As the years have passed I’ve come to be really proud of the way I talk. My accent says, I’m from somewhere. I have a history and a place that is unique to me. And damn it, I know all about sweet tea (and sweet corn bread and country ham!) And, in a world that is getting more and more homogenized ever day, that is saying something.
Also, the accent, in general, changes the deeper south you go and as you travel from one state to another-something that Hollywood has never figured out nor ever really gotten right. We do NOT all sound the same. It also changes depending on your history- in my home town there is what I call the “hill-billy” accent and the “blue-blood” accent (they drop their r's and add an “a,” “Mu-tha,(mother) could you please ask bru-tha, (brother) to pass the bu-da (butter)?”-yeah, I can hear it in my head, it's spelling it that's the problem.) Usually, their people have had money somewhere along the line.
Yeah, I have the hill-billy one.
You’d think that a woman with an English degree would try very hard to be correct when it came to her language but nah, man. This is like poetry, it’s out-loud fun, messin’ with words.
I mean really, what we do to the vowels of words is amazing. It’s messed up a hundred times since Sunday, but it is seriously just a whole lot of fun to say these jacked-up words. The words take on a rhythm and a cadence all their own as we drawl them out.
“Hey, Baby! Did you want to watch some Tv?"
can be plumb beautiful and twisted, at the same time, as it comes off my tongue.What we do to cuss words is even more joyous and they can mean a thousand different things depending on how we stretch them out and where we put the emphasis.
"Shit!" means basically,
“Ow! I dropped that big hammer
on my toe and it hurt!”
"Sheee-at!" means, that's impressive, like,
“Sheeee-at, Son, that is one
big-ass bass boat!”
(“Son” in this context does NOT necessarily refer to one’s offspring. It can be anyone of the male gender to whom the speaker is speaking. We also have a vocabulary that is unique to the region that you are in. For instance, in my hometown, “Pespi“ could be a correct answer to the question, “What kind of Coke do you want?” )
You get the picture.
My most favorite is one that I heard my dad say, I think pertaining to a piece of machinery that he was working on, most probably our car -
“Hellfire and damnation!”
What you will still not hear (very loudly, anyway) is the F-word. In fact, it wasn’t until I took a trip to Philadelphia as an adult that I heard that one in gloriously loud real life, as opposed to at the movies.
There I was, smack dab in the middle of Philadelphia- tall buildings, art museums, the steps Rocky ran up in his victory “jog”- and all I could do was stare at the guy in front of me on the sidewalk talking on his cell phone because he was dropping the F-bomb like he was a WWII fighter pilot. I mean, he was doing some serious damage. I kept looking around at the people on the street, wondering who was gonna turn him in to the Social Police, but they were completely non-plussed - nobody was staring at him or even making eyes at one another, they acted just exactly like they heard this kind of language everyday at the dinner table. Maybe, they did. I didn’t.
Now, truth be known, I’ve dropped that bad-boy a time or two myself and, while it feels quite satisfactory, I never can quite get over the feeling that some Aunt Bea wannabe is gonna walk by and bop me on the head with her big purse. There are some things that small town USA just won’t let you get away with.
I’ve never quite figured that one out-they will PAY money to take themselves (and sometimes, their kids) to see a movie in which everything on god’s green earth is done and said but don’t you even THINK about doing it or saying it on the sidewalk outside of the courthouse.
No, siree!
Hollywood can get away with it but you, my native son (or daughter), can not.
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