AVI reposted this regional dialect quiz.
The biggest difference between my dialect and the one native to these mountains is that I was raised with the standard Southern “ya’ll,” whereas here they say “you ‘uns.” Or “we ‘uns,’” as appropriate. In the Deeper South where I was raised we don’t have a first person plural other than “We.”
12 comments:
Mine comes out not too far off--where I grew up in upstate Illinois and in Iowa.
Eric Hines
Wow. Two cities indicated, Wichita and Springfield MO, exactly bracketed my small town of origin -- which was in a region of darkest red. Henry Higgins would be hard pressed to do better.
I'm Houston/Shreveport/Jackson, but would fit in anywhere from West Texas to North Carolina.
A colleague who grew up in upstate NY once teased me about saying "I'm not, either," when the standard English would be "No, I'm not." I think it was the most colloquial thing he'd ever heard me say, at least unironically. It struck his ear about the same way as if I'd channeled Slim Pickens and said "Well, shucks, I ain't no way like that."
Mine came up with Salt Lake City, Fresno and Modesto. Even though I was born and raised in SoCal until I was 16, I have lived in the south ever since. I'm 63 now and have spent all but 8 years in WNC and the upstate of SC. The 8 years was spent in Atlanta after I got out of the service.
Brownsville TX, Overland Park KS, Jackson MI
The closest I've spent to any of these as an adult is Carbondale IL. Next would be Urbana, IL. Little Rock and LA before I was 10--those are kind of neutral.
But James, weren't you an MK whose childhood speech would have been a randomly-regional English? Or your parents' regions? Yours would be fascinating to suss out.
teased me about saying "I'm not, either,"
In early grade school Iowa, especially, we were saying "I'm not either"--we didn't know about commas at that age--when we weren't saying "I ain't neither."
Eric Hines
My father was New Orleans, my mother Southern Illinois(*)/Chicago. I went to school in LA, and then in Liberia where I was home-schooled first and then went to an American-style school with kids from all over the US and the world. My closest friends were from India, Denmark, Liberia, and the USA.
I apparently didn't pick up much from BBC, and my Liberian English was useless (I used to be able to hear, but not speak it. I guess I was a hair too old to pick it up easily.) Other missionaries were largely from the South. Maybe that and LA would be the places to start to figure out the accent. The MidWest has been my home for my adult life, and I've undoubtedly adjusted.
Sometimes I read some useful idiom that fits so well that I adopt it, even though it was never part of my early life or my current environment--which could skew things a tad.
(*) A bit north of the region of Southern dialect in Illinois.
"You'uns" is more akin to Pittsburghs "Yinz" than to "y'all". Interesting.
This is a weird one for me- I'm an L.A. native, here my whole life. Cities it triangulated me to? CLeveland, Grand Rapids and Madison. I think it's confused because I'm not easily categorized- Dad was from NJ so brought some of those pronounciations, but adopted others on his travels before here- and Mom an immigrant- and neighbors not more than a generation of two removed from somewhere else in the country or world- Several questions I could have honestly given two or three answers to. Sneakers, Tennis Shoes (tennies), used both. Lots like that.
Richmond, Va. Newport News, Va. Jackson, MS.
Jackson, Mississippi, central Texas, and northwest Iowa. Mississippi is the closest.
I've been told several times that my idioms and my accent don't match. I use a lot of "Southernisms" but I don't have much of a Southern accent. I've moved around too much, and this part of Texas has more of a flat, Midwestern sound compared to the rest of the state.
LittleRed1
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