My Lect

My Lect:

A Personal Account of Flavors of English I've Heard Growing Up in West Virginia, and In My Journey Through Life.

            I'm writing this for a couple reasons: I've recently enjoyed viewing various "Accent Challenge" videos on YouTube, where English speakers worldwide answer a series of questions which were crafted by a linguist to highlight common regional differences in vocabulary (e.g. "buggy" vs. "trolley" for "shopping cart"). It's heartening to see how people from all walks of life are interested in the flavors of language.

            The second reason is that my dad recently died, and in the process of memorializing his life, I've gotten in an introspective mood which inspires me to record a facet of my life, and of the Henrys and Maxeys, and of southern West Virginia, for the sake of family history. I'm especially interested in language, so I'll focus on that facet. I'm going to jump around a bit—it may sound kind of random; but I'm just trying to remember all that I can about language and accents in my life. This is a work in progress, which I'm continuing to hone.

            I was born in 1974, so mostly a child of the 80s. I grew up in the unincorporated community of Lashmeet, in the Bluestone Valley watershed, in Mercer County, in southern West Virginia, in the Appalachian Mountains, specifically in the stretch of mountains along the border of W.Va. and Virginia, which I've recently learned used to be called the Ouasioto Mountains.

            My dad was from Michigan, so I'm only half-Appalachian. After graduating from the local Concord College, mom "fled" the Mountain life by taking up an offered teaching position in Flint, Michigan, home of General Motors. My dad had gotten discharged from the Vietnam War. Some mutual friends introduced them, and they were engaged within a month.

            When Darryl visited Liz's homeplace in Spanishburg, he said it looked like paradise, and that it would be a better place to raise children. So they put in a trailer on the hillside above Grandma Maxey's farm, overlooking the Bluestone River. A few years later they bought a house in Lashmeet, on "The Ridge" (as Reese Harmon Ridge is known locally).

    Besides the Michigander influence, there was a lot of media and television in our household. And my mom and grandma (and various aunts and uncles) were school teachers. All that influenced my way of speaking.

Words I remember from when Grandma Maxey and Uncle John used to babysit me at the ancestral farm in Spanishburg:

✹     ground squirrel = chipmunk

✹     dinner = lunch

✹     supper = dinner/supper

✹     britches = pants. Dad would say "slacks." (Though maybe that was just for dress pants?)

✹     switch = a twig for whipping a naughty child. Grandma only threatened to use it once! I don't remember what I did—I vaguely remember delaying and wanting to keep playing when she told me to do something or come with her. She said so sweetly and quietly: "I'm going to get a switch." And she slowly walked over to the yellow-flowered bush at the gate, and plucked off a switch. When I realized that sweet Grandma was serious, I felt simultaneously amazed, hurt, indignant, and compliant! Or as Lando Calrissian says: "I don't like, I don't agree with it, but I accept it."  J

✹     flapjacks = pancakes

✹    Indian corn = multicolored corn used for artistic displays

✹     youngins = children

✹     icing = frosting. Grandma's cake icing was usually light brown—I don't know if that was maple icing or what. I thought that kind was "icing", but the white kind which my mom made was "frosting."

✹     law-dee-law! (an exclamation). Shorter version: Law! (I looked this word up and it originally came from "Lord!")

At some point, I remember experiencing a cognitive dissonance and confusion around the use of different words for the same thing. I can remember asking my mom about the difference between icing and frosting, and flapjacks and pancakes.

BTW, we called her Gramma (Grandma), not Mawmaw, which is the usual word for grandmother in southern W.Va. I wonder who decided on "Grandma"? I didn't even know the word Mawmaw.

(Another BTW: I find it interesting how my niece and nephew drew from both the General American and Traditional Appalachian wordsets in order to distinguish their two sets of grandparents: the Henry grandparents = Gramma and Grampa; the Elison grandparents = Mawmaw and Pawpaw.)

I had a bit of Appalachian flavor when I was a little kid; I suppose I mostly picked it up from my Spanishburg classmates. (I went to Spanishburg Elementary from ages 4 to 7, before being forced by the government school board to attend Lashmeet.) When I was very young, I used to say:

✹     clift = cliff. I remember my dad correcting me.

✹     yella. I remember my Aunt Harriet (a schoolteacher) correcting me: "It's not yella. It's yell-ow." As I was sitting on the colorful handmade oval rug next to the stove in grandma's living room. I felt indignant. (Also of note: I didn't say "yeller", which would be even more old-timey.)

✹    [Addition 6/12/21: balleyball = volleyball]

✹    wheelbarrel

✹     poor/pour/pore pronounced the same: /por/.

✹     I pronounced "pen" the same as "pin." Same for other "en" words. (When I worked at McDonalds in Princeton, me and a young fellow had a nice conversation about this. He agreed that he pronounced them the same too. He had a strong Appalachian accent, and it was interesting to hear him try to force himself to pronounce "pen" with the "e" vowel. Because it's an unnatural combo to the Appalachian tongue, it came out sort of like "pan.")

✹     "picture" pronounced the same as "pitcher." I remember talking about it with my mom on a drive down Rich Creek, how the words were pronounced the same, but spelled different.

✹     "libel to". I still use this even today.

✹      "oncet/wunst" = "once". I vaguely remember being corrected for this.

