Rhode Island
Rhode Island belongs to what Hans Kurath3 calls the Narragansett Bay speech-area, which also includes the adjoining counties of Connecticut and Bristol county, Massachusetts. “Here,” he says, “expressions are current that have not been encountered elsewhere in southern New England. Some of these are confined to small districts, others are known on both sides of the bay, and some have spread to Buzzard’s Bay, to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, to Cape Cod and to the New London area.” He lists a number of terms that are common to the whole area, e.g., closet or kitchen-closet, a pantry; crib, 2. corn-crib (corn-house and corn-barn are never used); cade, a pet lamb, and apple-slump, a deep-dish apple-pie, and others that are confined to parts of it, e.g., tippetybounce, a seesaw; fryer, a frying-pan; horning, a serenade; shacket, a hornet; squin, the livers and lights of a pig, and eaceworm, an earthworm. Some of these have extended beyond the bounds of Rhode Island, but they seem to have been carried by immigrants from the State. The rural Rhode Islanders, in pronouncing aunt, wobble between the Boston ahnt and the General American ant. They sound a clear f, not a v, in nephew. They use how ah yuh? as a salutation, with an occasional descent to how be yuh? They say judge, not jedge. They sometimes omit the first r in secretary, but they sound the vowel in the penultimate syllable. When they do not use Negro or colored man, which seems to be usually, they call an Aframerican a niggah, a dahkey or a coon. Calm and its analogues have the broad a. Deaf is usually def, not deef. Jaundice is never janders and drowned is seldom drownded. Depot for railroad station is still in use, though it seems to be fading.1
The pronunciation of the Rhode Islanders in colonial days has been studied by Claude M. Simpson, Jr., who made use of the enormous collection of early spellings and rhymes assembled by Miles L. Hanley and his students at the University of Wisconsin,2 and also of the town-records of Providence, Portsmouth and Warwick. In the latter he found a number of words used in senses not recorded in the NED, and others that antedated the NED’s examples. Of the former he recorded creasing-plane, apparently a common tool in the Rhode Island of 1700; to enlarge, to compensate; faultive, a person at fault; flag-collar, a cheap horse-collar, possibly stuffed with dried flag plants; in forwardness, in advance of; hobbing-iron, an instrument of unknown character; act of oblivion, a cancellation of debts; to offend, to obstruct, as a road, and wainscoat-plow, a carpenter’s tool. Simpson found old words in the town records that antedated “by over two centuries” the earliest examples given in the NED. His full dissertation has not been printed, but there is a copy of it in the custody of the American Documentation Institute at Washington, and microfilms and photostats are obtainable.
In 1936 Professor George Hibbitt, of Columbia, invading the town of Little Compton in search of local folk-lore, picked up phonograph records of the speech of the inhabitants, most of them descendants of immigrants who left the Plymouth colony at an early date. He reported on his return to New York that it was “clipped and sharply staccato, with no trace of the northern New England drawl.” He found stoop and piazza in use to designate a porch, helpkeeper used for housekeeper, and such pronunciations as lodge for large, hahly for hardly, krasligged for crosslegged and summus for summers.1 Another observer, reporting on the speech of Providence, lists gangway, a small street; cleanser, a cleaner of garments, and rule, a recipe. He says: “You hear broad a’s all up and down the street. One can’t be kidded about them here, or be covertly suspected of affectation or undue attachment to things English. As a matter of fact, we’re more consistent about our broad a’s than the English.”2
South Carolina
South Carolina has produced an able phonologist in Dr. Raven I. McDavid, Jr., and as a result its speech promises to be studied more scientifically than that of any save a few other States.3 Surveys for the Linguistic Atlas, begun by the late Guy S. Lowman, Jr., have been continued since his death in 1941 under McDavid’s direction, and a great deal of first-hand material has been accumulated. The speech of the State, according to Greet, is partly Tidewater Southern and partly the General Southern of the country above the fall-line, excluding the mountains of Appalachia.4 The division between the two areas, according to another Southern authority, is made “by a line drawn through Columbia parallel with the coast.”5 But McDavid has shown that the matter is rather more complicated than this, and that isoglosses mark off the different tides of early settlement. The first settlers along the coast were mainly southern English but there was also a considerable body of French Huguenots. They were followed by two groups that pushed into the interior – the first, south of the Santee river, made up principally of German-Swiss, and the second, above the river, of Baptists from Wales and Presbyterians from Scotland and Northern Ireland. Finally, a flood of Scotch-Irish and Pennsylvania Germans came down from the north along the eastern slopes of the Appalachian chain, “totalling perhaps as many as the white population of the coastal settlements and of the townships planted from the coast.” The result was a formidable conflict of dialects, further complicated by later immigrations from the Northeast, but the commercial and cultural influence of Charleston was sufficient to make its speechways more or less dominant, and they are thus often encountered far in the interior.
