[hoosiermama]

The source of the “Southern Indiana” drawl.

[Earthdweller]

I learned about this when I was doing genealogy...fun stuff. Most of the songs in the south are based on the Scotch/Irish rhythms...even the dancing style. NYers don't need to be trashing their southern cousins, just ‘cause they don't like cement ponds. :)

[jay1949]

Many of my distant kinsmen and their neighbors migrated from the central North Carolina Piedmont to Clay County, Indiana, in the 1820s and 1830s. Such folk tended to move as a community and would have taken their dialect with them.

[Miss Marple]

My father worked as a maintenance supervisor for a local school district. One of his janitors was from way rural Appalachia. One day he asked where another guy was.

Clarence answered, “He be up in yon balcomb.” (Translation..He’s up in the balcony of the auditorium.)

All the other guys laughed. My dad didn’t. Self-educated, he recognized archaic speech for what it was. He was very fond of Alistair Cooke’s special “The Story of English” and often remarked on the patterns he ran into in different parts of the South.