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Needles
07-13-2004, 17:01
Yesterday I had someone tell me that people from the South butcher the English language. I had to inform him that not everyone in the South speaks the same way, and amongst the dialects of the South could be found some of the purest and oldest forms of the English language spoken in America. The Southern Mountain Dialect is of course what we hear as we are hiking on the Southern parts of the AT, I grew up with it and have no problem understanding some of the quirkier aspects of language in the Southern Appalachians, but since many AT hikers come from up North I thought I would post these links so that you might find it easier to talk to the locals when you are confronted with "proper" English :-)

http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh30-2.html

http://www.angelfire.com/tn2/ScottCoTnMemories/SouthernMountainDialect.html

http://www.smokymountainnews.com/Templates/issues/01_00/01_26_00/op_crowe.shtml

Speer Carrier
07-13-2004, 19:19
Thanks for the information. It was very interesting. I was born in New England, spent several years in my teens in southern California, lived for 15 years in central New York, and have been in Atlanta for 25 years. Each of these areas has its own way of speaking and accents. Since I've been in the south, the way people speak here is what I consider normal. (I don't in clude Atlanta, but rather north Georgia and western North Carolina, because Atlanta has become a very cosmopolitan city with not much in common with "the south") When I've been to Maine, New Hamshire, or Vermont I have found the speech patterns to be delightfully colloquial, and provincial. I even find myself kind of mocking them to myself. And don't get me started on my native Massachusetts. Now, my friends from the Syracuse area seem to all speak with a very flat sound to their speech, which I never noticed when I lived there. And, of course when I visit my brother in our former home of San Diego,everyone sounds like the Sean Penn character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

We who live here in the south know how we are thought of by people from other parts of the country,in part because of the ways those native to this area speak, but we sort of dismiss it as harmless. After all the folks in north Georgia in speaking of the thru hikers they encounter from other areas usually say "them folks from up north sure talk funny"



Skink

tribes
07-13-2004, 22:00
The Southern Mountain Dialect is of course what we hear as we are hiking on the Southern parts of the AT, I grew up with it and have no problem understanding some of the quirkier aspects of language in the Southern Appalachians, but since many AT hikers come from up North I thought I would post these links so that you might find it easier to talk to the locals when you are confronted with "proper" English :-)

http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh30-2.html

http://www.angelfire.com/tn2/ScottCoTnMemories/SouthernMountainDialect.html

http://www.smokymountainnews.com/Templates/issues/01_00/01_26_00/op_crowe.shtml


These links are great. Thanks.

Mr. Clean
07-14-2004, 07:17
I grew up in Northern Virginia where some of these terms were used, but have been in Maine for so long I'd forgotten them. Thanks.

Mags
07-14-2004, 12:48
Accents rock!

I am sad to say that I've lost most of my Rhody accent since being in Colorado for thep past five years...though it does come back strongly from time to time! :) (What is a Rhode Island accent? Somewhere between "Cheers" and "Welcome Back Kotter"!)

A few years ago, dated a woman from "down South". When I would see her family, they would comment on how I talked funny. When the girlfriend would see MY family, they would invariably comment on her accent.
All relative I guess! Though, I will readily admit my Rhody way of (attempting!) saying "Y'all" was rather funny. :)