The dialect of Charleston was first investigated so long ago as the 80s by Sylvester Primer, then a teacher at the College of Charleston.1 Those were the cradle days of phonology in the United States, and Primer found it necessary to expound, even to a presumably professional audience, some of the elements of that dawning science. Like most of the other early investigators of American speechways he was struck by the number of archaisms he encountered. Charleston, he reported, was a speech-pocket in which many Briticisms of the Seventeenth Century still survived, though there were already signs that they would not last much longer. “A stranger in conversation with a Charlestonian,” he said, “first observes a slight shade of difference in the pronunciation of certain vowels and words. Peculiarities of this kind are naturally more marked among the middle and lower classes, though the prevailing sound which a given letter may have acquired … pervades to a certain extent all classes of society.” He went on:
In the more common pronunciation of the words ear and air, tear (lacryma) and tear (to rend) are not distinguishable. Hear, care, fair, etc., also belong to this class.… The proper names Pierce, Peirce, Pearce always have the long e-sound and are never pronounced pers, as in New England. Either and neither fluctuate between ee and eye.… The pure a-sound, as in father, is rare in Charleston; the tendency is rather to the ae-sound, as in man, cat, sad.… We also have the same sound for a and au when they precede f, ft, n, nd, th, s and sh: ask, demand, ant and aunt, glance, bath, laugh, example, launch, grant, command, dance, past, gaunt, jaunt, etc., all of which have the sound ae and never aa.
Obviously, Primer was here describing a speech quite different from the Tidewater Southern of Virginia – one in which relics of various British provincial dialects had been preserved by the social intransigence of Charleston, and spread by the city’s prestige to its dependencies. He continued:
The words dog and God always have the sound aa, as daag, Gaad.1 … That shade of the u-sound heard in put, book, pull, pudding, etc., has passed entirely over to its sound in but.… The oi in words like boil, toil, oil, often has among the lower classes the pronunciation of bile, etc.… When a precedes r, r is almost inaudible, as in hard, harsh, harp. It disappears in words like more, door.… The introduction of an i-sound between k, g and a following a-sound has modified the character in words like cart, garden (cyart, gyarden). Here belong kind, scarlet, sky, guard, guide, garrison, carriage, girl, etc.
McDavid’s studies began with the dialect of his native Greenville, a town of the Piedmont at the base of the Blue Ridge. His discussion of the phonology of that dialect is rather too technical to be summarized here, but it may be noted that, in the cases of two familiar words, to wit, to hoist and to rear, he shows how a divergence in meaning has flown from a div
ergence in pronunciation. He says:
In standard speech the noun hoist refers to a mechanical contrivance, the verb to the execution of a mechanical or formalized operation, like the hoisting of a flag. In the vernacular – the speech of rural, substandard urban or boys’ groups – the noun h’ist refers to a lift or boost given with the arms or shoulders, the verb to the giving of such a lift. Such rural speakers hear of ammunition hoists and socially privileged boys hear others ask to be given a h’ist up the side of a fence; the two forms are borrowed back and forth until for practical purposes they exist side by side as independent words.
