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The Dialects of American English
The various Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) who invaded Britain after 437 AD brought with them their own dialects of West Germanic. These formed the basis for the emergence of later dialect areas. The submergence of the various British Celtic languages (of which Welsh is the only modern survivor) also lead to innovations in British English. The Viking invasions resulted in more Norse influence in the north than in the south, thereby contributing another layer to the existing dialects. Likewise, the Norman French invaders influenced the south more than the north, which came to be more conservative linguistically. The Great Vowel Shift of the 1500’s didn’t affect northern English dialects, which came to be called Scots English. Because of the long history of dialect creation in the English speaking areas of Great Britain, there are more dialects of English in Britain than in America, Canada, and Australia combined. (Unfortunately, we don’t have time to cover modern British English dialects in any detail.)
British colonization of other continents led to the establishment of various colonial, or overseas, dialects. These dialects developed because of the following factors: 1) the language spoken by emigrants who first established the colony was a particular variety of British English–the so-called founder’s effect; 2) this may have mixed with some non-English language in the colony–the so-called substrate effect; 3) there may have been further mixing with other English dialects in the colony–the leveling effect of dialect mixing; 4) innovations in British English that did not occur in the more conservative overseas dialect, or conversely, innovation in the colonial dialect (for any of the three previous reasons) which did not occur in Britain.
The main dialect areas of the US can be traced to the four main migrations of English speaking people to America from the British Isles during the colonial period (1607-1775).
1. From 1629-1640 Puritan religious dissenters fleeing oppression from Charles I fled East Anglia and brought their distinctive twang (a sort of “flat sounding” nasal lengthening of vowels) to Massachusetts. The extreme conservatism and nostalgia for England helped maintain this dialect while the language of East Anglia changed (speech similar to New England can still be found in East Anglia. Today the 16 million or so descendants of the Puritans and many of their neighbors speak some form of this East Anglia derived speech.
Main features
–pronunciation of [O] in caught, bought
–low fronted [a] instead of back[A] in words such asfar, father (the so-called nasal twang)
–Deletion of syllable final [r], as in far pronounced “fah”, Carter pronounced “Cahtah”.
–Compensatory addition of [r] after a final schwa, as in Cuber (instead of Cuba). This trait developed after the colonial period.
–some lexical particularities, such as earthworm called an angleworm, pail rather than bucket (either word is used in standard American.)
Influence on General American
–The New England dialect eventually influenced speech in many areas of the Northeast, from Maine to Wisconsin, especially in the Chicago area.
–A large number of New England town, city and county names derive from East Anglia.
–Due to the influence of the Puritan Religion, Old testament first names are found in New England far more than anywhere else in the American colonies (Nathanial, Nehemiah, Joshua, etc.); New England also has a large share of Hebrew town names (Salem, Concord)
–gave us the word cuss from curse, originally a high class, [r]-less pronunciation
–gave us such words as conniption fit, scrimp, pesky, snicker.
–gave English such idioms as: sharp as a meat ax, big as all outdoors, cool as a cucumber. Since everyone was expected to know how to make Boston baked beans, today we also have the idiom to not know beans about. Also: Wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole (rivermen used 10-foot poles to guide their ships).
Many idioms associated with sailing derive from the New England dialect, as one might expect: to lower the boom on someone, three sheets to the wind (meaning “drunk”), take the wind out of one’s sails, and even cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.
Unlike many other American regional dialects, New England speech was not affected significantly by any non-English language.
New York English, as a special variety of general New England speech, developed after the British took possession of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1664, leading to the rapid conversion of Dutch speakers to English. Dutch left a strong phonetic substrate, however, which sets Brooklyn speech apart from other northern dialects.
Features shared with New England speech:
–final [r] is dropped: beer = bee-ah
–caught, bought are pronounced with [O] rather than [A]
Main features deriving from the Dutch influence:
–interdentals become t,d. For instance, them, these, that become: dem, dese, dat (since Dutch has no interdentals)
–er => [schwa + y] thirty purple birds, thirty third street = uh in final position were = wuh
— [oi] => [er] oil, oyster (a later compensatory development)
–I want you to (do something)-> I want you should (do something)
In connection with New York, it might be apropos to mention one of the ethnic-based dialects that undoubtedly contributed to the uniqueness of the city’s linguistic soundscape: the language of the European Jews who came to New York in large numbers beginning during the last century.
