Ann
Ipock
Humorist,
author, speaker
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Georgetown
Times
Don’t be
messing around with my Southern twang
By Ann Ipock July
26, 2005
I recently read that with the huge influx of Northern folks moving South,
our Southern dialect is predicted to die a slow death; first being diluted
— then drowned — then done GONE. Hush your mouth! Say it isn’t
so! Not that I have anything against “you’s guys” for
y’all or “Bois-tun” for Boston. OK, I lied — I
do. But along with pearls, white gloves, parasols, and gardenias, our
language is as big a part of our Southern heritage as, say, our vittles:
grits, collards and boiled peanuts. And I aim to preserve it.
Lest this horrible prediction come true, I hereby solemnly swear to do
my part to keep Southern colloquialism alive and well. And since I haven’t
written about my late, great Granny Pinky (Ida Henrietta Hurt Morris)
in forever (it seems like) what could be more natural than to highlight
her now?
She was the epitome of Southern charm and grace.
Though she didn’t speak in tongues — she often spoke tongue-in-cheek
and had more clichés than Doans has pills. Granny’s brogue
was a thick, eastern North Carolina one — at times, even sounding
like the Harker’s Island “hoi toiders.”
I noticed she entertained certain phrases and ideologies that were unique to her — so much so, that I sometimes had to translate to my friends who sat there dumbstruck. For me, the language she spoke was easy to understand — as common as black flies on a split watermelon at a picnic. But when she said, “The good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise” I’d tell my puzzled friend Jane DelRosso — who came from Pennsylvania — what she really meant; that being, “If everything goes all right.”
My sister Cathy and I devised
our own Pinkyisms recently, things we remembered that Granny said. They’re
original and spontaneous. And though I’m not asking you to “forward”
this list via email — you can thank me later — I am asking
you to make a concerted effort to use at least three of these phrases
every single day for the rest of your life. This should ensure our Southern
stability, which I’m calling PASS: Preserving America’s Southern
Society, a school of sorts, if you will.
Here we go: The answers are at the end of the column. When you get through
reading them, simply read them again, and again, until they “stick.”
We’ll start off with “expressions” and then move to
“words.”
1. “Indeed you are not” means: A) you’ll get a whooping
if you do B) quit nagging because the answer is “no” C) an
oxymoron
2. “No one will ever notice” means: A) everyone will be staring
at you B) no one really cares C) an oxymoron
3. To “jerk a knot” means: A) to tie your john boat up to
the dock B) a strategy to try to get your chil’ren to behave C)
to tie on a fashionable scarf
4. “The devil is beating his wife” means A) it’s raining
while the sun shines B) the Dirt Devil is being used to vacuum the hardwood
deck outside the single-wide C) the wife is losing the race
5.“Putting up damatoes” — tomatoes — means A)
placing tomatoes way up high on your refrigerator shelf B) canning tomatoes
in jars C) putting up WITH tomatoes that are bruised or mealy
6. “Mommock up the furniture” means A) to rearrange a room
B) to lay in a Pawleys Island hammock C) tear up the sofa, loveseat and
milk-crate end table
7. The “glove compartment” means A) the tiny box inside the
car for storage B) the place in the store that sells gloves C) another
name for “pocket” of the car
8. “The boot” means A) the trunk of your car B) footwear for
cowboys C) pushed aside
OK, now I’d like to test your knowledge of certain words.
1. How do you say “oil?” A) all B) oy-yul C) awel
2. How do you say “pen?” A) pin B) pee-yun C) pan
3. How do you say “roof?” A) rhymes with “aloof”
B) rhymes with “hoof” C) top of the house
4. How do you say “insurance?” A) in-shonce B) in-shor-unz
C) when is the hurricane going to hit?
5. How do you say “umbrella?” A) UM-brella B) um-BRELLA C)
parasol
6. How do you say “declare?” as in, “I declare!”
A) I de-kly-uh B) I de-clear C) Idee clare
7. How do you say “river?” A) ri-va B) riv-her C) ree-ver
8. How do you say “pencil?” A) pencil B) pun-sell C) pint-sul
Expressions: 1)A 2)B 3)B 4)A 5)B 6)C 7)A and C (fooled ya!) 8)A
Words: 1)B 2)B 3)A 4)B 5)C 6)A 7)A 8)C
If you scored a perfect 16, you could be an instructor at PASS! If you scored less than 10, you’ve got a lot of reciting to do. If you scored less than 5, it may be too late.
Just kiddin’ folks! We love you Down Here, no matter where you’re from! Y’all do come back, now, y’hear?