Crash Course in Southern Pronunciation and Grammar

CRASH COURSE IN SOUTHERN PRONUNCIATION AND GRAMMAR

Sat. June 16th, 2018 (with a correction Sun. Sept. 2nd, 2018)

Perhaps you are not a native of Dixie, but you have a sudden need to pass as a person born and bred in the South of the U.S.  This little essay will put you on the right path.  In a linguistic outburst or moment, Monty Python once observed that "Isoglosses were erected to repel invaders."  "Isoglosses" are the dotted lines that separate the dialect peculiarities of each small town from the dialect peculiarities of the next small town over, as illustrated in Leonard Bloomfield's book Language on page 326.  Monty Python were probably thinking of the small towns of England and Scotland, but something similar applies in the Southern U.S.  Nonetheless, there are three general characteristics, and they will be explained here.

(1) The Beautiful Pronoun.  Talking to more than one person?  In some parts of the English-speaking world, you will say, "you lot."  In the vast majority of the United States, you will say, "you guys."  But if you were born in the South, if your parents were born in the South, and if you haven't traded in your tongue for a more worldly model, you will say, "y'all" or its grander uncontracted form "you all" (which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Mark Antony when he says "You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown" -- sounds very Southern if you glide over the Roman holiday, and pretend not to notice "thrice").  The apostrophe in y'all marks the exact spot where the "ou" of "you" disappeared.  If you write ya'll, you are very likely to be a Southerner, but nevertheless, your apostrophe has slipped a gear, because y'all does not have the same background as I'll, you'll, we'll, they'll, in which the apostrophe marks the spot where the "wi" of "will" disappeared.  I once saw a bumper sticker in Chapel Hill, one of the many intellectual capitals of the South.  The bumper sticker maker had printed "NO NUKES YA'LL," but the bumper sticker owner had taken scissors to the bumper sticker and rearranged it to say "NO NUKES Y'ALL."  Quite rightly!

To borrow an idea from southern France, Dixie could be poetically called the Langue de Y'all.

There is a small portion of the South where people say "y'uns" instead (derived seemingly from "you ones", but it doesn't sound right unless contracted).  My friend Harrison has been known to say y'uns.  There's an isogloss waiting to be figured out -- the exact geographical home and haunt (or distribution) of "y'uns" is unclear to me.

Back to y'all.  There's an idea that's gained traction, that Southerners sometimes say y'all to one person.  In my view, that can happen, but it has the exact same meaning as saying "you guys" to one person.  If a Southerner says y'all to one person, the Southerner probably means "your group, including you who are here, plus your significant other or your family and friends who are not here."

Basically, if you know how to use "you guys" or "you lot" or "you people," then you know how to use "y'all."  I had a linguistic professor (Robert Rodman) who came into class one day and pointed out that Americans don't say "You guys eat you guys' spinach."  Instead they say, "You guys eat your spinach."  At the beginning of the sentence, you have established that you are talking to several people.  When it comes time to use the possessive form of the pronoun, you insert the simpler form "your," usually singular nowadays -- but after all, "you" and "your" continue the old plural pronoun of Old English.  Arriving at the punchline, Southerners say "Y'all eat your spinach."  We don't say "Y'all eat y'all's spinach."  Different pronoun.  Same grammar.  In the song Ode to Billie Joe, Bobbie Gentry has the narrator's mother say "Y'all remember to wipe your feet."  That's good grammar y'all -- Southern on the ground, on the farm and in the town.

In the movie Rush Hour, Chris Tucker corrects Jackie Chan's pronunciation of y'all several times.  To tell you the truth, I thought Jackie Chan pronounced it pretty well.