Most immigrant groups who came into the US after the colonial period–in the 19th and 20th centuries–did not establish permanent ethnic dialects of their own. (Instead, they conformed to whatever the local dialect was.) But one group contributed heavily to New York English. Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, most of whom spoke Yiddish, added their own additional flavor to New York phonology and vocabulary.
The Ashkenazi Jews in Central Europe spoke a dialect of German called Yiddish. The Sephardic Jews of Spain spoke Ladino, a medieval dialect of Spanish. Yiddish especially has influenced New York speech and also contributed words than Americans of all dialects may use and know:
–many words and phrases from Yiddish that have come into General American English have a special twist of humor or irony: schmaltz, chutzpah, schlemiel, schlimazel, klutz (wooden beam), kvetch, yenta, schmuck, schnoz (big noze). Yiddish has even brought about minor changes in the phonotactic rules of English: which now allow the combination sh+consonant at the beginning of a word: example: schnook (dope).
–Standard American phrases originating in the Yiddish speaking community include: Get lost, What’s up, I should worry, I should live so long, I need it like a hole in the head, You don’t know from nothin’, Pardon the expression, Enjoy.
–Rhyming slang: Deprecation is shown by means of partial reduplications such as Joe-schmo; or Oedipus-schmedipus, so long as he loves his mother.
Modern New York influence on General American, of course, is not confined to Yiddish origins. Even people who have never traveled to New York are familiar with this accent from watching TV. Recently, New York has given American English such terms as: Yuppie (young urban professional), and bag lady.
2. Let’s move on to a very different dialect. From 1642-1675 the Royalists, also called Cavaliers, fled from the south and southwest England with their indentured servants and settled in Virginia when the English Civil War against Charles I began. They brought with them their south England drawl (a drawing out of the vowels); they also brought such phrases as aksed (instead of asked), and ain’t (instead of isn’t). Royalists later settled the Carolinas as well. Southern English speech laid the foundation for the development of American Tidewater speech, or Coastal Southern English.
A large number of features distinguish southern dialects as a group from their cousin dialects in the American north, as well as from modern British dialects in the south of England.
–the classic Southern drawl, caused when vowels become long or diphthongalized: house = ha:wse, eggs = ai:gz; some words even contain triphthongs: flowers. [fla:ierz]
–loss of final t, d after another consonant: an(d), tol(d)
–first syllable accented (rather than the second) in such words as: guitar, insurance, July, police, elope, etc.
–yall for you all
–bucket, not pail
Influence on General American–
Southern English has contributed and continues to contribute to General English a variety of highly colorful idioms: Mad as a rooster in an empty henhouse, Don’t get crosslegged (Don’t get mad.), tearing up the peapatch (on a rampage), kneewalkin’ drunk, He’s three bricks shy of a load. (dumb)
Other southernisms that made it into general American include
–snickerdoodles; tacky; varmint, from vermin, vittles > victuals.
–spitting image of > spirit and image of
–fink, ratfink > Albert Fink, an unpleasant railroad detective after the Civil War.
What is the origin of certain features of Southern English that cannot be traced back to dialectal differences among the original immigrants from the British Isles?
The upper class southern dialects and the dialects of the coastal southern areas (where few native Americans remained) were influenced by the English spoken by West Africans. Most linguists today believe these features derive from the influence of the speech patterns of the Africans brought to the 13 colonies as slaves between 1619 and 1808, when the slave trade was prohibited. This would include the southern drawl. Let’s take a look at the ethnic dialect that has come to be known as Black English.
Black English developed in the Southern states when speakers of dozens of West African languages were abruptly forced to abandon their native tongues and learn English. Slaves from different tribes couldn’t communicate with one another–in fact, masters deliberately tried to separate slaves who could speak the same language. Since the Africans had to communicate with one another, as well as with the whites, a kind of compromise language evolved on the basis of English and a mixture of the original West African languages. Such a makeshift, compromize language, used as a second language by adults, is known as a pidgin. When a pidgin becomes the native language of the next generation, it becomes a creole–a full-fledged language. The African-English creole in the American colonies evolved into today’s Black English.
Black English was most influenced by the speech of the southern whites.
Features carried over from early Southern English into Black English:
–loss of final consonants, especially sonorants: po(or), sto(re) like aristocratic southern English.
— use of double negatives, ain’t, as in early English.