A more striking peculiarity is the existence of two forms, rear and rare, for to rear. The first of these is the general word; the second is a verb describing two types of action: (a) that of a horse rising on its hind legs, and (b) that of a man drawing himself back preparatory to throwing a missile or striking a blow, as in “I rared back and hit him” or “He rared back and threw the ball as hard as he could.” Whether decreasing familiarity with horses will make the metaphor less apparent and keep the doublet from spreading is a matter for speculation. The present existence of the doublet in at least one dialect is a fact.
Wedgefield, whose speech Miss Parler investigated in 1930, is a small village in Sumter county, about thirty miles east of Columbia. Among the terms she listed were to put a bad mouth on, to suggest an evil contingency; big doin’s, adj., conceited, haughty; brass ankle, a person who passes for white but is suspected of having Negro blood; butt or butts meat, fat salt pork; to cap the stack, to cap the climax; carbox, a box-car; to cut up Jack and kill Jinny, to raise a commotion; embroidery, ambrosia (a dessert of oranges and grated cocoanut); lot, a stable yard; mutton corn, green corn; paratoed, pigeon-toed; sick’em, said to anyone who sneezes; sivvy beans, Lima beans; to specify, to make good, and yinnah, a pronoun used for you, singular and plural. Miss Parler reported that coarsely ground corn is called grits before cooking and hominy afterward. Only the lowest class of poor whites (locally, po’ buckras) call it grits after it is cooked. “This fact,” she says, “has led some of the people who pride themselves on their breeding to ask for hominy in a store. A few others used carefully to ask for a quart of grist, partly because grist was considered more correct, but chiefly to avoid such a po’ buckra word as grits.” Miss Parler says that the addition of the redundant own to possessive pronouns, as in his own, the doctor’s own, etc., is characteristic of upcountry South Carolina speech, and Dean J. C. Seegers, of Temple University, tells me that it is also to be found in Charleston, “usually among Charlestonians of German descent,” who also used all both.1 I am indebted to Dr. McDavid for the following additional observations:2
Psalm, calm, palm, etc., still rhyme with jam in rustic South Carolina speech, and also in the speech of the older generation in Charleston – not the so-called first families, but quite respectable people. The broad a of Boston or Oxford occurs only as an affectation in the -s, -f and -n words; the normal pronunciation is tomayto and vayse. Lava occurs only with the broad a; gratis with that of hat or hate; the second syllable of asphalt has the aw-vowel. The common pronunciation of pretty uses the vowel of good. In upcountry South Carolina there is no medial vowel between ah and aw. The first occurs in swan, squalid (varied, sometimes, by the hate vowel), and wash; the latter in water. Swamp and God may have either. The oo of fool occurs in room and broom and coop only rarely. The uh-vowel is heard occasionally in constable, especially in the vulgate, and almost always in conjure.
In “Low-Back Vowels in the South Carolina Piedmont,” before cited, McDavid presents a statistical study of the speech of 75 students at Furman University, Greenville. He used 158 test words in which either the vowel of father or that of law may occur. He found that in the following, inter alia, the ah-sound was overwhelmingly prevalent, horrid, orange, chocolate, wash, doll, swan, forest, God, quarrel, foreign, Chicago, John, moral, orator, Florence and borrow, and that the aw-sound prevailed in loss, cross, dog, gone, on and coffin. In log, daub, hog, frog, water, wasp, office, offer and swamp there was divided usage.1
South Dakota
The glossary of South Dakota terms in the volume on the State in the American Guide Series2 is headed “Language of the West,” and in it there is evidence that the local speech differs but little from that of the adjoining States. There are separate lists of farmers’, prospectors’, cowmen’s and sheepmen’s words and phrases, and at the end a brief section of “General Terms.” The latter includes nothing that has not been reported elsewhere save honyock, a homesteader, apparently a derivative of hony, an old American term for a poor white.