✹     bust and cuss. Words used a lot as a kid on the playground. I still use them. I remember the family talked about how "bust" comes from "burst", and that "bust" was still the correct word for some meanings. I didn't quite understand. J

✹     I think I used to pronounce "coupons" as "cue-pons" (like Appalachian). Maybe even "cue-ponds."(?) I remember my family having a discussion or argument about how it's supposed to be pronounced. Now I say "coopon."

✹    I pronounced "really" as "rilly." And I still do in contexts of everyday, flowing conversation. In Traditional Appalachian, the dark, rounded "l" at the end of words tends to lower the vowel "ee" /i/ and "ay" /e/ vowels, so that "heal" and "hill" sound similar; and "hail" and "hell" sound similar. I'm not sure if they're complete homophones, but maybe they are. I'd need to run it by a traditional speaker to see how it maps out. But I myself didn't pick up the Appalachian vowel system or rounded "l" so, I think only "rilly" really rubbed off on me.

I and my family didn't use "ain't" and "y'all." I remember those words were strongly frowned upon in my family and among the government (public) school authorities. I purposely use "y'all" quite a lot nowadays though, as it's clearer than how Standard English foists double duty onto "you" as singular and plural, and I also feel that "y'all" sounds more beauteous than the harsh Northeastern equivalent "you guys" (or "youse guys.") The word "guy" is borrowed from French "Guillaume", meaning "William." I just don't feel inclined to call every lovely person a "William." Also, "y'all" gives me some space for distinguishing myself from the kind of hoity-toity elitism that can be experienced in the Northeast. People around here are a bit shocked to hear "y'all." J

I didn't have the twangy Appalachian vowels. As far as I can tell, I have mostly a General American English accent, and I suppose I mostly did then too. Here's why: I started first grade when I was four, but even in elementary school, I experienced my classmates saying: "Whur're you from?" Me: (feeling exasperated and alienated): "I'm from here!" I must've modeled my speech mostly on my dad.

Some common words and phrases I heard growing up, from among playmates and adults:

✹     "I'm kin to…"

✹     In elementary school, my classmates tended to insert an extra syllable in my last name: Hen(e)ry.

✹     "color" pronounced like "collar." "What collar is it?" Side note: I remember I had a coloring book at Grandma's house which spelled it "colour." I was like: "How and why would a printed book spell the word wrong!? I was taught it's spelled 'color.'!"  I felt indignant that it was spelled wrong! In retrospect, it must've been from Canada or somewhere.

✹     The vowel "haa", "baa" and "raat", for "hi" and "bye" and "right." (In International Phonetic Alphabet: /ha:/, /ba:/ and /ra:t/; versus General American: /haɪ/, /baɪ/, and /raɪt/.) Especially the girls, with their higher-pitched voices, the words "haa!" and "baa!" really stood out. Also of note, when Appalachian speakers try to aim for a more General American accent, there's a tendency to "hyper-correct" and pronounce the final [ɪ] even more tensely  than in General American, like haa-ee [hai], baa-ee [bai], and raa-eet [rait].  

✹     holler (yell)

✹     holler (hollow/valley)

✹     kindly (kaandly)= kind of. As in: "It's kindly cold out!"

✹     Since "pin" and "pen" are merged, Traditional Appalachian turns them into compound words: "stickpin" vs. "inkpin."

✹     "red light" (red laat) = stop light/traffic light, whether it's currently green, yellow, or red.

✹     A good ideal! = "a good idea"

✹     them = those. "Them apples over there."

✹     "Ain't got no." But teachers frowned upon double negatives.

✹     ramps = a kind of wild scallion or leek. Spanishburg School had a yearly RAMP DINNER fundraiser, but sadly, we never went.

✹     greazy = greasy

✹     pepperoni rolls were invented in W.Va., by an Italian-Appalachian restauranteur, and were a delectable lunchroom staple. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepperoni_roll

✹     sick on my stomach = sick to my stomach. Darryl used to talk about this saying, which he heard from folk in his daily interactions at work. He implied that it was incorrect. But I was like: how is being sick "to" the stomach any righter than being sick "on" the stomach? "To" and "on" are both pictorial abstractions. One is simply Traditional Appalachian, the other General American.

✹    juice = electricity. When I used the word once as a teen, Darryl strongly condemned it, as sounding uneducated.

✹     posta = supposed to. "Are we 'posta do that?

✹     possom = opossom. I remember as a kid learning that opossum is more correct, but I still say possum.

✹     Possom Forks = a "folk etymologized" version of Pocasin Forks. The sign says Pocasin, but everyone said Possum. It's a place between Lashmeet and Matoaka. Sadly a place where two of my friends had a fist fight after school while we gathered round.

            Pocasin is an interesting word—I looked it up and it comes from the Powhatan language—the indigenous language of the eastern Virginia shore. It means "swamp on a hill"—a wetland that is on elevated ground. It was picked up by English settlers as a word for that kind of landscape feature. And then carried with settlers throughout Virginia, the Carolinas, and West Virginia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocosin

            By the way, Matoaka (Matoax) itself is the birth name of Pocahontas (whereas "Pocahontas" was a meaningful nickname), the princess of the Powhatan Confederacy. There is also a town of Matoaca, Virginia near the eastern shore.