–loss of ng: somethin’, nothin’, etc.
Black English, in turn, gradually influenced the speech of southern whites–especially the children of the aristocratic slave owners. Given the social prejudices of the Old South, this seems paradoxical. However, remember that throughout all the slave owning areas, black nannies helped raise white children, and the children of blacks and whites played freely together before the Civil War. Since language features acquired in early childhood tend to be kept throughout life, Southern English naturally became mixed with Black English.
Let’s look more closely at how Black English developed on the basis of West African Dialects. Whenever a group of adults is forced to learn a second language, the language learned retains many features of the original native language. Thus, the English of black slaves retained many features that were African and not present in English at all. The children of the slaves learned this form of English as their native language. Thus, on the basis of language mixing, a new dialect, called a creole, was born. This process–at least in some small degree– characterizes the English of all Americans whose parents spoke English as a second language. But in the case of African Americans, due to the social separation they lived under from the very start, the differences were stronger and more lasting.
Main features carried over from West African languages.
–No use of the linking verb ‘to be’ or generalization of one form for it.
–emphasis on aspect rather than tense: He workin’ (right now) vs. He be workin’. This is found in many West African languages.
–I done gone (from Wolof doon , the completive verb aspect particle + English ‘done’).
–Regularization of present tense verb conjugation: He don’t, he know it.
–voiced th in initial position becomes d: dis, dey; in medial position it becomes v: brother > brovva. final voiceless th = f with =wif
A large number of West African words came into Standard American through the medium of Black English: bug (bugu = annoy), dig (degu/ understand), tote bag (tota = carry in Kikonga), hip (Wolof hepicat one who has his eyes wide open), voodoo (obosum, guardian spirit) mumbo jumbo (from name of a West African god), jazz (? Bantu from Arabic jazib one who allures), banjo (mbanza?), chigger (jigger/ bloodsucking mite), goober (nguba /Bantu), okra (nkruman/ Bantu), yam (njami/ Senegal), banana (Wolof). Also, the phrases: sweet talking, every which way; to bad-mouth, high-five are from Black English–seem to be either American innovations or loan translations from West African languages.
The speech of African Americans gradually became more like the speech of their southern white neighbors–a process called decreolization. (And the speech of the whites became slightly more like that of the blacks). However, in a few areas, the original African English creole was preserved more fully. There is one dialect of Black English still spoken on the Georgia coast, called Gullah, which is still spoken there by about 20,000 people; it is thought to represents the closest thing to the original creole.
After the Civil War, Black English continued to evolve and change, especially in the creation of new vocabulary. After the 1920’s millions of blacks migrated to northern cities, where various varieties of Black English continue to develop.
There is one other notable southern English dialect. The Cajun French in Louisiana also adopted English with noticeable traces of their former language.
3. From 1675-1725 the Quakers, or Society of Friends, migrated from the north midlands of England and Wales to the Delaware valley. Their speechways–mixed with those of later German and Swedish immigrants–gave rise to the distinctive band of dialects spoken in parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
–Phonetic features include the pronunciation of a back rounded [Å] in words such as caught, saw.
Also, the pronunciation of [E] instead of [œ] in bad, and, sack, etc.
–Retention of the syllable final [r] in all places.
Contributions to American English: great number of euphemisms. Speakers tried to avoid saying male or female names for animals that might have sexual connotations (bull, cock, etc.), and also avoided names of parts of the body: used rock instead of stone (Old Eng. For testicle’); chicken breast/leg = white meat, dark meat.
4. From 1718-1775 English speakers left North Britain and Northern Ireland and settled in the Appalachian backcountry. These people are called the “Scots-Irish.” These were mostly Anglo-Saxons refugees of the Norman Conquest who had settled within the Celtic fringe of Britain. The true Scottish and Irish people were Celts who spoke Scots-Gaelic or its close relative Irish-Gaelic and most did not adopt English until the 18th or 19th century. The immigration of true Irish and Scottish peoples, beginning in the mid-1800’s, had little permanent effect on American dialect formation.
