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Appalachian English is American English native to the Appalachian mountain region of the Eastern United States. Historically, the term "Appalachian dialect" refers to a local English variety of southern Appalachia, though Appalachian English today geographically encompasses multiple varieties, predominantly including Western Pennsylvania English as spoken in northern Appalachia and regional Southern U.S. English as spoken in central and southern Appalachia. In fact, the Atlas of North American English identifies the "Inland South" dialect region, in which Southern U.S. English's defining vowel shift is the most evolved, as centering squarely in southern Appalachia, around the cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; and Asheville, North Carolina. All Appalachian English is rhotic and characterized by distinct phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. It is mostly oral but its features also sometimes represented in literary works.
Contents
- Phonetics
- Phonemic incidence
- Conjugation of the verb to be
- Conjugation among other verb types
- A verb ing also known as a prefixing
- Other verb forms
- Double nouns
- Pronouns and demonstratives
- Liketa
- Other
- Lexicon
- Colloquialisms
- Origins
- References
Extensive research has been conducted since the 1930s to determine the origin of the Appalachian dialect. One popular theory is that the dialect is a preserved remnant of 16th-century (or "Elizabethan") English in isolation, though a far more accurate comparison would be to 18th-century (or "colonial") English; regardless, the Appalachian dialect studied within the last century, like most dialects, actually shows a mix of both older and newer features.
Appalachian English has long been criticized both within and outside of the speaking area as an inferior dialect, which is often mistakenly attributed to supposed laziness, lack of education, or the region's relative isolation. American writers throughout the 20th century have used the dialect as the chosen speech of uneducated and unsophisticated characters, though research has largely disproven these stereotypes; however, due to prejudice, the use of the Appalachian dialect is still often an impediment to educational and social advancement.
Phonetics
Phonemic incidence
Research suggests that the Appalachian dialect is one of the most distinctive and divergent dialects within the United States.
Conjugation of the verb "to be"
The conjugation of the verb "to be" is different from that of standard English in several ways, and there is sometimes more than one form of the verb "to be" acceptable in Appalachian English.
Divergence from standard English conjugation of the verb 'to be' occurs with the highest frequency in the past tense, where grammatically plural subjects also take the singular form 'was' rather than 'were'. Thus, the paradigm of the verb 'to be' in Appalachian English more closely resembles the paradigm for other non-'be' verbs in English, where the past tense takes a single form, regardless of number or person.
The use of the word ain't is also one of the most salient features of this dialect. While "ain't" is used to some extent in most American English dialects, it is used with much greater frequency in the Appalachian dialect.
Conjugation among other verb types
While the greatest amount of divergence in subject-verb concord occurs in the past tense of the verb 'to be', certain types of plural subjects have an effect on concord across various types of verbs. However, plural subjects continue to show the greatest frequency of non-concord. The example below is taken from Wolfram and Christian:
Conjoined Noun Phrases:
Collective Noun Phrases:
Other Plural Noun Phrases:
Expletive 'there':
A-verb-ing (also known as 'a-prefixing')
A notable feature of Appalachian English is the a-prefix which occurs with participle forms ending in -ing. This prefix is pronounced as a schwa [ə]. The a-prefix most commonly occurs with progressives, in both past and non-past tenses. For example, "My cousin had a little pony and we was a-ridin' it one day" Common contexts also include where the participle form functions as an adverbial complement, such as after movement verbs ('come', 'go', 'take off') and with verbs of continuing or starting ('keep', 'start', 'get to'). An example of each being: "All of a sudden a bear come a-runnin'", and "He just kep' a-beggin'".
However, the a-prefix may not be attached to a verb which begins with a relatively unstressed syllable, such as 'discover' or 'retire'.
While much less frequent or productive, the a-prefix can also occur on participles ending in -ed, such as "a-haunted"
The a-prefix has been found to occur most frequently in more animated or vivid narratives, as a stylistic device.
Wolfram & Christian's study suggests that a-prefixing is more common with older speakers. Because of the considerable difference of a-prefixing frequency according to age (the frequency varied between 10% and 50%), the authors state that their findings support the "(...) contention that a prefixing is a phenomenon that is dying out in Appalachia". As their study was already published in 1976, it highlights the demand for research which considers more recent data.
A-prefixing can be traced back to the 16th century: The construction reached its height from 1500-1700 and developed out of using the preposition "on" and a verbal noun ending in -ing. Only used in formal and educated writing in the 17th century, it became nonstandard in the 18th century.