            Another anecdote: A few years back, I wrote to the principal of Lashmeet-Matoaka Middle School, and suggested that we change the mascot, and retire the Matoaka "Indians." I'm the one who painted a generic "Indian" painting on the cafeteria wall (which is still there, as far as I know), so I played a role in that. I offered to paint a new mural, and I suggested that we reach out to the present-day Powhatan tribal leadership and make the change an educational and positive experience for our Lashmeet-Matoaka community. Unfortunately, after a brief acknowledgement, I didn't hear back.

            My family has a connection with this matter of concern. Because, through my grandma and uncle's genealogical research, they found that, like many West Virginians and Virginians, we are very distant descendants of Pocahontas, of the Powhatan Nation. Grandma and John even made a long drive to visit Chief Custalow, leader of one of present-day Powhatan tribes, and there was a photo of them with Custalow in the newspaper. So I have a homeopathic interest in amending this.

In elementary school, I sometimes heard kids say:

✹     lib'ary for library

✹     ax = ask. But these both were viewed as dunceful pronunciations. (But hey, in Old English, "ax" was a legitimate variant for "ask.")

When we visited with my Michigan cousins, especially Lori and Lisa, they spoke so fast. Their way of talking made me and Chad (my older brother) laugh and laugh with delight.

I don't recall any salient accent or vocabulary of Darryl (my dad). Goes to show that I subconsciously experienced Darryl's accent (but not my mom's) as the "norm." Except that he pronounced "-ese" in "Chinese" as "Chin-eece" (/s/ sound) instead of with a /z/. (And I suppose also Japaneece, Vietnameece, etc.) And Darryl pronounced "ancient" as "angk-shent"; and pronounced the "l" in "caulking." He was well-spoken, yet was sensitive about any implication of his pronunciation; as he had a speech impediment as a child (pronouncing /r/ as /w/), and took speech therapy to overcome that.

I never met either of my grandfathers, who both died in the late 60s. The only language tidbit I remember Darryl share about my grandad Ardell (from Flint, Michigan), is that one of his favorite (joking) exclamations was: "By the gods of war!" And that Ardell was very well spoken in his role as the Flint administrator of adult/continuing education for the University of Michigan.

Uncle John was a storyteller. When he turned the chair around backwards and straddled it, you knew it was time for storytelling. A common approach was to have the listener guess what sort of animal he'd seen: "It had black rings around its eyes…" A raccoon!

            A few times during family visits or reunions John and others would gather in grandma's living room for "storytelling time." I miss it. Due to television, our family never had that. It was like from a different era.

Uncle John proudly cultivated a locally-based identity, and was a member of the Mercer County Historical Society. Some colorful words I remember from John:

✹     "bar a' candy" = candy bar

✹     "Ie-talian" = Italian

✹     "Ie-suzu" = Isuzu (my family had an Isuzu Trooper SUV)

Speaking of I-suzu, here are some words for car models I heard growing up:

✹      CaMÅRy = Camaro. I'm using the letter Å (å) for the slightly rounded "ah" sound I hear in Traditional Appalachian. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, it's [ɒ].

✹     FeeÅRy = Ferrari. Also used for Pontiac Fieros!

✹    HONN-die = Hyundai. My first car. I pronounced it "HUN-day", but I still don't exactly know how to pronounce it in English. I can pronounce it Korean though! The Korean original sounds different than any pronunciations I've heard in English.

Where I grew up, there were often trees whose trunks were painted white. I asked my mom about it once, and she said that her family used to do that too. As the youngest child, it was her job to paint the trees with lime whitewash paint. I asked her why they did it. She explained that basically, a tree with a white trunk was a sort of "yard tree" or pet tree, as distinguished from a wild tree.

Another local craft item I saw a lot of growing up: white-painted tires, with an upturned triangular fringe, used as a planter in the yard.

In high school: a classmate told me a joke about Appalachian speech: I forget exactly how it went. It was something about a trucker having a flat tire, and putting out flares, but getting confused because he put out "flowers." (Flares and flowers sound the same in Traditional Appalachian.)

My Spanish teacher at Matoaka High School had a strong Appalachian accent. (Even when she was speaking Spanish!) I remember her saying:

✹     'pecific = specific

✹     spere = sphere

I was a teenager when the Princeton-Bluefield area was named "Four Seasons Country." There was a contest in the Bluefield Daily Telegraph to come up with a touristic name for the region which is serviced by the newspaper—Mercer County and surroundings. In the end, as far as I recall, the owner of the newspaper picked his own coinage as the winner. Which my parents scornfully laughed about.

I went off to college in North Carolina. I don't remember accent being much of a thing, except that some people had a General American accent and some had a Southern (with a spectrum of "country" or "genteel" varieties) or African American accent. Traditional Appalachian is more twangy and less drawled than the Traditional Southern lects.

            So much of my life (from childhood through my mid-twenties) has been immersed in Appalachian and Southern friends and life. I hardly even knew these were distinct flavors from "Generic American" until I later lived in the West and Northeast.

            I do remember though feeling angry when, at college (when I was abroad in China) one American smart-alec made fun of how I pronounced "tour" as "tore."

