Posted on 09/18/2015 9:57:02 AM PDT by chasio649
The other day, my son asked why there are such a variety of accents in the country. Why does a fellow from Mississippi have a twang that’s different from a fellow in Texas?
Long ago, I asked my father a similar question. He pointed out that it isn’t just in America – a wide range of dialects and accents are common for French, Arabic, whatever.
In recent days, some interesting pieces have appeared online. One in Slate has a list of the top slang terms from every state. Here’s what was included for the Mid-South:
Arkansas: “tump” -- to tip over or dump out. Louisiana: “banquette” – sidewalk. Mississippi: “nabs” -- peanut butter crackers. Tennessee: “whirlygust” -- a strong wind. The words from Arkansas and Mississippi are familiar. Not so those from Louisiana and Tennessee.
Humans are so inventive, language doesn’t have to be spoken words. Slate has posted a video shot in a mountainous region of Turkey where residents whistle long range conversations when their shouts won’t carry. Some 10,000 people still use this method of communication.
And if you want to get into some truly odd language characteristics, head down to northwest Brazil. There, the Piraha people speak a language unrelated to any other. Christian missionaries have spent agonizing decades trying to learn the intricacies of the Piraha’s tongue and culture.
A 2007 profile in the New Yorker says Piraha is “based on just eight consonants and three vowels, (and is) one of the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possesses such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations.”
Further, the Piraha, “have no numbers, no fixed color terms, no perfect tense, no deep memory, no tradition of art or drawing, and no words for ‘all,’ ‘each,’ ‘every,’ ‘most,’ or ‘few.’”
Why has this group been able to resist modernity? Largely because they “consider all forms of human discourse other than their own to be laughably inferior, and they are unique among Amazonian peoples in remaining monolingual.”
I find it inclusive.
Back in the 50,s my dad brought home a Yankee family that he had found somewhere. He was always picking up destitute people and helping them find a job or a place to live.
They came to Texas and found a job but they were the first Yankees that I can remember meeting and their accent was hilarious .
I would never have been attracted to a guy who sounded like that.
Uh no a lot of the Southern drawl comes from the Irish brogue as many Irish settled Appalachia.
Looks like quite a few folks have served your ignorance up to you.
Make this a learning experience.
I am from E. Ky and went into a small store with my grandfather to get something to drink. Grandpa was born in 1900 and asked for a ‘dope’. The owner got mad and ordered us out saying ‘We don’t sell that stuff here.’ I explained what grandpa meant and we got our drinks. Probably goes back to when Cokes actually had coke in them.
Another word you don’t hear anymore is ‘poke’, it means a grocery bag. Proper usage is ‘Reckon you could put that in a poke fer me?’
That’s great.
My family was traveling south through Alabama to Florida. We stopped at a gas station and heard the clerk say “We’re outta piper tails.” We looked at each other “piper tails?” As we talked about it for the next 20 minutes while back on the road we finally figured out she meant paper towels.
“...where residents whistle long range conversations when their shouts won’t carry...”
I worked with a couple of older carpenters during the summer back in high school. Bob would carry on a conversation with me. Butch maybe said (yelled?) four words to me each summer. They barely talked with each other.
One time framing-in a second story with Bob helping him with something. After a couple of hours he lets out a loud whistle. A few minutes later Butch comes up with an armful of tools, sets them down but keeping one and starts helping Bob with something else. No words between the two of them!
And a really large group is “All you alls”
Same with me whenever I go spend some time visiting my relatives in Noo Yawk.
yins or “yuns” is also big in eastern Kentucky and places where they migrated post-war, such as northwest Indiana.
I always thought the pronunciation was "All y'alls" :-)
Of course you are correct. (Hey - I’m a yankee!) Although growing up in Minnesota and knowing enough Norwegian I was mistaken for being a Norwegian a couple of times when I visited there, accent and all.
One time on a hike we came across an older guy up in the mountains - it was clear that he lived up there. The Norwegian guy I was with was having a conversation with him, but I could tell he was having a difficult time, and I couldn’t understand much. I asked him what the old guy was saying.
“Beats me - I could only pick up a few of the words. Lots of these mountain valleys have dialects that are so different from anywhere else.”
See my post #130. I grew up in rural NW Indiana with many friends and family from Magoffin County, and I find our mix of appalachian English and nasally Chicago vowels to be delightful, if an acquired taste. I’d be interested in your perspective.
I’ve traveled the lower 48 pretty thoroughly in my 54 years.
The deepest drawl I ever encountered was in Buffalo, Texas. Had a clutch go out and I was stuck there for two days while it was being fixed. Man, I really had to engage my brain to figure out what was being said to me.
Whenever I’ve lived in the South for any length of time, my own speech has adapted pretty readily. It’s just natural.
I can spot a native Minne-sooo-tan quicker than any other group. :-)
Except maybe people from Lawn-Guyland. :-)
LOL! A blogger at The Washed-Up Post as a source? ROFLMAO! You really are a Dummy-Underground infiltrator, right down to the Racism Card.
Try this on for size:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPfOL4wUuMU
By the way, I didn’t read your WaPo blogger, but we Southerners know what our genetics are, for the most part. The ones that have some mixed blood were mostly from rich 6% of the population. The rest of us were too damn poor to buy extremely expensive farm equipment, like $500-$1500 slaves, much less use them as sex surrogates.
Needless to say, those 6% would be a hell of lot more embarrassed by a mulatto bastard than the run-of-the-mill poor sustenance-farmer Southerner.
Besides, if all this racism and oppression is going on in the South, you’d never know it from black migration patterns. And Mexicans. And Guatemalans. And Salvadorans. Et cetera, et cetera.
There. Fixed it so that it reflects the nonsense that you are selling.
I am from Appalachia (E. KY) and I have found the Irish brogue most pronounced in what is now called Bluegrass music which really came from the mountains.
Being Irish myself I really love the Bluegrass music.
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