One island of early Scotch-Irish English speech was left behind and preserved during the push west. This special, archaic variety of English is known as Appalachian English. It preserves many archaic features that date back to earlier stages in the development of English in Britain. Forms thought to be substandard today are actually the outmoded standard of yesterday. A good example is the use of double negatives such as ‘not nobody.’ Linguists have dubbed this variety of English as “American Old English” or “American Anglo Saxon”. Other mountainous, relatively isolated areas of the American East show a similar preservation of archaic speech. Mario Pei, a popular writer on linguistics, said that “The speech of the Ozarks comes closer to Elizabethan English in many ways than the speech of modern London.”
Main features–
–pronouns: hit (it), youns, (ye ones–Chaucer), (possessives) hisn, hern, yorn, theirn them used as an adjective in place of their; them boys.
–Retention of preposition in the progressive aspect: I’m a talking to you.
–propensity to use compound nouns: men-folk, man-child, kin folks
–exchanging parts of speech in comparison to standard English: It pleasures me, That was mighty fetchin’ of you, She prettied herself up, I’ll muscle it up (lift it up), He bigged her (made her pregnant); He daddied that child.
–Many colorful idioms. Slow as Christmas (slow in coming about), slick as a peeled onion (sly), His backbone’s rubbin’ his belly. (very hungry).
–fixin to, pert near, afeared, beholden (indebted), took sick, upped an, mess of (lot of)
–Rhyming euphemisms: swan, swanny = swear, land sakes alive, golly, dad blamed.
–Special distance words: This here, that there, that yonder.
–bag called sack; dragonfly called mosquito hawk, green bean called a snap bean; pail called a bucket.
Some southern features from the poorer classes are shared with the dialects of the rural midwest since poor southerners helped colonize the midwest. Also, some features of Appalachian English are shared with the speech of poorer southern whites for the same reason.
–ain’t, use of double negatives–older “correct” version of English, avoided by the upper classes, who chose the innovative single negatives preferred by the British upper classes.
–ng = n: somethin, nothin, (also found in Scotch-Irish dialects of middle English: Celtic languages had no ng)
The “Scots-Irish” dialect of southern English mingled with Cherokee and other Native American languages in a band running from western North Carolina to Oklahoma and East Texas, giving rise to the so-called backwoods, or highlands, southern dialect, which is more faster and high-pitched than tidewater southern and more nasal than Appalachian English. Some of the phonological features of the backwoods southern dialects undoubtedly come from Cherokee and other Native American languages. The south was the only area in the East where Native Americans mixed significantly with the whites. This occurred mostly with the poorer whites on the frontier. Substrate features include: nasality, tensing of vowels [e] instead of [E] rather than diphthongization as in Tidewater Southern English.
Influence on General American–
— highly expressive idioms: He can lick his weight in wildcats. Faster ‘n greased lightning, can’t hold a candle to, sharp as a tack, madder ‘n a wet hen, tuckered out.
–Some words widely assumed to be of Appalachian origin are not: the word moonshine was coined in England, ‘hooch’ is of Native American origin. Words like redneck, cracker, hoosier were coined in Northern England and brought over; originally, they were not necessarily insults. The derogatory term Hillbilly was coined only in early 1900’s.
5. Remember that dialects based primarily on geography are called areal dialects. One of the main researchers of areal dialects of the United States was Hans Kurath, author of the Dialect Atlas of America He found that there are four main dialect areas in the Eastern us: New England (including New York), Middle Atlantic, Backwoods, and Southern Tidewater; The three main dialectal divisions can further be subdivided into at least 27 subdialects. The original eastern dialects tended to become more leveled and to merge farther west.
General American– After the Civil War the rapid and extensive move West of settlers from all dialect areas of the eastern US led to a leveling of eastern dialectal features and the creation of a more General American, or Middle American dialect. People who are said to speak “without an accent” are actually speaking with this leveled-out form of speech that developed from the mid-Atlantic stretching westward through the Ohio valley. Most features of Standard American developed from a levelled mixture of dialects mostly from the poorer classes along the middle Atlantic seaboard who immigrated west after the American Revolution to find a better life.
Main features:
1) retention of [r] in all places
2) pronunciation of [ae] in many words. Cf. British ‘class’ ‘aunt’. Gives American English a flat sound to British ears.