For several years in my twenties, I lived in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Clinton Hills in Greensboro, North Carolina. When I went to vote, I was the only Caucasian person in a gymnasium full of people. My African American neighbor, a woman in her 50s or 60s, spoke with a very old-timey flavor of what I like to call the language of Spoken Soul, or which linguists call African American Vernacular English (AAVE). She is the only person I've ever heard say skreet for street. She was so kind and welcoming—when I moved there, she made a plate of hot greens for me and brought it over.

            I had an acquaintance from Wilmington, N.C. on the coast, and she had a different accent. Sounded like Canadian, not Southern. As in Canadian, "out" and "house" are something like /əut/ and /həus/. I rode my bike down from Greensboro to Cape Fear once, and, stopped by a country church near the coast, asking for directions. And the lady in there spoke the same way. I learned that's the Tidewater Accent, which is really a different kind of speech. It does sound European or Irish. I heard from my brother who lived in Lynchburg, Virginia for awhile, that the native speech of that James River valley, though situated far inland, has some features of Tidewater English.

Speaking of Canadian, my family once took an epic trip to to swim in all of the Great Lakes (except for Lake Ontario). Which involved a visit to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (which is not actually in Canada, but pretty close). We were all excited about how they talked, with the "eh?" at the end of the sentences. We even bought a bumper sticker for our car that said something like: "We visited the U.P., eh?"

My sister-in-law from Flat Top shared a couple of Appalachian features of their family and friends:

✹     mirrow = mirror. (In this case, the "er" has flipped back to "o"! I wonder if the process was: Old Appalachian shift to mirry / mirra, then a later hyper-correction, trying to achieve the "o" spelling?)

✹    "Take'n-come-see-us!" A unique(?) farewell that one visitor repeatedly used. I suppose it's short for "take care and come see us!"

When I lived out in California, one lady thought I had an Irish accent. Another thought I had a mixed Northern-Texan accent!

In Cali, in 2000, I remember the first time I ever heard the phrase: "No worries." From a big and jovial Filipino American young man who worked with at the gas station in Cardiff-by-the-Sea. At first I literally didn't know what he was talking about. Like: you're not worried...uh, so what of it? But I picked up the phrase myself, because I liked it's light-hearted concern. However, another word I first heard in Cali, from an Iranian American young man who I worked with, but which I didn't pick up: hella (=very).

In later life, I asked Liz (my mom) questions about old Appalachian words. She said that these words stood out in her memory of the way her father spoke, who was born in the late 1800s.

✹     warsh = wash

✹     salad = some sliced onions on the side.

✹     poosh = push

She said that when she was a girl, she called "bags" pokes.

            She recalled that there was a backwoodsy family who came to Spanishburg school (maybe from Camp Creek, or Flat Top, or Egeria or somewhere) when she was young, and that she remembered they said yins instead of "y'all" or "you." I looked this up, and yins is thought to be the Old Appalachian form for "you" (plural), which was later displaced by "y'all", coming up from the South. Since this shift began before electronic media, I guess that "y'all" was spread via the culturally prestigious influence of southerly based Southern Baptist Church and Southern Methodist Church (now the United Methodist Church)—the two main denominations in W.Va. back in the day. A similar form, "you-uns," is still used around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the present day.

            Liz did have some Appalachian or Southern flavor in her speech. She basically had a light Southern accent, but with General American grammar and vocabulary. The main example that comes to mind is that she pronounced "dog" as [dɑʊg]. She was happy and proud of the way she said the word. [Edit: I also remember: "(That's) pri-ee gooood!" ("pri-ee" = "pretty," but totally dropping the t, and not with a glottal stop either, but totally elided. Said with a melodious tone. A jocular informal phrase for when something tastes delicious. Another word: an exclamation of disbelief: "psht!" I think of Liz when I say these words myself...which I still do!)

    And, curiously, her variety of speech seemingly pronounced the words "their", "there, and "they're" differently, but in a way that none of them rhymed with "deer/dear." Namely: [ðɪ̈ɹ], [ðɛɹ], [ðeɹ], & [diɹ]. Whereas in my lect, the first three words are complete homophones. I grilled her on how she pronounces these words. And I was like: "Well, what is a word that rhymes with 'their'?" And she said: "Well, in my way of speaking, no word rhymes with 'their.' It has a sound of its own."

            Now, as an amateur linguist, I know of some words in English that have a sound of their own, and don't rhyme with anything, such as "tsk-tsk" (the click sound), "mm-hmm," and "psst!" But I'm not sure that her concept of the word "their" wasn't altering her pronunciation in a self-conscious way. But maybe she's right, maybe in her lect, she really did consistently distinguish between "their," "there," and "they're" (and also from "eer"). I wonder if scholars of English regional varieties have reported such a thing in Appalachian or elsewhere?

            Liz and Darryl both pronounced their "wh". So "which" didn't rhyme with "witch." I only pronounce "wh" in careful speech. I do like the sound though.

             One thing she noted about my speech is that I pronounced "interesting" as sort of jammed up: "intch-ro͝osting." And I still do. 

          Liz admitted that, as an educator (and daughter of a family of schoolteachers), she looked down on Traditional Appalachian speech. Once, as an adult, I tried to recite a Traditional Appalachian text to her (the Wren story here: http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/appalachian-wv.php)— and that brought a strange look on her face. Something like: here her son was bringing to life this old speech which she'd tried so hard to leave behind. But one detail: Liz recognized the word "furnint"—which I'd never heard before; she said she'd heard people use it when she was young, and that it meant "near" or "around" (IIRC). 

