Y'uns Have No Idea

Language. I use it. Southern dialect? Creeping into my usage more and more. I'll write more on all of this later this evening, I thought I'd just go ahead and put in this small post so that I don't disrupt the order if Glenn decides to post the new topic before I have a chance to write.

**UPDATE**

Alright, so since posting that and reading the comments I've had time to think about some issues.

First, interestingly enough, most of my friends have a non-regional dialect. Or well, I guess more correctly, don't really have accents. I was raised in VA for the first half of my life, my grandparents on my mothers side are Yankees, and my parents don't have accents either. So, for most of my life I haven't really had one. However, I have found I am easily influenced by the people I am around, and tend to pick up mannerisms or certain sayings. So, for 4 yrs now (well and two others, but there was a gap in-between), I've worked with a couple of people who have Southern accents, and have been developing more of one myself. This comes out more at work because it seems friendlier. I don't know if that's because it's associated with southern hospitality, or whether people with southern accents are generally thought of as dumber, and therefore non-threatening. It bothers me somewhat. I was actually quite proud of my non-accent, but I get it back if I actually pay attention. I slip into southern when I get lazy.

I do say some words that are obviously not southernized. Like aunt. I pronounce it "awnt", whereas most people down here probably say "ant". Or pecan - I say "picahn", whereas most probably say "pee-can". I say soda, or the name of the particular soda I'd like, but I don't usually just offer or ask for a coke. I took Caitlin's little dialect test - not the one online though. She had one that had two similar sounding words - like cot and caught, and depending on how you pronounced them, there were markers for a certain southern accent. I'm pretty sure I don't have those markers.

As far as the term "y'uns" goes, I actually first heard it in TN, not PA, though most people associate it with that area. Apparently it is the plural form of "y'all", even though to me, "y'all" is already plural. I can't refer to a single person as "y'all", only "you", but I guess that is the magic of Tennessee. My friend Jeff was the first person I heard use that term. He had a pretty thick accent, and one of the church groups that came to the camp we worked at actually thought he had introduced himself as "Jif", like JIF peanut butter.

I don't have a problem with the words "dinner" or "supper" - they're interchangeable to me for the evening meal, though usually I just say dinner. I don't like it when it's used for the midday meal - that's "lunch", and nothing else. My grandmother often calls lunch "supper", and it irks me. She and her side of the family (my father's side) are from south GA. In fact, we still have farm land up there. She uses words like "yonder" and "dungarees", and we harass her to no end for it.

In closing - here's a hilarious quote from The Office I just saw the other night - not really to do with accents, but it's relevant:

Gareth: "My dad, for example, he's not as cosmopolitan or as educated as me and it can be embarrassing you know. He doesn't understand all the new trendy words - like he'll say 'poofs' instead of 'gays', 'birds' instead of 'women', 'darkies' instead of 'coloureds'."

On being a foreigner in my own neighborhood

As someone who does a lot of traveling overseas, I have become accostomed to finiding myself in situations where I cannot understand 100% of what is being said around me. Depending on where I am and the context in which I find myself, sometimes I understand most, but not all, while many other time I understand fifty percent or less. When you live like that for extended periods, you find yourself developing coping mechanisms. One of these is the noncommittal response: a shrug of the shoulders and "mmmmm" while nodding the head. There's also the smile and nod or even the laugh and nod (although if you're ever traveling in Russia, I'd suggest avoiding the smiling/laughing as that might get miscronstrued as I want to sleep with you). Also, if it is obvious that you've been asked a question, sometimes smiling and nodding works then too (although then who knows what you're agreed to!) although a hapless smile and a shrug seems to get one out of these situations easily in a lot of places. Certainly, there are plenty of situations where using these techniques should be avoided, but when strangers on the street or distant acquaintances babble things at you in a foreign tongue, I've found that these tricks work well. That way you don't always come across as the imbecile foriegner who hasn't bothered to master the local tongue.

The accents of the people in my neighborhood here in the US are, in many cases, nearly unintelligible to me. The other day, the man who lives at the house behind me asked me a question four times before I understood him. The first three times, the only words I understood were "your momma." Now, my mom's over here a lot, and I figured there was a pretty good chance that that the answer to his question was yes, and I was just about to give up and smile and nod when I realized I'm in an English speaking neighborhood, I shouldn't have to do that! Finally, after asking me four times, I understood: Was it my mom who had asked him about his dog the other day?

