posted on June 7, 2016 by Gayle Leeson

Say It Right, Y’all!

By Gayle Leeson, author of The Calamity Café

The Calamity CafeI’ve got a little something stuck in my craw, but I’m going to do what I can to fix it. And I want y’all to help me. It’s about the word Appalachian. It is NOT pronounced Appalaychian. It’s Appalachian. Short a like in apple.

I tend to use that word as a measuring stick of how well TV and movie writers “know their southern.” For instance, it was like fingernails on a chalkboard when I was watching Justified one night and heard (I believe) Boyd Crowder say Appalaychian. “No, Boyd, NO!” Those writers did and actors did so well with dialect and then…that word. When watching Big Stone Gap, I held my breath at the “Appa—” and released it with a relieved sigh at the “—lachian.” I have to say, though, that I was a little disturbed at the way the actors pronounced the word married. It sounded like murried. I thought, “We don’t say married like that, do we? Do we?” And, no, I don’t think we do. Of course, some Appalachians might—there are several different dialects.

Admittedly, I didn’t think I had an accent at all until I visited a resort in my twenties. Everyone I met there asked, “Gayle, what part of the South are you from?”

The reason I didn’t believe I had an accent was that, compared to my grandmother, I didn’t. My grandmother could turn cornbread into a four-syllable word. I heard her do it. Her daughter—my aunt—was in the hospital and my grandmother was making dinner for the family. She said, “I don’t know what I’m going to fix Bud [two syllables, by the way]. He won’t even eat my co-rn-bray-ed.”

My other grandmother used words I’d never heard of, such as, kyarn. She’d say, “That stinks like kyarn.” I mentioned it to my husband once and said I never did find out the meaning of kyarn. He said, “Road kill.”  My jaw dropped.  “You mean, carrion?  Kyarn is carrion?”  “Yeah,” he said.  “Put the Appalachian accent to it.”  It made sense.

So, I did a little research and learned that the Appalachian region has its own language.  Linguists call it “Appalachian English.”  The Scots-Irish settled the entire region known as Appalachia (all of West Virginia and portions of Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia) in the mid-1700’s.  At the time, physical boundaries kept modernization out.  Then in the 1940’s, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was created; and that brought tourists to the area.  By the 1950’s, highways and telephones were more prevalent throughout Appalachia, bringing the modern world another step closer to its rural inhabitants.

Now, I don’t want you to think we in Appalachia are a bunch of snobs.  We realize that the same immigrants who settled here settled land elsewhere, but the linguists tell us that our speech patterns will not be found in any other dialect to the extent that they are in Appalachia.  In addition, we Appalachians use variants of our own speech patterns.  Just because I don’t use the same words as my grandmothers doesn’t mean that I don’t have an Appalachian accent. In fact, the linguists say that each region has its own speech patterns and that most of us allow our situations to govern our speech.  For example, when I’m talking with my family, I’m liable to let down my guard a little—use a bit more Appalachian English and a bit less Standard American English.  In a more formal situation, I’ll try to employ a lot less Appalachian English.  Even though I know from personal experience that most Appalachians are not “dumb hillbillies,” I’m afraid that others might see me that way if I use the language I naturally use.  And yet, some phonological differences are so inbred, that I can’t not use them.

Did you know that the t at the end of slept is not silent?  You might say, “I slept in this morning.”  I would say, “I slep in.”  To me, that “t” just doesn’t feel right.  It reminds me of an episode of “All in The Family” where Edith met a Jewish baker and he called her “Edit.”  She told him, “My name’s Edith!  Th!”  So then he called her “Edit-th.”  To me, “slep-t” would be every bit as awkward.

The linguists also point out some lexical differences in Appalachian English.  For example, the Standard American English word might be faucet, but the Appalachian English version would be spigot.  If somebody looks sick, we might say, “he’s peaked” (that’s peek-ed).  Did you hurt your finger?  Then we might say you “stoved it up.”  I once knew a man who substituted “for” for “because.”  He’d say, “I need to go to the store, for I’m out of milk.”  My brother would substitute the entire remainder of our family with the word “nim.”  He’d ask me, “Did Mama and nim go to the store?”  Some people say “knowed” rather than “knew.”  We’re famous for our double negatives. “I don’t have none of that.”  Our present perfect tense has raised some eyebrows, too. “He’s done done it now!”

This little foray into my Appalachian heritage has given me new insight.  We might chop off some of our “-ings”; we might “reckon” rather than “guess” sometimes; and we might have places with such outlandish names as “Lick Skillet,” “Frog Holler” and “Sugar Loaf,” but we have a rich history.  We know where we came from and, for the most part, where we’re going.  And if anyone thinks we’re a bunch of ignorant hillbillies, then you ought to come and get to know us a little better.  If you stay long enough, we might be able to teach you how to talk right.

Gayle Leeson

Gayle Leeson is a pseudonym for Gayle Trent. I also write as Amanda Lee. As Gayle Trent, I write the Daphne Martin Cake Mystery series and the Myrtle Crumb Mystery series. As Amanda Lee, I write the Embroidery Mystery series. I live in Virginia with my family, which includes her own “Angus” who is not an Irish wolfhound but a Great Pyrenees who provides plenty of inspiration for the character of Mr. O’Ruff. I'm having a blast writing this new series!

10 thoughts on “Say It Right, Y’all!”

  1. Having a partly Scots ancestry, I’m wondering about “Mama and nim.” Did your brother really pronounce the “d” in “and,” or was it more like “Mama an em” ? If I remember the little linguistic history I studied, “hem” was brought directly over from Scotland and meant “them.” Of course, as old as I am and as shot as my memory is sometimes, I may be misremembering. Thanks, btw, for setting me right on “-ach” with a short “a.” ?

    1. You’re right, Kat! It was more “Mama an em!” LOL!

  2. Pat says:

    You are preaching to the choir! I was guilty of mispronouncing Appalachia until I read Sharyn McCrumb. I really do make an effort to find out how to say names from the people who live there. I’m a native Texan who has also lived in Louisiana so I am very familiar with interesting and wonderful names and accents. Notrees. Tickfaw. Cut-and-Shoot. Muleshoe. Dime Box. I also cringe when watching TV and the actor is butchering the accent. Although those Justified boys did a good job. I roll around on the floor and have fits when watching a show where no one bothered to research an area. Anyone watch that awful Texas mini series last year? Still looking for those boulders and caves at the San Jacinto battleground.
    The waterfall was lovely too. Wonder where it’s hiding. I don’t know about you folks but I am tired of Hollywood being lazy.

    1. I loved Justified. One of my favorite Boyd Crowder lines was, “I’ve been called a lot of things. Inarticulate ain’t one of them.” 😀

      I didn’t see the Texas mini series, but I agree that I’m tired of Hollywood being lazy.

      And now I want to visit Cut-and-Shoot and Dime Box.

  3. Alice Boni says:

    Thank you! That was great. I heard many of these when I was growing up in western Pa. Guess it wouldn’t matter now—people don’t talk to others—-they text them!!

    1. True, Alice! I saw something the other day that said “B4? It’s ‘before’. I speak English, not Bingo.” LOL!

  4. Thanks for that.
    Very interesting read for this foreigner, and I learnd how to correctly pronounce “Appalchian.”
    Who can tell when this skill will come in handy, right?

    1. That’s right, Gerd! What language do you speak? I’m guessing Dutch. 🙂

      1. Gerd Duerner says:

        I’m from Germany, which is close by we do share a border.
        Though I’m from the far end, closer to Austria.

        1. My ancestors are German too! 🙂

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