            Later in life she told me how recently she'd sat in a booth near some old-timers at a restaurant in Princeton (I believe it was Biscuit World), and listened to their conversation. She said it struck her about how intelligent and well-spoken these men were, speaking about current events and medical science in their Appalachian speech. She admitted that she'd been judgmental about the local speech for much of her life.

As a child and teenager, my family visited the Cherokee Indian Reservation in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. At a craft exhibit, I heard two older ladies speaking Cherokee language amongst themselves. Cherokee doesn't have any "lip consonants" (like p, b, f, v, w), so their lips hardly move at all when speaking. I picked up a Cherokee dictionary from the bookstore, and studied it and its Sequoyah Script some, but didn't really pick it up. I just remember "osiyo" is hello!

            And in the McDonalds in Cherokee town, I listened to the Cherokee laborers, and noticed how their English was very thick Appalachian, but with the addition of glottal stops, as I'd never heard before. So Cherokee English is its own thing.

I suspect that the influence wasn't only one way—that Cherokee may've influenced Appalachian English in some way. And possibly early American English as a whole—I've wondered if the nasalized words: "uh-huh" and "uh-uh" came from Cherokee. (???)

There were times in my twenties when I worked at Blue Flash/Marathon gas stations in Princeton. I noticed the manager of the store out near Princeton Hospital devoiced her final consonants, in addition to rounding off the L's:

✹     gold = gohwt

✹     told = tohwt

Several of the customers at the Athens Road location spoke old-timey Appalachian. Some words I remember:

✹     Narries = Narrows (a town across the border in Virginia). See, at least in Bluestone Valley Appalachian, the morph from "-ow" > "-er" didn't happen when it follows an "r". Instead it goes to "-y". So Narries, but not "Narrers." However, my soon-to-be nephew-in-law, who is from Giles County says that natives of Narrows do pronounce it "Nairrz." [nɛɹ:z]

✹     wheelbårry = wheelbarrow

✹     bårry= borrow

✹     aint = aunt

✹     cain't = can't

✹     air = our

✹     mairicle = miracle

✹     winder = window

✹     'lectric = electric

✹     light bill (laat bill) = electric bill

The word "dialect" has a very negative connotation in Appalachia. I asked the store manager Bill (from Athens) about old words. And he said, with a bit of a sour tone: "Ya mean di-alect?" That's why I use the words: "variety" and "flavor", or "Appalachian speech" and "Appalachian language" or "Mountain Talk." I'll sometimes use the newer, short scientific word "lect" to refer to any variety of speech. But not "dialect." Hell no. In our context, it's a slightly derogatory word.

When I was filling in at the Glenwood store, I experienced the one time in my life where I really could not understand what another person was saying, due to their Appalachian language (and my lack of it):

A man pointed at the hot dogs on the deli bar, and said:

"Yareckonairinnicaount?"

Me: *blink* *blink* "Pardon?"

Him: "Yareckonairinnicaount?"

Me: I really didn't know what he was talking about. I thought it had something to do with counting, like counting how many hot dogs there are. But I was totally perplexed. Embarrassed that I failed to understand English, I just smiled and nodded my head diagonally so that I could be nodding yes, or I could be nodding no. And he purchased his hot dog, and went on his merry way.

When I got home, I found an online Appalachian Dictionary, and feverishly looked up any words that had "count" in it. Something like: "You reckon count?" And I found that word and phrase.

✹     'count = "worth/quality" (from "account"). He was saying: "Ye reckon 'air any 'count?" = "Do you reckon they're of any account?" In other words: "Do you think they're any good?"

It was so satisfying to have unlocked a puzzle of our Old Appalachian language.

I loved keeping my ear out for the most flavorful, traditional speakers. Usually it was older folks, but there was a young farmer lad who came in and spoke in a really old-timey way. I was awestruck.

See, there's a difference between "Generalized Country Accent" and Traditional Appalachian Language. Traditional Appalachian is not only being replaced by the "General American English" of news-media and college, but for some segments of our populace, the language is being replaced by "General Country"—the accent of Country music and Country-targeted national media. But I kept my ear out for the ancient soundshapes and ancient words, which haven't been worn down, and which still retain their vibrance and form.

Around that time, with Liz's help, I tracked down Kent Lilly (a distant friend (or kin?) of the Maxeys), an elderly man who is locally renowned as a speaker of Traditional Appalachian. He was hired by director John Sayles as the narrator for the film Matewan—an acclaimed film which is set in W.Va., near where I grew up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matewan

I talked with him on the phone, and enjoyed that. I told him I was researching Traditional Bluestone Valley Appalachian English. And he said something like: "Well, I guess I'm about as Bluestone as you can git." And he invited me to come to his upcoming cultural talk at a local venue. I felt frustrated because my gas station job conflicted with that event, and I didn't go. And generally very frustrated how cultural passion is not economically supported. I would've loved to have recorded his talks and stories, and to have built up and renewed the Appalachian Language in the Bluestone Valley in various ways. But I was stuck scraping away at the convenience store. Were Concord professors as passionate about Appalachian language as I? But they get a salary.

