Losing the Appalachian Dialect

There was a post on FaceBook by my daughter talking about "country" speech.  More like "country" pronunciation.  She lumped being born in Kentucky with her time here in South Carolina as well as Alabama and Mississippi.  However, the Appalachian dialect is a separate dialect and should not be confused with the "southern drawl".  I really never understood how it came to be what it was until reading a book a long time ago called "Made in America" that detailed an awful lot of things that are American (like most of the ethnic foods we eat) and how they came to be.  The Appalachian dialect is one of these.

When I was young I, in the fifth grade, my teacher made the  mistake of telling me I had exceptional enunciation.  I had always loved words and tried to get them "right" and that gave me even more encouragement to do so.  I had grown up with my grandparents and parents pronouncing words in ways that just did not agree with my books.  At the time I thought it was ignorance and lack of education.  After all, my father did not finish the fourth grade and my mother did not finish third grade.  Actually, I was the first in my family to graduate from high school.  For what that is worth.

But, through this book, I found out the Appalachian dialect came into being not through ignorance or lack of education but through isolation.  All these strange enunciations were the correct way to pronounce words in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.  The Appalachian area, being so isolated, never (or rarely) came in contact with the language as it morphed over time in other areas of the country.

I do not know all the differences between modern pronunciations and "old time" pronunciations but I'll list a few here.

The first is all words that end in "ia" or sometimes just "a" are pronounced as though they end in "ie".   My mother's name was "Stella" but everybody called  her "Stellie".  I had a cousin named "Wanda" but never heard her called anything but "Wandie".   (Just as a meaningless aside, she had two two thumbs on one hand.  Fascinated me almost as much as her daughter did.  At two different times of course.)

Words with "oi" in them were pronounced with the "o" silent.  Point became 'pint'.  Join was 'jine' and so forth.  The one that remains with me so is 'pint' for more than one reason.  We lived in the hills and a ridge running down from the top of the hill was a "point" or, as I always heard it termed, "pint".  When asking where something was you'd get an answer like, "Go up the creek and take the Julie fork (the other fork being the Bascom fork) and to to fall rock holler and take the pint on the right".  See, we did not have north, south, east and west.  It was the hills.  The sun was not a constant presence like it is in the flat lands.  Directions were by landmarks and by the time you were a teenager you should know every landmark withing a few miles of where you lived.

But, maybe 'pint' remains with me because it figures prominently in the first "dirty" joke I ever heard.  It was told to me by my grandfather (Poppie) when I could not have been more than five or six.  I can't remember it in it's entirety but it concerned two cats making kittens.  Two people were talking about something and one of them stops the other and says, "I don't see the 'pint'".  To which the other replied, "That's because its in the other cat".   Rough, rustic humor.  Can't beat it.

Now my uncle Jerry (Aunt Bernices's (or Burnices, I never knew for sure) husband) provided some other terms I have grown to love and use (much to the chagrin of my wife).  Uncle Jerry was much older than my aunt though their youngest girl was only a little older than I.  He was mostly blind and had his own particular way of talking.  Two of the terms I use from time to time that drive my wife crazy are "atter" instead of after and "summers" instead of some wheres.  It was like, "Uncle Jerry what time is it?  Oh, looks summers like ten atter two".  He was also color blind though he dearly loved to play Rook.

Ok, Rook may take a little explanation.  It was played with a special deck of cards called (of course) Rook cards.  The rook was a crow-like bird from whence the name came.  The cards had four suits that were by color.  There was black, red, green and yellow (more of an orange as I recall).  But, Uncle Jerry could not tell the difference and would always 'renege' (not following suit... kinda like spades and hearts).   And, he chewed 'plug' tobacco.  Of all my bad habits that was one I could never get the hang of.  Much to my wife's relief I expect.  *smile*

My wife (now) was born and raised in Orlando, FL and just does  not understand where and  how I grew up and how sometimes I just automatically slip back in using words the way I learned them from my grandparents, parents and other old folk I came into contact with.  I can't help it.  They were with me long before the "correct" pronunciations came along.

In a way, I guess, it is somewhat contradictory as I'm a "word 'Nazi'" now.  I absolutely despise when people use a word that is NOT the word they want.  Like 'imply' and 'infer'  and many, many others.  Drives me batty.  But, then, I love words and find the correct word used in the correct context is more powerful than many of it's synonyms might be and for sure much more powerful than the wrong word would be.  I shake my head, laugh, curse then wonder what in the world has happened to education in this country.

And, if someone corrects them they will come back with something like, "I did not come on here for a spelling or grammar lesson.  Though they most times spell it 'grammer', showing their need for both'.  And I think, "No, that is why you went to fricken elementary school".  Sometimes I even say it. 

Trust me, the older one gets the less tolerance one has of stupid people (and I never had a very large one anyhow) and the less you care what anyone else thinks.  Then, I also was  not overly concerned with that either.  Kind of a family tradition I guess.  I'm sure some day I'll get into our particular family traditions.  But not today.