What’d Ya Say?
The English that I use includes the dialects of rural North Alabama, a personal English and standard English. As a child, I was steeped in the vernacular of North Alabama. I naturally shortened and blended words so that I said that “I wadn’t gonna do that” instead of “I was not going to do that.” I used expressions such as “I reckon” and “I’m fixin’ to” to indicate what I was thinking about something or that I was preparing to do something. Additionally, the long “i” in words like bright, night, and light was pronounced as /ai/. This vernacular and some of the pronunciations are still evident in my personal English. In addition to the words and sounds of the vernacular, my personal English includes vocabulary that I primarily use within the nuclear family, "the family unit." For example, small children are "baa-boos" or "boo-wads" or "little people"; a person's parents are "the parentals"; and a non-gender specific term for a waiter or waitress is a "wait-tron" while "do-dah" substitutes for any word I cannot remember and "Mr. -- or Mrs. -- Do-Dah" for a name that evades me at the moment. I may plan to arrive at "dark-thirty" and use "interesting" to describe things that are quite out of the ordinary. In addition to these types of English, I use standard English, which is the English that I use when I am in professional setting, such as the classroom. That English includes distinct pronunciations and particular use of the vernacular. For example, even though I may still “sound southern” despite my best efforts, when I am in an academic or professional setting, I distinguish between words like pen and pin, and while I may use the vernacular to make a point, the use of the vernacular is recognized as emphasis. Asking if someone is “not from around here” or to use something like Dreamland’s tag line that “There ain’t nothing like ‘em nowhere” are ways that the vernacular may be woven into the standard English that I use, but the vernacular is contrasted with the standard for emphasis. Both the vernacular and standard English are effective, but understanding how to use them, at appropriate times and in appropriate ways, means that that ideas can be communicated more effectively and easily.