3) vocab–stringbean (snapbean in the South), earthworm (angleworm), creek (not brook)
Origins–Derived from the speech of settlers moving west of the original 13 colonies into the Ohio valley and beyond. These people were of Scotch-Irish origin rather than upper class English, which explains the differences between Middle American and New England. The post-vocalic [r], which dropped out in the speech of the upper British classes, was retained in the English of the Scotch Irish and other originally Celtic speaking peoples of Britain. Competition between immigrants from Germany and the lower classes of the British isles in the push westward tended to level many of the differences peculiar to one or another smaller group of people. (The Pennsylvania Dutch are actually “Deutsch”, in other words Germans.) The Middle American dialect area contributed the most to speech in western states and forms the basis of the speech usually considered as standard American today. There were, however, certain features that remained isolated and unique to one or another of the Middle American dialect group. This was especially true on the mid-Atlantic seaboard. Maryland adds [r] after [a] before another cons: [Warshington].
Now, this western, “leveled” English is itself showing signs of dialect genesis. The history of American English and of English is far from over.
What does the future hold for American dialects? Will they evolve into separate languages? Due to the levelling influence of mass communication and travel, probably not. In fact, dialectal divergence in the US seems to be slowing down. John Steinbeck, in his 1962 novel, Travels with Charley, in which he describes how he traveled by camper all over the US with a French poodle named Charley, expressed fear that American dialects would disappear because of the influence of mass communication. Most dialectologists, however, believe that dialects are here to stay, since they are acquired from parents at an early age. Thus the well established regional dialects of American English are not disappearing. In fact, the western, “leveled” English is itself showing signs of dialect genesis. So the history of American English and of English is far from over.
Rockhound,
Your post on dialects in America is a subject near and dear to my heart. I’ve always been fascinated by dialects and linguistics (not that I have any talent in either; just an insatiable curiosity on the matter). By the way, the author of the article is right about Marylanders. We DO in fact tend to pronounce Washington as WaRshington.
Some comments, in no particular order. The area east of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland is locally called the “Eastern Shore.” I moved from Baltimore 32 years ago to the Eastern Shore to train as a claims adjuster. Once there, I began to think, “Gee, these people sure talk funny.” One of the most noticible of their speech markers was the way they pronounced house. Instead of HAUSE, they pronounced it HOS (with a long O).
I met my first wife in the college we both attended. She was from western Maryland; from in the Applachian mountain area. Sometime after meeting her, I drove to her parent’s house for dinner. Anyway, after dinner, she suggested that we take a walk. I agreed and we walked to the end of her neighborhood toward a farm lane. I asked, “Where does that lane go?” She replied, “Down to Antietam Crick.” I said, “You mean creek?” She relpied, “On campus, it’s creek. Here, it’s crick.”
I once worked for a construction company where the secretary was a older woman originally from an area near the West Virginia/Ohio border. Right after she was hired, one of the estimators said he was going to the store for lunch and did we want him to bring back anything. The owner and I each asked for soda. The woman replied, “Bring me back a pop.” The owner and I turned and simultaneously said, “What?”
My daughter’s room-mate in college was a girl from Kentucky named Skylar. Whenever Skylar left for class or the store or where-ever, she always said, “I’m fixin to go to ….”
I’ve never been to Maxton, NC, but I’m half Lumbee and Maxton is a Lumbee community. My father (who’s from the general area) says he can tell whether someone’s from Maxton immediately from their very distinctive dialect.
My friends find it amusing when I announce that I’ve got “cash money” to do a deal. Cash is sufficient they say. As is money. “Cash money” is redundant, they say.
I once lived in Philadelphia. There, I used to comment that I didn’t care for cussing. My friends from Philadelphia said, “You mean swearing?”
I’ll just share my come-up-ins and many here will identify with this language. We along that state line on both Va and Carolina sides speak a language not so far from Old English and Gaelic. House is pronounced Hause and out and about are close kin also to even a Scotch pronounciation. Bomb was Bum and Ambulance was Am-Bu-Lance ! We never had a bedspread on our bed but rather a CounterPin, and we did not have ceilings in our rooms we had Jist , our pronounciation of joist but then when we put tobacco up in the barn we Histed it our way of saying Hoist or raise up. If my father or any of the older population helped someone do something and referred to it later my father would have said, “I hope John fix his wagon.” In college and a semester of Chaucer’s Old English let me know my father spoke perfect English only it was Old English. Conjugation of help would be help, hope, holpen. Mama was our Mammy and all little girls were called Suik or something like that. Now to the possibly dirty or smelly subject. If something had a foul or awful odor or just plain stunk the older people said it stunk like “KHaun” or “Chaun” I have no idea how to write it but I know how to say it. Now I know in Old English a cow is a kine and my folks may have been using an Old English form of the “S” word so far as I know. We never used any swear or other words in slang so maybe it was a nice way to say it without saying it. I don’t know. I remember in college, a group of Cannadians were giving a program and I was facinated to hear them saying Out , House, and About just like I said it. Come on you Southside Virginia Saponi’s and let the rest of our folk know how us Virginians talk. Ed
well Ed, my family has not been in your area for a long time, however, we do say about (a-bowt) ryhmes with out and house is howse, we also have other tid bits that give us away as Celts, the ‘aye” that canadians are famous for and the Naye aswell when I was youung we’d say “nay or Naa” and the latter was really very offensive, NAA in your face was near fighting words, or atleast word.