In my early 30s, when I worked at Wal-Mart in Princeton as a cart wrangler, I heard a man joke to another man about going up "yander." The way he said it, it was clear he was using an archaism that neither of them used  anymore. I looked it up, and "yander" is an even older version of "yonder." But just the fact that he knew the old word—even in a joking way—shows the ancient Appalachian peeping through.

            I talked with one of my fellow cart-pushers about my goal to realize Appalachian as a distinct language, in its own right. He replied: "You mean Hillbilly?" I was like: Yes!

            I remember hearing a little girl speak with a strong Appalachian accent in the store. It was so poignant to hear the language is still alive. A pale wildwood flower. Or "flare."

            During that time, I went to see an Anthroposophic Doctor down in N.C., and when he saw from my paperwork that I worked on Greasy Ridge Road, he noted that it was refreshing to see that the names in W.Va. hadn't yet been sanitized and toned down. J

Once at Jiffy Lube in Princeton, I was in the waiting room with two coal miners from McDowell Co. They spoke very old timey. First and only time I've ever heard hain't and hit for ain't and it.

When I worked as a cartman, cleaner, and stocker at Allen's IGA on Athen's Road, I got tired of people greeting me with the traditional Appalachian salutation: "Ya hård addit?" (I don't believe in workaholism.) I invented a deft reply: "I'm steady at it." J

I attended 12-Step meetings in Princeton, and there was an older fellow, a retired miner foreman, who was a long-time pillar of the Recovery community. He used such colorful words; for example:

✹     goony-bin (? maybe I'm mis-remembering) = mental ward, an alteration of "looney bin"

✹     slickery = slippery

✹     flustrated = frustrated + flustered. He didn't just invent these words—they are common, systemic forms in Traditional Appalachian.

Me and another fellow (maybe in his 60s) helped co-found a 12-Step meeting in Keystone, in neighboring McDowell County; materially the poorest county in W.Va., and eighth-poorest in the US. (But rich in mood.) As we made the long drive to and from the weekly meeting, we talked a lot about local culture. My friend explained to me a couple of old words: sworpin' (=carousing) and ridge-runner (what him and other Mountain people were called in the U.S. Army). *Side note: in my own foray into the U.S. Army, at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, I found it strange how on the first night, the "welcoming committee" singled out those soldiers from West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Literally called us out as mountain folk, in some jocular derogatory way.

           Anyway, at the Keystone meeting, I loved listening to an elderly man and his middle-aged daughter who came to the meeting in support of the addicted granddaughter. These are some words I remember:

✹     gover-mint (secondary stress on the "mint.")

✹     hos-PIDdle = hospital. With strongly aspirated "p." Darryl said he'd heard that before too.

✹     "cwiled up" = coiled up (a snake)

In making my actions of amends, I called up one of my high school buddies who I hadn't talked to in decades. And hearing his voice on the phone, I was struck with how our language paths diverged. His speech continued to be filled with the flavor of the land, and he spoke with a powerful Mountain sound. On the other hand, I had only had a bit of local flavor growing up, and I lost most of that from moving here and there in my travels. I did feel like I missed something.

I became passionate about Appalachian cultural renewal, and I spent time in the Concord Library reading through the Appalachian section. There are several good reference works there—and even an example of how Appalachian could be spelled as a language, to systematically bring out its distinctions: such as by spelling "ow" and "ou" as "aow" and "aou"—to present how Appalachian has more of a twang there. In phonetics, something like: [æ:ɯ]

I'm not much of a reader, but three Appalachian writers I've appreciated are, One: Manly Wellman, an author of fantasy stories set in Appalachia. One of my elementary teachers, Ms. Gaither, shared one of his short stories, and as an adult, I later read all I could get my hands on. Two: Breece D'J Pancake, an author who was able to evoke the WV-specific feeling of desolation. Though desolation is only one aspect of Wild and Wonderful, West By God Vir-Gin-I-AY. Yet I explored that feeling thoroughly, both inside and outside of West Virginia. And three: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (the book, not the film); though I sorta skim through the violent parts.

I once went on a quest to walk to the Lincoln Memorial. Luckily, I was living in northeastern W.Va. at the time, so it was only a few days walk. Part of my quest is that I would speak only Appalachian. I would become Appalachian for this journey. I wondered if I would be able to evoke the Mountain Talk, but I found that I could. And it felt liberating to try on a different persona and flavor. After the quest was complete, I gradually dropped back into General American. But for a span of days, I was immersed in the Appalachian linguistic organism, and it felt good. (BTW, I've known a few other people who intentionally switched lects. I've known an Australian woman, a South African woman, and a British Israeli woman who purposely switched to a General American Accent. Also, a Korean American young woman at the school where I work surprised me by switching to an Irish Accent. She visited Ireland for a few months, and liked that flavor of English better, so she just up and switched—permanently, as far as I know.)

Then there were more travels and wanderings. And my attention was turned away. In my early thirties, I lived in Montana for a while. I was surprised how the Old Western flavor of English had a lot in common with Appalachian. At a gift shop, a middle-aged Crow Indian man spoke with the same vowel heard in Appalachian "hi" and "bye" and "right":  /ha:/, /ba:/, /ra:t/.

And the family I worked for in Bozeman would say "acrosst" like Appalachians, instead of General American "across."

