Tidewater accent

The Tidewater accent is a variety of English spoken in the Tidewater region of Virginia. It's a subvariety of Southern American English and features include:

• non-rhoticity/R-dropping or variable rhoticity
• conversion of a to e in certain cases, making afraid and bake sound like afred and Beck.
• limited trap-bath split: words like rather bath and can't are pronounced with broad-a.

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Tidewater Accent Media

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  The area in dark purple approximates the Plantation Southern dialect region, excluding the Lowcountry (the Atlantic coast of South Carolina and Georgia).

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  The old Virginia accent was mostly spoken in the central and eastern regions of the state, excluding the Eastern Shore of Virginia on the Delmarva Peninsula.