There’s others but “sa’ from the northern Blackfoot Suh for no, but for the most part we are between the very formalized English and the “cook-stove potty mouths” of our youthful vernacular.
I was stayed in New Orleans for several months and one of the Dr.s there asked me “does everyone speak the way that you do , where you come from”
and I had to reply yes they do, he said that it was very formailized and articulated English, he could be correct since we are taught to form each letter of every word precisely starting in grade one.
thanx for the chat. Tom.
Here I was wrestling with how to spell about to get the correct sound and you did it. Thanks, so now other’s may know how to speak southern Virginia English. When I was in college and one day in the cafeteria line a group of us were talking and the cashier asked me if I was from Alabama. WE have lived down here on the North Carolina coast long enough to have picked up some of that “High Tider” sound with the emphasis on the “i”. Some how I associate their dialect with a form of Cockney English. Yawl have a good day now. Ed
That’s interesting Ed, I know that many people from England settled with either relatives or friends from the same areas that they were from in England, so you get Cockney’s (my folks) with Jordies and Scouses and who knows, I asked a distant cousin what a yeoman would have been called in England, he looked odd at me, I said “if a Cockney married a Jordie” and he said “oh a wooley back”..
I think that many of the English coming here left the social yokes behind them, “the only thing worse than being English is being more English” !
Hey Rockhound….all y’all! *grin* This is a right neat link/post…so thank you kindly for posting it…the spoken word is indeed a fascinating subject and local dialects and colloquialisms moreso. I can right relate to much mentioned…as I’m certain everyoen can…having lived and travelled and heard various groups of peoples speak in their own unique flair. I can say that the only one very unique thign about where I grew up (Cincy, OH) was the use of the word : Please. Allow me to explain. Typically the word is an offering up of politeness when asking someone you typically would say, for example: “Would you please pass me the salt?” Standard usage…but not so in Cincy…we too used the word Please in that context but we also would use it as such: If someone asked you a question….and you did not hear them fully or correctly we would simply reply: “Please?” …rather than asking: “What did you say?” or “What?” or “Huh?” or “Say that again?” I have never before heard tell of anyone anywhere else utilizing the word, please, in that fashion and have, on many , many occasions, had others stare at me oddly when I use it in that way. My mother, who hailed from Cynthiana, Harrison Co, KY used to reply to the very same situation by replying: “Come again?” …which was equally miffing to some. I grew up in Cincy, like I mentioned but went to KY every summer with mother to visit and stay with our KY kin and many remnants of their dialect still today stick with me….much to my family’s amusement. I say “worsh” not wash….when I sew on a button or mend anything I am “darnin”…when I am feeling cocky and insistant that I am correct I say: “I toad ya so”, as opposed to TOLD…I say cubberd and not closet…my sis says “clossin” in the same vein…and God only knows why but I simply cannot ennumciate the word aluminum…it comes out allunimum…don’t ask why…my father was a stickler for proper english usage and left me with a “word of the day” every day on an index card…that was mine alone to learn and use grammatically correctly int he course of that very day to “earn” my allowance of a quarter and 4 pennies…his thinking: a quarter WAS alot…and 4 (pennies)to make it look like more! I mastered quintessential and Czarina by age 6 but still found myself using “kintucky talk” oft times. We said Skeeter and Chigger too…and so many more than I can even take the time to bore ya’ll with typing. It’s neat, groovy and interesting. I have heard others refer to their “living room” as the “pah lah” (they being from Pawtucket, RI). If I had a nickel for every time we uttered the phrase: “Ya’ll come back now, ya heah”…I’d be a wealthy woman. I was always called a “toe head” because I am blonde and being “knee high to a grasshopper” or ” no taller’n a frog’s kneecap” made perfect sense to me. Mother used to threaten to “whip me some shade of red I ne’er did see ‘fore” ….especially when she was “as mad as an ole hen missin his tail feathers come dawn”. Odd people were called “as crazy as a one legged coon dawg”. I remember one “auntie” who had a propensity to muttering: “well I’ll be a son ov’n witch hazel”. Her meek attempt at blasphemy masked no doubt. Aunt Ruth used to say: “That dawg don’t hunt nah more” when asked to do something she was not takin’ a shinin’ to. The lists is perhaps endless…I won’t be, but thanks again for the stroll down Memory Lane! *wink* Blessings to all y’all~~~~Laurie