            Somehow from American Indian friends during that time, I picked up a closer pronunciation of "going" and "doing", at least in some phrases. Which is still with me. The "oh" in "going" is tighter almost like "gwoing"; and "oo" in "doing" is almost like "dwooing."  Like in the phrases "where are you gwoing?" and "how are you dwooing?"

Anyway, back to Appalachia. I suppose that the roots of Appalachian language came primarily out of West Country English (Southwestern British English) surrounding the port of Bristol, England. Note the existence of a Bristol, Virginia and Bristol, Tennessee. As for the sound of West Country English, think of Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings films, or Pirate Speech (me hearties!), both of which are depictions of West Country English. Bristol is also the center of "country" culture in England. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Country_English

Some similarities between West Country speech and Apppalachian:

✹    West Country English is, like Appalachian, very rhotic (R-ful). Unlike most of the other lects of England, West Country doesn't drop its "Rs." In contrast, like most lects of England, the traditional lects of the Deep South and New England are typically non-rhotic...they drop the "R." For example, Bostonian: Paak the caa (park the car) or Old Deep Southern: Pahk the cah.

✹    Like Traditional Appalachian, the letter "L" near the end, such as "gold" or "cold" is often not pronounced, so "an old gold bowl" sounds like "an ode goad bow." I have heard this in Traditional Appalachian too.

✹    In a similar way that Appalachian morphed the "-ow" endings with an "intrusive R" (hollow > holler), Bristol English did something similar with "-a" endings, adding an "intrusive L": cinema > cinemal; America > Americal. I wonder if that process may be related somehow. 

            Though of course, since the mountains were settled in a later wave, the West Country speech in America had already mixed—on the Midland American coast—with other varieties of "English English," such as from the northwest port of Lancashire and the eastern ports of Norfolk (England, the namesake of Norfolk, Virginia) and London.

            When I do genealogy searches on my mom's side, these are the places in England we map to. The name Maxey itself comes from one village named Maxey in eastern England. And many of the names of families in Spanishburg are old English names: Meadows speaks for itself. Shrewsbury is the name of a town in the county of Shropshire, in eastern England. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrewsbury

Blankenship is the name of a village in the county of Northumberland in Northeastern England. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blenkinsopp_Castle

            We lived on the border of farm country (Spanishburg) and coal country (Matoaka and parts west). Coal country is more ethnically mixed, due to the arrival of labor for industry.

            I'm supposing that Early Appalachian was not much different than the rhotic (R-ful) variety of Old American English spoken throughout the U.S. Midlands (Pennsylvania and New Jersey) and Piedmont/Appalachian foothills. And from there, this Old Midland+Piedmont American English moved deeper into the mountains, but also out into the Old West. And that it was only the 20th century spread of a particular flavor of Midwestern "NBC" English through national radio and television that made this older American speech, now termed "Appalachian," seem distinct and archaic.

            Yet this Old American English did develop distinctions within the Appalachian landscape. First through the absorption, via quiet intermarriage, of remnant populations of Cherokee people throughout the wide domain of the Cherokee Homeland—which includes the entire Southern Appalachians, as far north as West Virginia; and also, in legendary times, Cherokee Country included western Pennsylvania as well. Many people in these mountains have a "Cherokee Princess" in their ancestry. And according to the online genealogy charts, the Maxeys do too. Even if the biological, cultural, and linguistic influence of Cherokee was slight, it's a simple fact that the Appalachian People inhabit the landscape which was, and still is, Cherokee Country, for thousands of years. And so there must be some sort of subtly shared mindset.

            Another source of distinction was the influx of Protestant Scotch-Irish. To list some names of friends at school: McKinney, McKnight, McMillan, O'Dell. And it's no coincidence that Pittsburgh—the largest city in Appalachia—is spelled similarly as Edinburgh.

And also German settlers (names like Mutterback and Weiss). Lashmeet is itself ultimately of German/Austrian origin: from Laschmidt / Loschmidt / Lochschmidt / Lochschmied (maybe it means "locksmith"?), but carried to America via French Protestant (Huguenot) families who landed in Maryland and then spread out from there; they spelled it Lashmett / Lashmette / De Lashmutt.

            And then Italian and African American speech and culture, focused on coal mining and railroad work, were two other early ingredients. In Lashmeet and Matoaka there were Italian families like the Cardens (<Cardino?) and Pacittos.

        There were no Black children at Spanishburg (in farm county), but two Black students when I went to Matoaka High School (in coal country), though my classmate (Kim) moved away when I was in junior high.

    Appalachia is distinct from the Deep South in that the terrain and climate prevented the establishment of large plantations and cotton. And so African culture mostly came somewhat later. As an aside: my Grandma referred to African Americans as Colored folks, Colored people. Not so correct today, but in her day, the word was a polite form.

Presently, if I pinpoint where my own individual lect comes from—besides the roots of my dad's General American/Midwestern basis + some Bluestone Valley Appalachian flavor which was mostly (but not entirely) worn away an early age, I see strands from many different sources. This is probably the case for most everyone in the present-day world. Words and tonalities picked up from friends: such as "squeerrel" (a sort of endearing word I sometimes say to myself for squirrel, which came from my NYC friend Katy, who picked up the Australian word for squirrel somehow, and transmitted it to me). Or "Gee." (from my friend Tara). And from fictional media: "Hoo-boy." (from Wilma Flintstone). Or from travels: "aiya!" (a Chinese word for "woah!" or "ouch!") from my time living in China when I was 18-19—I found that, even today, that exclamation still comes out instead of "ouch! or when I sigh with frustration. And the exclamation "oi!" (when I bump into something, like "oof!"), which I somehow picked up from the several Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian songs which begin with "Oj" which I've learned or taught in my choir groups over the years.

