Saving Community Language

How far should writers, storytellers, and scholars go to save language? The question is not debated enough. In fact, it is mostly overlooked in this age in which all television newscasters have developed non-regional speech patterns and film actors sound strained as they "take on" accents that are not part of their heritage (or first language).

However, college classrooms are a steeping cauldron of comment. There is never a semester that my classes don't engage in the battle of dialect. That is because standard English usage is not the usual part of most people's everyday speech. Academic writing is the common ground of understanding between professor and student. It is the way business is communicated appropriate when business jargon is substituted for some of the academic "speak."

I believe every American dialect should be recorded in writing and in audio. Yet, the double-standard of the English-speaking people is glaringly apparent. For only southern accents and African- American Harlem accents are written in dialect. (However, Walter Dean Myers is one award-winning author who makes community dialect or colloquial speech part of his writing.) That is the rule with only slight exception. For instance, everyone knows that people living in Boston, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and anywhere in New Jersey have accents. To my sourthern ear, they are glaring and harsh. But fiction writers who place their characters in northern areas of the United States hardly ever write in dialect unless the character is a thug, a brut, a thief, or they want the reader to know the character is unfortunate. I assume it is because writers think people are uneducated if they have an accent.

It is only in the south that writers use goin' to, wantin', and askin'. That is, they emphasize how "g" is dropped from the "ing" words. And, well it should be, because most southerners drop the hard "g" as they ease into the smoothness of their gentle accent. Readers who don't understand smoothness and gentleness should hang out at a meeting of the women's garden club in Charleston, South Carolina or Savannah, Georgia. The same classy, cultivated southern accent can be found at all symphony guild meetings throughout the south, as well as at every grandmother's Sunday lunch. Don't forget that most ladies at the church dinners also have well-cultivated speech patterns.

My husband recounts how some southerns sing their sentences. "When they start singing to me, I can't concentrate on what they are saying," he said. Except in his Pittsburgh accent, he too, says, "sayin." Now that I have noticed, I can add that writers never have characters from Pittsburgh in dialect. And, they should, because people in western PA also say "you'uns," "crick," "wush," and "these ones."

The great storyteller, Ray Hicks, said he was proud that people commented on the way he talked. It was a noteworthy speech pattern recorded by many scholars and commented on endlessly by his storytelling audiences. (Many of his oral recordings are in the Library of Congress.) And, because of his way of talkin', it will never be lost in a sea of nonregional speech because of the number of people who have included his speech in theses, books, and recordings.

When I wrote, The Life and Times of Ray Hicks, Keeper of the Jack Tales (University of Tennessee Press/ available everywhere books are sold), I included as much of his pronunciations as possible without confusing the reader. For he preserved more than a southern Appalachian way of speaking. He saved his community language--word for word--in total consciousness.

This has led to conversations with Amy Michels about the importance of how people in each rural community put their own words into the way they speak. She said, "That's one way they could identify outsiders." But in small rural communities (still barely touched by Floridians buying the mountain) descendents still express themselves in colloquial languages that have lasted for over two hundred years. Amy never says, "such." She says, "sech." She never says, "boil." She says, "bile."

In days gone by, heritage, kinship, and language was more important to life in a community than it is now. That is more reason the old expressions and community ways (including superstitions) should be remembered, regardless of whether the community is in Harlem, Boston, or south Georgia.

Our techno-modern age now requires us to keep our colloquial speech the same way that immigrants keep their native languages. They speak English in public and their native language at home. Success in business demands the use (and command) of standard English. But there is nothing wrong with going home and saying, "How are you'uns doin'?" or "Wha's up?"

Comments

[Seidy Coello]

Being born in Honduras and raised in Miami I have always found accent to be a very big deal. Even though my accent would not let you know I was not born in the United States, it will make you think that I am from up north. I do not have a Miami accent as many would say and people often don't believe when I tell them where I'm from. I am very proud of the way I talk, but there are times when I have to sound "proper". Whenever I am in school or at a job interview I find the need to change my vocabulary and especially my accent because they might find it offensive or disrespectful. I personally enjoy reading a book when the author makes you feel like you are in the story. Writers that include some sort of unique vocabulary, accent or any feel of how that character speaks are very daring because every expects them to write with proper grammer. Today's society looks down on individuals who talk or sound different. They classify everybody by how well they speak and assume that those who are not "proper" spoken are uneducated which is not always the case. I don't think it is fair that we are forced to hide how we talk to be accepted by those who are important, which happens a lot in the business industry. I believe that we can all express ourselves freelly but we have to know our limits on what's appropriate and on what isn't under certain circumstances. We need to learn more about all the different slangs and accents we have within our own country to understand others, because all accents and languages are beautiful

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