Whenever I speak to my neighbors (which is pretty rare, and after the incident the other day, bound to be rarer) I find myself feeling as though I should emulate their speech patterns. I feel as though if I speak with proper English, I'm setting myself even further apart from them than I am already, like I'm trying to show through my words that I am somehow better than them. I was having a different conversation with the fellow who lives behind me yesterday, and he wanted to know why I wasn't married, why I didn't have a boyfriend, etc. His question, actually, was, Why you ain't got no man? and I found myself answering (without even thinking about it) I on't need no man! (And you're seeing that correctly, no "d" in "don't").

I love eavesdropping on people, and the people in my neighborhood are out in the street a lot. There's a tendency among my neighbors to shout (er, holla) jovially at one another, and I'm always trying to ascertain what's going on without actually having to stick my head out the door and see. Usually I have no clue. It's as though everyone is speaking a different language.

I spent a month in this house last summer, before heading off to Korea. After I left, my mom discovered that someone had written with their finger, in the dust on my trashcan white girl stay here. We debated whether or not it was a request (as in White girl, please stay here) or a statement of fact (There is a white girl who stays in this house). I choose to believe it was the latter.

Similarly, here's a conversation I had with a girl of about 10 who lives on my block:

Girl: I thought you was older.
Jane: Oh, you probably saw my mom. We look a lot alike.

Girl: Oh. Your momma stay wit you?

Jane: No, she lives a few miles down the road.

Linda, who started this topic off for us this week, mentioned that she got the idea for this topic from reading a recent post on my blog - the one about the crazy naked old dude in my house. Yeah, you should probably go read that, if you haven't already. I've been thinking about that incident, and wondering if there was something I did that gave the crazy old coot the impression that I would like to see him naked. Was there something I agreed to that I misunderstood? Did I smile at something that should have instead earned him a glare? Hard to know. (In case y'all are interested, he showed up a couple of days ago, knocking on my door. I didn't open it or say anything, and he went away.)

Also, because I just used the contraction y'all, I would like point out that English desperately needs a plural you, and I think y'all works just fine. So long as it's not contracted like ya'll, as that's just nonsensical.

a rose, they say, would smell as sweet...

so i might be jumping the gun with my topic for the week, since i don't think everyone blogged last week, but i actually have a topic and a little bit of time and a decent connection all at once, so gun-jumping, here i go!
this week's topic was actually sparked by a comment in jane's blog about dialects, which caused me to become aware that when the guy at mcdonalds said "guy yep yuh", he was actually asking if he could help me (presumably by taking my order). so that led to a bunch of other thoughts about the english language - its uses, its evolution, dialects, etc.
i get to use many versions of english at work; i interact and communicate with young children, both educated and uneducated adults, and people whose first language is not english, and i find myself speaking differently around different people. for instance, my boss is somewhat of a grammarian. we say "shall" and "perhaps" and the like. we once had a debate over how one should express that another was behaving like a curmudgeon - then both went home and did some research. it turns out that when one behaves like a curmudgeon, one is displaying curmudgeonry. who would have guessed? my job also requires that i process in all our new staff members - from teeny-boppers beginning their first job to management staff with postgraduate degrees. i find myself referring to things as "cool" or "sucking" with many of the new hires. then of course, there are the few to whom i have the fun of explaining that when we ask for them to specify a race (for equal employment opportunity tracking purposes) one need not cross out the word "caucasian" and write in "white". you can bet i didn't mention curmudgeonry to the few, the proud, the needing to have paid attention in elementary school.
i do admit that i can be a bit of a language snob, but i digress. the point of the topic is to discuss how our language is so varied - accents, dialects, fun localized phrases, the whole gamut.
we can mention that in texas, when asked what kind of coke one would like, it is perfectly acceptable to reply "mountain dew", or that in ireland "good crack" means "lots of fun".
i know someone who was very offended when approached by a (presumably) homeless person in london and asked "fag?" (the unfortunately dirty person wanted a cigarette) and someone who was mortified when she learned that in the united states, if one asks to borrow a rubber, one will not be handed an eraser.
i highly doubt that i'm the only person to have experienced or been told about misunderstandings of this sort, so please share yours (for those who speak foreign languages, feel free to make comparisons among the way we phrase things, idioms, etc. as well).