            And of course the process of language development is ongoing for all us who are still alive. One of my co-workers where I work in rural upstate New York uses the term "hot mess" a lot. I didn't like the sound of it, because it sounded sort of gruesome. But I looked it up this week, and it apparently originates in the kitchen, not the battlefield. It meant a "hot meal" or "hot dish." I still don't plan on using it, but I'm okay with it now. However, I did pick up from her a little nonsense word used as a segway while working at various chores: "doo-doo-doo!"

            I don't watch television or read newspapers, or have much technology, so when I visit my hi-tech brother's family, there are some words I don't understand at first, like "rip a CD" and "Roku."

            I've sort of reshaped my way of speaking, through my decades of amateur study of linguistics, phonetics, and languages, through my time practicing mindful speech in Thich Nhat Hanh's Zen tradition, and later through my immersion in the mystical philosophy of Anthroposophy, which sort of has its own German-centered terminology and an intensified consciousness around words and speech. But most thoroughly by Recovery lingo, whose literature, rooms, meet-ups, and hard-won path of ascension, continue to hone my word.

So now I say I have my own individuated accent. Don't we all?

(Our scientists nowadays even acknowledges the uniqueness of each human voice, through the linguistic term "idiolect"—the speech ("lect") of each individual ("id"). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idiolect

Years ago, I made this webpage about Appalachian language and culture, including various designs for an Appalachian cultural flag. Over the years, several people have contacted me through the site, including Michael Montgomery, one the leading scholars of the Appalachian language. And also a young person interested in establishing an Appalachian national state. (Though the world doesn't need another nation-state.) And a person who, like myself, designed an Appalachian flag. I like all of the Appalachian flag designs—in my world, I consider them all to be "co-official." From my perspective, each and every Appalachian-identifying individual is free and welcome to design their own Appalachian flag.

In the present-day fusion of schools and state, Traditional Appalachian will forever be looked down upon and erased, as not being "Standard Government-and-Business-Approved English." That's one of many reasons I'm aiming (as far as I'm able) for the separation of schools and state, as part of a wider separation of the culture-forming powers from the equalizing/leveling power of the government. An Appalachian Folk School could very well choose to use Traditional Appalachian as the language of instruction and literature. 

I'm striving for a future where there are no more government schools in the Bluestone Valley. But where universal access to School Choice is guaranteed. So that every cent of school tax money is cleared through the individual conscience of each family or guardian, by being issued as a tyranny-proof tuition voucher which can be spent toward tuition at any kind of school whatsoever, as long as it's a school. Appalachian Folk Schools, Waldorf Schools, Montessori Schools (there is one in Bluefield last I looked—East River Montessori), Great Books Schools, Paideia Schools, Reggio Emilia Schools, Farm Schools, Nature Schools, Art Schools, Music Schools, Maker Schools, African Centered Schools, Christian Schools of all sorts (Baptist Schools, Methodist Schools, Catholic Schools, Quaker Schools, Adventist Schools, Amish Schools, Mennonite Schools), Jewish Schools, Muslim Schools, Democracy Schools, Libertarian Schools, Anarchist UnSchools, Language Immersion Schools, and Indigenous Immersion Schools (Cherokee, Shawnee, Mingo/Seneca, and Moneton/Tutelo were anciently the indigenous languages of the Bluestone Valley)...and even Confederate Schools and Black Nationalist Schools (Black Panther Schools, Republic of New Afrika Schools, and Nation of Islam Schools). For example. 

Free means free. Cultural freehood.

Families could try a school out one year, and if it doesn't suit the child, choose to take their voucher and spend it at another school. And people of course would be free to spend above and beyond the voucher, but the voucher ($11,554 per year in West Virginia, as of 2021) would be a universal baseline for every child citizen.

And I look to the day when all the cultural nationalities which have a relationship with the humanity of the Bluestone Valley are free to offer their own optional, voluntary school systems alongside the now de-governmentalized, de-monopolized American Community Schools. Let's get out from under the grip of the nation-state beast...the fused cultural-government. The English, German, Irish, Italian, and Scottish kindergartens and school systems are of natural interest to the peoples of the Spanishburg and Lashmeet areas; along with any nation in the world for which there are parents here who are willing to spend their tuition voucher toward that. I write about this in my booklet Solving Burning Conflicts: Through the Separation of Culture and State. Available on Amazon here or online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20170211075541/http://socialself.org/Articles/solvingburning.aspx 

Lastly, there's a saying:

"If you pronounce it AppaLAYchan, you're not."

There's an even more posh version I've heard here on the N.Y.-Massachusetts border where I live nowadays: AppaLAYSHan!

Those pronunciations aren't "wrong." Both of them are prevalent in the Northern Appalachian mountains which stretch through upstate New York and New England. But in native Southern and Central Appalachian speech, it's firmly Appalatchin.

—Travis H.

January 27, 2021

What are your experiences of language flavors?

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