Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Appalachian English

Over a decade ago, I had KYHillChick down to the County to visit her mom. Midday on Saturday, they decide they want to go visit Doc, my long-time deceased Father-in-Law. They hadn't been to visit his grave since long before I'd come on the scene, and they had forgotten how to get there. They knew it was in sight of Granny Holtz's Knob (not kidding), so that placed in the SW part of the county. I had a good map, and I looked all over the map, and couldn't find the road. KYHillChick goes native as soon as she hits the county, so she's just as unintelligible as the rest of her kin.

"Cow Hill Road, right?"

"That's the one. The road has a douba-yella line runnin' down it. The cemetery has a little white church next to it, and it's next to the grave of William and Martha, his parents."

We spent the better part of the day running up and down the back roads of the county looking for that cemetery. Finally, about 4 O'Clock I was driving over by the new Federal penetentiary, and found a white church on a road with double-yellow line running down it. There was a large cemetery out back. I pulled off. At first they didn't want to get out. It looked too different. I told them they at least needed to get out and check.

"We're looking for William and Martha,"

I walked ahead, and found myself in a mess of graves with the correct last name. Sure enough, there was a tombstone with William and Martha on it. and a nearby one with Doc's name.

"That ain't right."

"How come. You got Doc right there, and William and Martha are right here."

"The dates ain't right."

"Just stand next to the grave and cover up the dates a little with your feet, and nobody'll know the difference," I replied. They weren't having it.

By this time we'd almost made a complete circle of that end of the county and were close to my MIL's house, so we went back there. I brought out my laptop and found a gazetteer with 10,000 place names for the state of Kentucky. I did a search for "Cow*" and came up with a slew of cow-related place names: Cow Bone, Cow Lick, Cow Ridge, Upper Cow-this and Lower Cow-that. Not one was Cow Hill Road. I told them I was flummoxed. They'd lost Dad and that was that. Either the cemetery was moved, and the road name changed, or they'd misremembered.

"There ain't no Cow Hill Road! C-O-W-nada! Zip! Bumpkus!"

"It ain't Cow, C-O-W." was the reply.

"Well then how do y'all spell cow down here?"

"It's C-A-L." my loving wife and consort replied. "It's named for my Uncle Cal Stevens. It's Cal Hill Road."

Within a minute, I had Cal Hill Road located and the coordinates for Lower Cal Hill Baptist Church and its adjacent cemetery fed into my GPS. Within an hour we were standing at Doc's grave, in the lee of Granny Holtz's Knob.

I know lots of people who talked pretty much like that growing up.

As for it being original Elizabethan English....yeah, not so much. If you’re interested, there is an outfit in London that has resurrected the pronunciations of the time and actually performs plays in the Globe Theatre using the original pronunciation of Shakespeare. The closest thing it sounds like is like a pirate. But as they note, practically every English speaker in the world, and many with the older dialects will find lots in common with it because it is literally the mother tongue.

I remember old people when I was a kid who still things like p-I-son with a long I instead of poison.

sounds like their english is more proper than north.

Back when Angus was a young-un, we were down to the county for a family reunion. It was Doc's family, KYHillChick's father. This was at a time when Angus was first learning the bagpipes, and this was one of his first times performing at the reunion. It used to be that the reunion was mostly about music. Doc's brothers were mostly all musicians and they were regional favorites in their day. Sadly they're all gone now. Angus is part of the new generation and plays Bluegrass as well as most of them as well as playing the bagpipes.

So the musicians were setting up, and we were touring the tables saying hello. KYHillChick and I stopped by the table with the remaining brothers and sisters of Doc, then all up in their 80's and 90's.

"I got a bone to pick with y'all." I said. "I'm on to ya." That got their attention.

"I gave my son the travel atlas on the way down to keep him happy, and I got to hear a list of all the dirty place names. Y'all ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Granny Holtz's Knob, Big Blue Knob, Beaver Seep, Cheesy Hollow, Dick Bend. . . I'm on to ya! I know what y'all's up to down here."

Those old folks broked out into such laughter, we thought we'd have have to prop them up back in their chairs.

My Mother In Law was raised in Graham County, she no longer lives there, she moved to Haywood County back in the 50's after getting married.


Graham County is a very rural county back in the sticks, a lot of good people there.

Here's an interesting idiom for you. KYHillChick has been corresponding on her Appalachian forums about it. Maybe you've heard a version.

Variations:

They Lo!
Day Lo!
Thy Lord!

. . . sometimes given as an expletive and sometimes with a rising inflection as in a question.

It is believed to be a contraction of: "May thy Lord have mercy!"

? Didn't you voluntarily move to the South?

It's how most of my family on both sides, talk. You know, unless they moved to a town of 500 or more people, then they sound like some TV news man.

Florida ain't really "the south". "North Cuba" is more accurate.

More like South Bronx.

