Comments on: Have you seen this?

By: auburn60

auburn60 — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:47:02 +0000

And both of us ‘ain’t from around here’!

We’s ‘outlanders’.

By: tori

tori — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:12:49 +0000

auburn60– me too!

By: auburn60

auburn60 — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:31:50 +0000

My former brother-in-law is from Rhode Island and right before he joined our very Southern family he made a comment at dinner one night about the ‘awnets’ being particularly bad that year. We all nodded agreeably because no one wanted to admit that none of us had a clue what he was talking about. Turns out he was talking about the ‘hornets’–which we called ‘wasps’ anyway.

Here in Tennessee I have found one test of the local vernacular is what you call that thing you push around at the grocery store–is it a cart or a buggy? And the thing you carry your junk in–a purse or a pocketbook? If you say ‘cart’ and ‘purse’–you ain’t from around here.
(I say cart and purse.)

By: Steve Weber

Steve Weber — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:25:46 +0000

Thanks Tori, I needed that. Russ is great but I like Louis too.

By: rockin robyn

rockin robyn — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:10:42 +0000

Hi gang, interesting conversation! How about Pennsylvania dutch talk…. when we were children my mom would holler at us to “red” up our rooms!! or was that “read” up our rooms… I’m not even sure how that is spelled — what, paint our rooms “red” — na, it meant to clean our rooms!

If my mom was trying to talk to you about something and she couldn’t explain what it was – she would describe it as a “do-jiggy”

Cute story — my sister’s boyfriend is Greek and when we’d go visiting his parents, when they are not talking to us they speak to each other in Greece… one time I took my brother’s daughter (my niece along) to play with their grandchildren… my sister’s boyfriends parents are talking to him in the Greek language and my niece (she was 4 or 5 at the time) tugs on my arm and whispers to me with a confused look on her face — “are they talking?”

By: Barbara M. Lloyd

Barbara M. Lloyd — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:00:33 +0000

Okay, it took me a spell (got that from my grandfather) to rise above the fact that my Russ was not singing…..then I decided to cave in and tell you the visual thang is rather clever. ….and would have been even more so with the right vocal chords. Well, what did you expect, Sweet Pea?)

My grandfather was the king of what we called down-home talk. “See them dogs fittin over yonder” meant that dogs were fighting in the distance. As a child, I I was forever getting his message screwed up. And when he asked the blessing, you heard the first two words and the last two words before the “amen.” The rest was a muttering under his breath. Thank goodness, God had better hearing than everyone who ate with my grandfather.

By: tori

tori — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:30:58 +0000

BrownEyedGirl– “Fell out” is one of my favorite Southern-isms! (As in, “I ’bout fell out when she said that!”)

By: BrownEyedGirl

BrownEyedGirl — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:11:36 +0000

When I was a paramedic student training in the inner city, I ran into this…. I got called to a patient having “athletic procedures” ( Seizures) or simply ” they done fell out” ( fainted) Our mentor paramedics we studied under loved watching us sweat trying to figure out the chief complaint.

By: auburn60

auburn60 — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:28:27 +0000

My in-laws say ‘Howugettinlong’ (How are you getting along?) and yes,they run it together like that. My favorite around here is ‘Youount to?’ (You want to?)
I dropped the phrase ‘fixin’ to’ from my vocabulary when we lived in Ohio. People kept asking me what I was about to repair.

By: CarolynR

CarolynR — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:46:08 +0000

auburn60 I don’t know about saying it, I couldn’t even read it! But now Tori has revealed herself as a polyglot, I’m sure it’ll be a cinch!

“Jeet?” I got that !!

By: trishARKANSAS

trishARKANSAS — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:33:14 +0000

This really happened. A friend and I went to a mission training seminar type thing. People really seemed to notice our accents. So we began to lay the Arkansan talk on pretty thick. We say things like “Yontoo go get a bite to eat?” or we would ask each other “Jeet yet?”(translation “Did you eat yet?”)

When the seminar was over I began to think about how we over exaggerated our accent’s. So I decided to use my husband as guinea pig and do a little test. When I saw my husband i said “Jeet?” Without skipping a beat he replied “Yeah I got one of those things out of the ice box and had it for dinner.”

By: auburn60

auburn60 — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:02:57 +0000

But can you say ‘It’s a right nice night for a knife fight?’
I know a North Carolinian who told his potential bride that she was gonna have to wrap her mouth around that phrase before his family was going to accept her.
She still can’t say it 20 years later. They divorced. Not because of her diction,however.

By: tori

tori — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:24:30 +0000

CarolynR– Why yes, I do. Also fluent in Arkansan, and can speak a smattering of North and South Carolinean, if they don’t talk too fast. Heh heh.

By: CarolynR

CarolynR — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:34:10 +0000

Very, very clever – yes have seen it before! Brings out my inner ahhhhh. Luvvit, thanks Tori. Have a great week.

(Henceforth am counting on you for translation into Tennessee as necessary, you being bi-lingual and all. You don’t speak Missis, Missi, Mis, errr that place with the river do you?)