sentences:  Southern accents are colloquially described as a "drawl" or "twang," being recognised most readily by the Southern Vowel Shift initiated by glide-deleting in the vowel (e.g.pronouncing "spy" almost like "spa"), the "Southern breaking" of several front pure vowels into a gliding vowel or even two syllables (e.g.pronouncing the word "press" almost like "pray-us"), the pin–pen merger, and other distinctive phonological, grammatical, and lexical features, many of which are actually recent developments of the 19th century or later.