Scholars of Twang Track All the 'Y'Alls' in Texas

NY Times ^ | RALPH BLUMENTHAL

[hispanarepublicana]

Can I also just say that I called a Washington D.C. federal agency one day, and I couldn't understand a single thing the young lady of African American descent who answered the phone was saying? Additionally, my luggage was lost as I arrived for some international travel in Asia a few years ago, and I spent a good amount of time dealing with the airline/airport employees there at the airport, and I dealt with them again as my bags were searched for the return trip. When I landed in San Francisco, I was stunned by my observation that the airport/airline employees in Asia spoke better, more clear, English than the ones of various ethnicities at the San Francisco airport!

[wizardoz]

Did you find out anything about the origins of the population? Had they by chance come up from Central America somewhere?

[SeeRushToldU_So]

Texas ping

[Wallace T.]

The Melungeon "hearth" in southwestern Virginia and adjacent areas of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky lies just south of the Upper Southern homeland of the Shenandoah Valley. While the Melungeons may have suffered discrimination in Appalachia, most of that was lost when they migrated westward. Elvis Presley and Abraham Lincoln were both partially of Melugeon ancestry.

In the last Texas governor's race, the "white" Republican candidate, Rick Perry (BTW, isn't Perry a common Melungeon name?) was darker complected than the "minority" Democrat candidate, Tony Sanchez, who was very obviously of the Caucasian race, with fair skin, blue eyes, and, at a younger age, light brown hair.

Where the Melungeons came from has never been settled. I have heard that Tay-Sachs disease, a marker of Jewish ethnicity, has been found among them. One particular Melungeon could have been used as a body double for Sadaam Hussein. Tay-Sachs disease has also been found among the Pennsylvania Dutch. There is the belief that some of the Amish and Mennonites may have been converted Jews. The scene in the movie "Witness" where the Amish boy, lost in the Philadelphia train station, finds a Hassidic Jew, thinking him to be a fellow Amishman, may be less ironic than the movie's producers thought.

[Servant of the 9]

I wonder when the Tahms will take such a in-depth look at the gibberish they speak in N'yawk.

Because it's too new. Until 150 years ago, the educated accent in New York, Philladelphia , or Boston was almost identical to an upper class Virginia accent, or an upper class English accent.

SO9

[Ditter]

My husbands father was born in Ellis Co. but they moved on. My mothers family settled in east Texas 2 years before Stephen F. Austin arrived with his colonist. We still have some family members living in the area where the original homeplace was located. They have some rural accents, want you to know! I of course, do not. ;9}

[OldPossum]

This has nothing to do with speech as such but note one section in your post: While the southern accents are often endearing, and, when spoken by, respectivly, men or woman are the eptoime of masculinity and feminity (Go figure), New Yorks phrases and accents seem to either baffle ("I could care less!") or amuse ("fuhgedabboudit" or"whaddayadointameovahheah").

I have always been puzzled by "I could care less" since it is illogical. What the speaker is actually trying to say is "I could NOT care less" to indicate that he or she is so indifferent to your plight that it is impossible for them to care anything at all.

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

Thanks for the ping Georgia Boy...... y'all understand all about those great words like fixin to and woodja.....

"I'm fixin to go shoppin, woodja like to come along?"

[Wallace T.]

Yuns, or rather its variant, yins, is pretty common around Pittsburgh, the town that eastern Pennsylanians think is the largest city in West Virginia. Yuns/yins is a vestigal usage that in many areas, like the Missouri Ozarks, has been replaced by ya'll.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

"I've always wondered just WHAT THE HELL IS THAT BAAHSTON ACCENT ABOUT, ANYWAY?"

An accent that nobody, NOBODY outside of natives can do properly in movies. It's also disappearing quite rapidly, but it's very old. If you read any of Paul Revere's original writing you can "hear" the accent even way back then, because Revere spelled words like he spoke them.

A true Boston accent is heard as far west as I-495, as far north as Salem, NH, and as far south as, say, New Bedfid. The crap that comes out of Ted Kennedy's mouth is not a Boston accent. Kennedy sounds like a picklesmootcher pretending to be from Harvard pretending to be Thurston Howell III.

