Regional differences in the noises we make aren’t just confined to humans. A recent study in England showed that urban ducks are loudmouths compared to their country cousins. (Of course, we humans are far too suave and sophisticated for something like that to hold true among us.)
Researches plan to turn their attention next to the dialectical differences among the wolves in Tex Avery cartoons.
“Just look at a cartoon like Little Rural Riding Hood (1949),” one researcher said. “In that cartoon Country Wolf has a pronounced, rustic ‘aw, shucks, golly’ manner of speech, with marked differences in vowelization, consonantal dropping, cadence, word choice, and even syntax when compared to his cousin, City Wolf, who basically sounds like Charles Bouyer.”
“Compare those two to The Wolf From Down South, who appears in cartoons such as Sheep Wrecked (1958) and Blackboard Jumble (1959). He always speaks in a friendly, laid-back, ‘Hey, y’all!’ manner with an accent and intonations that could come from any of the Gulf South states.”
“These can’t be attributed to anything other than regional differences,” the researcher noted, “because all three wolves were voiced by actor Dawes Butler, meaning that the biological substrate for each wolf’s vocal capacities was identical.”