You folk are really bringing memories out of the woodwork. I am going to ask if any of you have ever “made a water haul” ? No it does’nt have anything to do with going to the bathroom. If you know what it is then let us know and if not I will share this little bit of sounthern Virginia culture with you tomorrow. Ed
Howdy Ed! I’m not certain if I’m thinking the same thing or not but when we went fishin with nets at the “crick”…and we just didn’t catch a single solitary thing…it was called a “water haul” by heck! (I much preferred catching crawdads myself *wink*) To stray off topic just a wee bit I wanted to recount a tale about they boys and their antics: my older brother Michael and the boy cuzzins were in charge of fetchin the turtles…so off they’d all stroll with gunny sacks on their backs and later in the day…before supper…they’d all come trudging back home to Aunt Stell’s house and they’d plop those sacks just chock full of turtles on the back “day porch”….the screened room where the “worsh” tub was….and there’d literally be hundreds of em crawlin all over the place…and the boys always seemed to rather enjoy crackin the turtle shells with a rock or hammer…leavin behind lil naked turtles that got greyer and greyer and slower and slower…then Aunt Stell would scoop up the poor lil things and boil em up and do her thing and make turtle stew/soup…made ME lose a taste for the stuff in all honesty…anywho….back to the worsh tub…before dinner my cousin Julie Ann and I would be told to “tidy up” so we headed for that ole tub and soaked and scrubbed together…2 lil toeheads in that galvanized thing….and I remember the boys poking fun of us…sitting “naked as Jay Birds” in that tub with so very many turtles crawling and cracking all around us…with us squealing at the horror of it all…and from then on Julie Ann’s brothers…mean lil things used to chittter at us: “hey girls…are ya still naked as a turtle”…I dunno if anyone else heard that before but those lil naked turtles and the 2 of us in that tub naked to bathe gave them the opportunity to poke fun. Those Boys were so mean!
OK….end of tale…was I even close on the fishin analogy? Blessings~~~Laurie
Rockhound and All,
Thanks so much for the detailed etymological info. I especially love the dialectic phrases. Now this is probably getting off-topic and maybe should be in the “Shoot the Breeze” room but I have a few favorite phrases such as, hangin’ in there, “like a hair on a biscuit”, busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kickin’ contest, up to my neck in alligators, smooth as a baby’s butt, sharp as a tack (smart), and some others that I won’t repeat here!
Ed,
When I was young and spent summers in Lee County, VA at my gr. grandmother’s, we’d have to “fetch water” from the spring down below the “ole homeplace” since they had no running water or indoor plumbing. Is that what, “makin’ a water haul” means?
Jim
A “water haul” is an effort in futility, a failed endeavor, action and strength invested for nothing. If we went to town and my father was looking for a particular item he needed but the stores did not have it we had made a “water haul.” The whole concept was based on the idea of backing the mule drawn wagon into the ford at the creek and filling barrels with water by standing in the creek with buckets and passing up to someone on the wagon who was filling the barrels. At the same time we were making every effort not to allow a leech to get hold of us. Now once this was accomplished and you took off for the fields and got there only to find out all the water had sloshed out of the barrels — You had made a water haul !!!!!!
By the way I can remember when my father took the burlap fertilizer bags and they were put on that wagon. When the barrels were filled he would dip a bag in the barrel getting it soaking wet and then lay it over the top of the barrel. My little mind couldn’t believe a wet burlap bag was going to hold water in the barrel but it did. So my wish for each and every one of you in this blessed season and the prospect of a new year is that you will make few water haul’s and your efforts will be blessed with success. Ed
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