[Khurkris]

>"Y'all ain't from hair ayr ya?"

An anecdote-

During the late 80's I ran a Gov't office in several cities in South Texas. One gentleman working with me was born in Pennsylvania, but raised in England and Austrailia. He was a 'public school' man. (Means he went to private schools rather than public ones). His British accent was very thick and proper, but he was not a tight a**. Very funny guy actually.

We had to do a lot of investigation by telephone and this led to some humorous incidents. The most common one being, his calling and introducing himself followed by a very long pause. Then he invariably would respond with..."No...I am not from here". Eventually he would add that he was from Pennsylvania, that seemed to satisfy most folks.

[usmom]

My mother and her side of the family are from Texas. Try as she might, she can't stop calling a pen a pin. My dad is from southern Illinois, and his relatives all say warsh instead of wash.

[Diddle E. Squat]

So if you love Texas, they say, be fixin' to say "naht" for "night," "rahd" for "ride" and "raht" for "right."

Total BS.

[Winfield]

How 'bout a study of the "dialect" of the Kennedys and New Englanders who insist on saying "Aferker" and "Cuber"?
Drives me up a wall. Actually, I hear a lot of "Warsh" and "Warshington" in Pennsylvania.(And "din", as in "Din you know that?")

[Wallace T.]

What the Eastern elites forget is that you do not eliminate a people by suppressing their language. Their British counterparts might remind them that Ireland gained her independence after the native Gaelic was virtually extinct, after centuries of settling Englishmen, Welshmen, and Scotsmen on the island, and after a system of state education was set up extolling English culture and history and ignoring Irish culture and history.

Even a South where most folks sound like Kansans or Indianans may still be filled with Southerners.

[SeeRushToldU_So]

"I'm fixin to go shoppin, woodja like to come along?"

You couldn't melt me and pour me into a mall today.

[hispanarepublicana]

Try as she might, she can't stop calling a pen a pin.

Here's the odd thing, though. Everyone I know around here calls a writing pen a "pin", but pronounces the "pen" in "cattle pen" or "hog pen" properly.

[Melas]

The border between east Texas (where the Dixie dialect of Texan is spoken) and north Texas (where the Midwest dialect reigns) is at the junction of I-30E and the I-635 loop in Mesquite, Texas, immediately east of Dallas. Folks east of that point say "warsh" (wash) and "naw" (no), and call iced tea "ahhs tay". Further east, behind the Pine Curtain that separates east Texas proper from the rest of the state, the speech patterns are amost entirely those of the deep South: "yeller" for yellow, "cobeer" for beer, etc.

In Dallas proper, people tend to speak with a flat, midwestern inflection, and say "you guys" along with "y'all". In fact, the presence of the east Texas inflection in one's speech is taken as evidence that the speaker is a hick.

I myself am from Dallas and generally use the Midwest inflection. However, when I visit my family in Tyler, I begin to speak with the east Texas accent. I don't know why this is.

Truer words were never spoken. Although Tyler is barely East Texas. I move to Garland in August after having lived in Deep East Texas (Pineland then Jasper) for 9 years. The difference is night and day. I love it here.

It's not really a midwestern accent here in Dallas though. It's a Western accent as heard in Colorado (my home state), Arizona, California. A midwestern accent would be Jenny McCarthy's grating Chicago twang. Can't stand it.

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

LOL...... Hey instead of staying OUT of the traffic, I am driving toward it! lol...... I know, I'm an idiot.....

[mikegi]

My father's side of the family is Texan from way back (late 1700's and early 1800's). Dad was born in Boerne, TX and grew up in Marble Falls. Mom's family is southern Georgia (Valdosta).

Here are a couple of my observations about accents in the US:

1) Absolutely the best woman's accent is the high class south Alabama/Georgia one. It's like getting an audible massage when you listen to it. So soft and sultry.

2) Absolutely the worst woman's accent is Boston. All I can remember is hearing is "my f---ing legs" in that nasty tone. Blech!

3) For me, growing up in Austin and SA, that good ol' Texas twang always carries with it a strange combination of strength, confidence, and friendliness.

When I stayed in England many years ago I was always introduced by my host as being from Texas as opposed to the United States. Everyone around the world knows about Texas apparently.