I have met Asian chicks with southern accents before. While not common, they are not unheard of in the urban centers of the deep south. They tend to have a brand of Southern accent generally found in members of my generation. It is a result of language skills being equally learned from parents and cable TV. Yesterday, at a restaurant, I overheard a conversation between two young ladies, one of whom was Asian.

She did not have a mild accent. She had a full-on rural Alabama drawl. This is the type of accent that can only come from life in an area with no cable, bad TV reception, and little contact with Yankees. I was intrigued, and had to perform a test. I caught her gaze, smiled politely, and she smiled back.

Yes! Her smile was classic. At the first moment, it was perfunctory and reflexive, and then she saw I was a male of approximately her age. The smile morphed to something that said "Maybe I am interested, but you will never know. I give you this smile as a favor, and you should feel grateful and indebted."

There was no doubt about it. She is an Asian Southern Belle; an interesting cultural anomaly, to say the least.

In a related note, I once had a friend who was Pakistani and had a back-woods Alabama accent. Her father was a doctor in a rural area. Although she had the speech patterns, Islam apparently does not mix well with the Southern Belle personality. Interestingly she dressed like a model straight off the runway, yet very conservatively with long dresses and long sleeves.