Til The Cows Come Home: Also Known as a Darn Long Post About Appalachian English*
Our voice is a deeply personal part of our lives and our heritage. Let’s explore Appalachian English, often stereotyped, yet used by over 25 million people in the United States today.
*Specifically about the Northeast Alabama variety of Smoky Mountain English, since that’s where I’m from.
I was born in Alabama and I didn’t think anything was wrong with my language. I pronounced “mountain” as “mounain” (linguistically known as consonant clutter reduction), I said “falling” as “fallin” (g-dropping from the end of infinitive verbs — see music video below from the country music GOAT), and if I pronounced the words “pen” and “pin”, well, you wouldn’t be able to tell a difference (these are known as vowel mergers). I used “y’all” as a pronoun and referred to a group of people as “all y’all”. I said “buggy” and “britches”, I called a toilet a “commode”, and although nowadays, I will say damn and shit in every type of setting, I have never in my life told someone to “shut up”.
