trendy clubbers on Orange Avenue in downtown Orlando