Other verb forms
Double nouns
Some nouns are spoken in pairs, the first noun describing the seemingly redundant second noun, as in "hound dog", "Cadillac car", "widow woman", "toad frog", "biscuit bread", or "rifle gun".
Pronouns and demonstratives
"Them" is sometimes used in place of "those" as a demonstrative in both nominative and oblique constructions. Examples are "Them are the pants I want" and "Give me some of them crackers."
Oblique forms of the personal pronouns are used as nominative when more than one is used (cf. French moi et toi). For example, "Me and him are real good friends" instead of "He and I are really good friends." Accusative case personal pronouns are used as reflexives in situations which, in American English, do not typically demand them (e.g., "I'm gonna get me a haircut"). The -self/-selves forms are used almost exclusively as emphatics, and then often in non-standard forms (e.g., "the preacher hisself"). Second person pronouns are often retained as subjects in imperative sentences (e.g., "You go an' get you a cookie").
'Liketa'
In Appalachian English, the form 'liketa' functions as an adverb and occurs before the past form of a verb. 'Liketa' carries a meaning similar to "on the verge of" or "came so close that I really thought x would", where x is the subject of the verb. It also serves as an intensifier. For example:
'Liketa' also imposes a notion of counter factuality on the clause in which it appears, distinguishing it from the word 'almost'. For example, you could say "They almost made it to the top of the mountain", but "They liketa made it to the top of the mountain" would be incorrect. 'Liketa' does not carry the same notion of partial truth as 'almost'.
Other
Lexicon
The Appalachian dialect is part of the greater Southern dialects. In its relation to south of the Midland, it has several terms in common with its North Midland counterpart, including poke (paper bag), hull (to shell), and blinds (shutters). Certain German-derived words such as smearcase ("cottage cheese"), however, are present in the North Midland dialect but absent in the Appalachian dialect.
The following is a list of words which occur in the Appalachian dialect. These words are not exclusive to the region, but tend to occur with greater frequency than in other English dialects.
Colloquialisms
Origins
Early theories regarding the origins of the Appalachian dialect tend to revolve around popular notions regarding the region's general isolation and the belief that the region is culturally static or homogenous. The tendency of Appalachian speakers to retain many aspects of their dialect for a generation or more after moving to large urban areas in the north and west suggests that Appalachian English is conservative rather than isolated. Beliefs about Appalachia's isolation led to the early suggestion that the dialect was a surviving relic of long-forgotten forms of English. The most enduring of these early theories suggested that the Appalachian dialect was a remnant of Elizabethan English, a theory popularized by Berea College president William Goddell Frost in the late 1800s. However, while Shakespearean words occasionally appear in Appalachian speech (e.g., afeared), these occurrences are rare.
Examples of archaic phrases include the use of might could for might be able to , the use of "'un" with pronouns and adjectives (e.g., young'un), the use of "done" as a helping verb (e.g., we done finished it), and the use of words such as airish, brickle, swan, and bottom land all of which were common in Southern and Central England in 17th and 18th centuries. The use of double negatives wasn't uncommon in England during the 17th and 18th centuries. The use of the "a-" prefix (e.g., "a-goin'" for "going") and the attachment of "-ed" to certain verbs (e.g., knowed), originated in South England. Some speech habits which can be traced back to the rural areas of Southern and Central England include the h-retention (e.g., hit for it), the use of the word right in the place of rather (e.g., right cold), and the presence of words such as yonder.
While the Scotch-Irish and English settlers had a strong influence on the Appalachian dialect, linguistic analyses suggest that Appalachian English developed as a distinctive dialect among English-speaking people in North America. The Appalachian dialect retains a number of speech patterns found in Colonial American English but largely discarded in Standard speech, such as "r" intrusion (e.g., "warsh" for "wash") and a "y" sound in place of "a" on the end of certain words (e.g., "okry" for "okra"). The southern drawl is of an unknown American origin.
Much of Appalachian English has developed independently in the Appalachian region of North America, and is not a remnant of speech derived from the British Isles, however most of that which can be traced to Europe, does not in fact have its origins in either Scotland, Ireland or Northern England. In fact, the majority of the linguistic anachronisms found in this region of North America can be traced back to regions of England such as the West Country, Southern England and East Anglia.
Native American influences in the Appalachian dialect are virtually non-existent, the exception being place names (e.g., "Appalachia", "Tennessee", "Chattahoochee River", "Cheoah Mountains"). While early settlers adopted numerous customs from tribes such as the Cherokee and Shawnee, they typically applied existing words from their own languages to these customs.