Tennessee
Most of the published studies of the speech of Tennessee deal with that of the Appalachian region, and need not be considered in detail here.3 So far as I know, there are only three devoted to the speech of the lowlands, and all are short. The first, based on observations of J. Douglas Bruce and others, was published in Dialect Notes in 1913.1 It included change, dessert; to die out, to die; hunkle, haunch, and Lord’s bread-wagon, thunder. The second, published by T. J. Farr in 1936,2 listed bed-buddies, bed-bugs; black spot, a shady place; bug-dust, cheap smoking-tobacco; bush-house, a brush arbor used for religious services; cat’s uncle, a criminal; cawked, exhausted; to chip out, to have a misunderstanding; cow-paste, butter; flinch, coward; goot, a lunatic; long-faced, bald-headed; mullock, state of disorder; to pad, to seek work from house to house, and triddler, a woman gossip. The third, by Alfred Mynders,3 added on the drop edge of yonder, at the point of death; heart-burning, consumed by love, and miring-branch, a stream with quicksand.4 In 1934 Rebecca W. Smith undertook an examination of the diary of William Donaldson, a young Tennesseean who set out from Jefferson county for Springfield, Mo., in 1841. Its misspellings revealed pronunciations that still prevail in the mountains, e.g., attackted, crep, tremendious, patridge (partridge) and famly.
Texas
The speech of Texas as a whole still awaits scientific study, but that of the northeastern corner of the State has been admirably described by Oma Stanley.5 Stanley’s material was mainly gathered in Smith county, the chief town of which is Tyler,6 but he also sought it in fourteen additional counties, and so covered an area larger than many States. It is a farming region lying to the east of Dallas, and its speech shows the influence of both Appalachian and Lowland Southern.7 Most of its original settlers apparently came from either the Ozark region or the lowlands to the eastward, and there is little evidence in the dialect of the present inhabitants of any influence by General American or by such speech-pockets as that of the Germans of New Braunfels area, more than 250 miles to the southwest. “Education,” says Stanley,
has had virtually no influence on pronunciation among the vast majority of my subjects. Many people whose training, knowledge, profession, experience, and social position place them as distinguished members of the community use the same sounds as the dwellers on the farms or in the deep backwoods. Their grammar is more “correct,” their vocabulary is larger, their competence in handling the language is greater, and their mental range is immeasurably wider than that of the illiterate white speakers. But phonetically they all belong to the same group.1
The Appalachian influence seems to be rather greater in the area studied than the Lowland Southern influence. The r is sounded before consonants, “with distinct quality, as generally in America,” though not so emphatically as in the Middle West; the flat a is heard in aunt, bath, dance, glass, laugh and path, usually somewhat lengthened; and the mispronunciations and “bad grammar” that bristle in the dialect are mainly those of the highlands. The general American tendency to move the stress forward is exaggerated, and such forms as pólice, ínsurance, víolin, éxpress and súpreme are not uncommon. “Governor,” says Stanley, “is always guvner, perspiration is prespiration, adenoid is universally adnoid, turpentine is turpmtine.” The medial t is lost in breastpin, costly, exactly, mostly, roast beef and strictly, and the first t in frostbite. Fifth is u
sually fith, and evening is e’nin’. Final d after n is usually lost, “even when the following word begins with a vowel.” Final t is lost after k, p and s, as in correc’, kep’ and Methodis’, and sometimes after f, as in draf’ (draft). In careless or illiterate speech v changes to b, as in lebm (eleven). Sometimes gl changes to dl and cl to tl. The th of these, after n, becomes another n, as in “In nese days.” Before vowels and diphthongs g and k are often followed by the glide y, as in gyate (gate) and cyamel (camel). Texas is teksiz. Stanley is chiefly interested in phonology, but he adds an appendix on East Texas grammar. In the main the conjugation of to be is in accord with the books, and I be is never used for I am or I’m. In the third person plural are is used with they but is with them. Ain’t appears in all persons of the singular. In the past tense was is often used in the second person singular and in all persons of the plural, though not invariably. The other verbs show the common peculiarities of vulgar American. Some of Stanley’s examples:
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