dialects - Why has Southern US English all but abandoned adverb forms?


In Southern US English, adverb forms are almost always replaced by their adjective forms. For example:



The journey was awful long.
He's running real fast.
He ran to the store quick.
He plays tennis good.



This seems something unique to Southern US English. What dynamic is there in that region that has resulted in this loss of a distinct adverb and adjective?



Answer



"Real" and "awful" as intensifiers go back a real long time, and are much further widespread than the U.S. South. See this ngram. With respect to these particular terms, I imagine people in the South speak English just as good as anywhere else.


real/really fast, awful/awfully bad


For "ran quick", you might actually have a valid complaint, since Ngrams shows "quickly" is much more common. But one example isn't good evidence of a general trend towards adverb loss.


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