Tag Archive for 'ozarks'

I allowed myself to get thoroughly distracted by Wikipedia today, and it was great fun. Somehow I managed to (eventually) make my way from Guy Fawkes to a discussion of American English at which point I decided to investigate some of what Greg has said in the past about my speech patterns, and I am pleased to report that my accent seems to fit best into the category of General American, which is frequently perceived by Americans as being "accentless". I can't say that I understand the phonetic alphabet and all of the terminology used in the article, but there are several things that I do understand.

While there is and can be no single formal definition of General American, various features are considered to be part of it, including rhotic pronunciation, which maintains the coda [r] in words like pearl, car, and court. Unlike RP, General American is characterized by the merger of the vowels of words like father and bother, flapping, and the reduction of vowel contrasts before [?]. General American also generally has yod-dropping after alveolar consonants. Other phonemic mergers, including the cot-caught merger, the pin-pen merger, the Mary-marry-merry merger and the wine-whine merger, may be found optionally at least in informal and semiformal varieties; however, the most formal varieties tend to be more conservative in preserving these phonemic distinctions.

I definitely display rhotic pronunciation (i.e. I pronounce my rs) and flapping (i.e. metal and medal sound very similar when I say them), and father and bother rhyme when I say them. I'm a bit iffy on the cot-caught merger--I seem to waver in whether they sound the same or not. I'm thoroughly off the fence on pin vs. pen--there's a clear distinction between them in my speech. Mary, marry, and merry all sound the same, and wine and whine tend to, too. By comparison, I have very little in common with the characteristics of Southern American English although I'm familiar with and can readily imitate many of the pronunciations/tendencies discussed within the article. With few if any exceptions, the pronunciations are things that I've heard but never really done myself. I did note one grammatical tendency that I do still use, namely: "The so called inceptive get/got to (indicating that an action is just getting started), as in the phrase "I got to talking to him and we ended up talking all night." Get to is more frequent in older SAE, and got to in newer SAE." I do think that I will still use got to on occasion. Another one that I will admit to is the use of dove as the past tense for dive. I do have to admit, though, that dived sounds absolutely atrocious to my ears. They also mention drug as the past tense for drag, and I'm sad to say that I did use that one at one time. I typically catch that one now. The same can be said for dropping the -ly off of my adverbs. In terms of Southern word usage, I have used yonder in the past, but it's not something that comes up frequently, I must admit. I do love the phrase hither, thither, and yon, though. And I must answer a positive both on the roley-poleys instead of woodlouse and crawdad instead of crawfish or crayfish. My cousin and I used to chase those in the creek, which, incidentally, I do not pronounce as crik. I do not, however, call shopping carts buggies or jitnies or trolleys. That would just be silly. I think that sums up my phonemic discoveries of the day. From there my Wikipedia search derailed into the descriptions of the Ozark Mountains where I grew up. It was interesting to see them refer to the Boston Mountains and Shepherd of the Hills country. Those are certainly terms I don't hear outside of the Ozarks. One of these days I should really take some time to recount some of my favorite parts of growing up in the Ozarks. For awhile, I was very interested in the history of the area--a situation only amplified while my mother worked at the local historical museum--and I can still tell some ghost stories and tall tales unique to the Ozarks from memory. And the Internet seems to be distinctly free of the story of Mary Calhoun. I wonder if my parents would still have the recording of that story my sister and I made when we were little...