(2) The Beautiful Vowel.  The South has its own sounds (see #3 below).  But first, we will mention a conservative tendency in Southern pronunciation.  Southerners, like Northeasterners, will use one vowel sound in the woman's name Dawn, and a different vowel sound in the man's name Don.  The American's "Don" sounds close to the Englishman's "darn," inasmuch as the Englishman is not pronouncing the R in darn; and the American's Don is the same from Carolina to California (with a possible exception for New York City).  The linguistic letter for the American's Don is simply /a/.  A as in Spanish.  The Southerner's Dawn has a different vowel sound, which linguists call an "open O" and write with a backwards c -- a little O with a hole punched on the left side of the circle.  It will be too hard to try to write that symbol in my blog, but you can picture what it looks like.  I call the sound of it the beautiful vowel.  It sounds halfway over to the "oh" in "oh yeah," but people in the Western United States do not use this vowel sound at all.  They pronounce Dawn the same as Don.  In the South, they sound different.  At least, with the same disclaimer: if you were born in the South, if your parents were born in the South, and if you haven't traded in your tongue for a more worldly model.  In the South, "caller" sounds different from "collar," and "caught" sounds different from "cot."  Caller and caught have the open O like Dawn -- halfway over to the OH sound.  Collar and cot have the ah-sound like Don.  Generally the AU and AW and ALL words have the open O vowel.  But then so do "dog" and "broad" and "gone."  To do this right, you have to memorize how some words sound (dog, broad, gone).  But if you are following me thus far with your tongue, you are on the right track.

To wrap up on point #2, the beautiful pronoun (y'all) contains the beautiful vowel (open O).

(3) The Rebel I.  "The rebel I" is a nickname for a vowel sound which Southerners use in the words that teachers call the words with Long I.  You can hear the alternative to the rebel I, when the Beatles sing (in "I Saw Her Standing There") "And I held her hand in mine."  "Mine" sounds like "mah-een" which is called a diphthong, meaning that one vowel sound glides over to another.  There is only one pronounced vowel letter in "mine."  But when you hear the Beatles sing "mah-een" you hear two vowel sounds.  A little exaggerated -- but still, that's how it's said every day in most of the English-speaking world.  Not in the South.  When you get to the end of the vowel sound in "mine" in the South, you are making exactly the same sound you were making when the vowel sound began.  That's not a diphthong -- it's a monophthong (mun-AHF-thong).  Our rebel I is halfway between the short A of Dan and the American short O of Don -- the latter being ah, as we've already noted.  It's not a long way from Dan to Don -- but somehow, Southerners manage to fit "dine" halfway in between.

There's an isogloss that goes with the rebel I -- an elusive dotted line, I don't know exactly where, but somewhere between North Carolina and Alabama.  In the deep South -- in Alabama, for example -- all long I's have the rebel I sound, and "right" has the same vowel sound as "ride."  But the shallow South, including North Carolina, is way trickier.  In the shallow South, you only hear the rebel I at the end of a syllable, as in "my," and before the voiced consonants B, D, G, J, L, M, N, V, Z.  If the long I is before one of the voiceless consonants F, K, P, S, T, the shallow Southerner will not pronounce the rebel I:  he or she will use the diphthong, just like a Northerner.  The shallow Southerner has the rebel I sound in "ride," but the diphthong in "right"; the rebel I sound in "rival," but the diphthong in "rifle"; the rebel I sound in "tidal," but the diphthong in "title."  Except for the T as in "title" (which has gone over to a D sound in the South as in most of the rest of the U.S.), this voiceless consonant thing goes according to the sound -- not according to the spelling.  The C in "rice" is pronounced like an S -- so the shallow Southerner gives the I the diphthong sound.  Rice.  But the S in "rise" is pronounced like a Z -- so the shallow Southerner gives the I the rebel I sound, just like the deep Southerner.  Rise.

In Ken Burns' movie of the Civil War, the Tennessean who has become a prisoner of war says "We're fighting for our rights."  For a split second, the Northerner thinks he said "We're fighting for our rats."  But then he catches on.  Like a deep Southerner, the Tennessean used the rebel I in "rights" (as well as "fighting").

It is unclear to me if Roy Orbison put into his song "Blue Bayou" the line that says "With that girl of mine by my side, the silver moon and the evening tide."  But later singers have sung it like that.  Here, all Southerners agree -- "mine by my side" and "tide" have the rebel I.  Practice will make perfect!

You may have thought dialects were easy.  Not really.  But if you have followed me this far, you can pass.  There is more, but now you have the big points.

This is my way.  James Thurber sketched another way.  If you have a pressing need to sound like a Southerner, you could try saying "Are you sitting in the catbird seat?"  But, my way is more reliable.

Frank Newton