BTW: Growing up as a Cincinnati Krauthead, I was exposed to Appalachian and Southern quite a bit. To my ear, they sound quite different. Being a Krauthead, it was a basic survival skill. Folks that spoke Appalachian and what we call "Hamiltucky" were generally kindly disposed to folks of German heritage. At least they were neutral. Folks from the Deep South had a far more negative reaction to us. To both, I was a Northerner or a Yankee, but with the Appalachians you were treated just as an outsider. Southerners had an additional animosity tacked on.

I mentioned Hamiltucky. There were a large contingent of Appalachians that came up to Hamilton, Ohio to work in the big plants like Fisher Body. Hamilton is just north of Cincinnati. Even though most of those plants are closed now, there is still a large enclave of Appalachians just up the road. Ditto for Dayton, Ohio.

Interesting fact: When I was at U.C. the retired Dean of the College Conservatory of Music still taught Music Appreciation to the undergrads. Doctor Anderson was a brilliant fellow and quite an entertaining lecturer. He posited that Bluegrass as a distinct artform started in Cincinnati and Dayton as the various populations came out of the hollers and moved to the big city. Their distinct musical traditions melded and that, along with a longing for the hollers back home, gave birth to Bluegrass. I had a buddy who was into Bluegrass in a big way, and used to go on about how much holler-to-holler differences there were, and could play licks from some places and could even play variations by generation.

FL can be considered the southern-most Yankee state.

Well having lived over in Britain, minus an accent variation, a lot of southerners speak the same way
as the do in rural Scotland and Ireland....

A lot of the people in Aroostock Co Maine ( far northern Maine) also speak much like the people in southern WVA, and SWestern VA. Pretty much Old English the way it was spoken in 17th Century England.

Just not a lot of outside influences from other dialects moving into those areas from elsewhere...

but yeah, I'll give ya the potential of a lot of inbred, you get into those areas, most people seem to know and are related to about everyone else in the county....or the area.

My grandparents were born in 1907 and 1911, but they were first cousins.

I know my cousin Jeff was having marital issues, when I was back each last in 2016. He got mad at my cousin Jim, for not taking his side in what was a potential divorce. I was there witnessing the argument.
Jim, replied, "whose side am I suppose to take? You're my cousin on my Mom's side, and Debbie is my cousin on my Dad's side".

Saw a lot in MN & Wisconsin, there brothers and sisters married brothers and sisters.

Judie had two of her siblings marry Martinsons, who were brother and sister... no relation from the Borkas to the Martinsons.. except by marriage.. here also having several aunts and uncles who married Martinsons...

the two family's grand pas served together in WW 2 is where the connection started.

Same thing happened, with my first wife's family.. two of her sisters married brothers from another family..
no relation, but the family genealogy chart, can kinda get tied in a knot in rural America, about anywhere.

You consider Miami to be the south?

^^^Mr. Dear Diary. ^^^

I wouldn't, I think of it more as the outskirts of northern Havana...

in high school, in Northern Va, we had some neighbors, the husband was deceased, but he had been the US Ambassador to Afghanistan for 10 to 15 years.. he died over there. His wife was from Paris, that had met and got married after the war. After Mr Dickenson died, his wife moved back to the Metro DC area, with her two daughters. While he was alive, they took regular trips to Paris, all the time on Uncle Sam's expense, being in the diplomatic corps. That ended with his death. His wife worked in the State Dept in DC.

So during the summer of 69, she was going to take her daughters up to Montreal and Quebec City for a month so they could be back exposed to the French language and customs.

When they got back, I asked her how was the trip and did it pan out how she wanted.... her response, was sorta funny I thought...

Say I was from London and wanted to have my daughters have exposure to English Culture, and language....
so I took them to Arkansas for a month.. it was pretty much like that....

That was a comparison that was easy to relate to...

Since those days, when in college in Boston, I spent a lot of time up in Quebec... I love the geography & Terrain... in fact in all my travels, my favorite city in North America is Quebec City. I love Quebec and the Maritime Provinces a lot. IN my younger days, I always hoped I ended up getting married to a girl from either Quebec or the Maritimes. I love it, the diversity of the geography and terrain, and the people you meet up there.. darn wonderful place.

i have lived in arizona all my life. Arizona is mostly people from somewhere else, so no specific accent per se. Now having said that i reconize when listening to that stuff things i wouldn't ordinarily think about. Like saying crick, for creek. And i have been kidded all my life about the way i pronounce things without thinking about it. Like haid, for head. What it tells me that even tho my family have been here for a long time, some words carry over from when they lived in tennessee and kentucky.
I was talking to my wife about it this mourning, she doesn't see it. But i do. When she gets around her girl chick cousins, it gets real thick. They revert back to that language without realizing they are doing it.
Actually, i am kind of proud of it.

Yep, when we moved to Sevierville in the 70's, that's what my yankee (Maryland) @$$ had to learn (larn?), and right quick. There was not a word they covered that I had not heard and used growing up. Well, except "boomer" and "gaumed", those were new...

I want to move back there, someday.

I'm a "crick" person. My mother's kin are from PA, so that's probably where I picked it up.

KYHillChick's kin all say "creek." They all hail from the KY/TN border, and originally came from VA and NC.