I've been enjoying the discussion of southern speech patterns very much. I
moved to Richmond from Reading, PA about forty years ago. I recall a time
when I was asked to answer the phone on the job. It was a job applicant and
I told them what to do. After I hung up, I was asked if it was a black
person on the line, and I reply, too honestly, that I didn't know since the
"white folks down here sound like black folks up home do".  When I began to
teach in Nottoway High School, 25 yrs ago,  I was appalled to hear the
country accent. I was teaching English to special ed kids. The kids
consistently used the verb "be" as a substitute for am, is and are. I
patiently corrected them, but each new batch of students made me start all
over again. For their part, the students often complained that my "Yankee
Accent" was responsible for their low grades on spelling tests.

Twenty-three years ago I remarried, a born Richmonder, and we moved out to
Dinwiddie County where we still live. By that time I'd gotten used to a lot
of the speech patterns in the Virginia. But I drove hubby nuts when I
persisted in pronouncing radiator with a short a in the first syllable
instead of the long a. For years he told me how ignorant it was. Then last
year we were in Reading to bury my mother, and had dinner with a cousin. In
talking with Steve, Diane, who used radiator heat in her home, pronounced
radiator the same way that had driven him nuts for years, and he finally
understood where in had come from.

Until Reading became a favorite shopping stop for Virginia bus tours, I
usually corrected most folks to pronounce it Redding, instead of Reeding. So
many Virginians shop at the outlets there now, that they know the correct
pronunciation. The pronunciation was deliberately set at Redding so that it
could be distinguished from the namesake of the town in England.

I still use some Pennsylvania Dutch expressions, even after forty years
south of the Mason Dixon line. I will call a mischievious child a "nix noox"
and a total idiot, a "dumkuff". Nice thing is that they don't know what I am
saying!

Anne





Anne Pemberton
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http://www.erols.com/stevepem
http://www.erols.com/apembert
http://www.educationalsynthesis.org

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