September 2004 The Megaphone Page 7
by Ginny (Hocker) Noble
Where does a dialect come from and what does it mean? Sometimes my curiosity gets the best of me, and I start searching for questions that I have. For instance, does anyone say – crick, warsh, worsh, tars, fella, hey, yeah, o.k., yella, rolley-coaster, reeely, all-rightnow, don’tcha, etc. Where did those words and pronunciations come from? The term dialect can be defined as a branch of the mother tongue that has been radically affected by location, time, or other influences that takes the speaker out of the native place. I know my voice sounds much like my family; evidently it is partially heredity and partially environment. And so let’s explore those points.
Heredity – my new hobby is genealogy, one of the fastest growing hobbies in the United States, thanks in part to the new age of technology and the computer. I have discovered where most of my families have originated from, and the routes that they traveled to get to the central part of Indiana.
I believe that my speech comes from a portion of all of them, and the different places where they have lived for awhile. I think that may be the case for many of you also. My ancestry happens to be mainly German, with a small amount of Scotch-Irish, French, and some English thrown into the mix.
Why did they leave? From what I can find – it was religion, and for a better lifestyle, in other words, more money. Most of my ancestors lived or arrived in Pennsylvania, which accounts for the Pennsylvania "Dutch." Now that does not mean the “Netherlands,” that means “Deutschland” which is the country of Germany. Many of the words and dialect that I speak probably come from that area of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania – which had some influence from the Quakers and William Penn.
From that part of the United States, I had relatives who were soldiers in the Revolutionary War. I have found that because of the poor economy and the non ability of the new country to pay its soldiers, they were often given conscripts. This was a promise to pay later. Also because the government wanted the west to be populated, land was offered very cheap as a reward or payment to these soldiers. I believe for some of these reasons my great-great-great- grandfathers decided to settle in a section of Ohio known as Clermont County. This Ohio section is quite close to Kentucky, and therefore a slight drawl has been picked up from that area of the United States.
Drawl means that the pronunciations of certain words are prolonged. From Ohio – they moved to Shelby County, Indiana, then to Madison County, and of course Elwood. One of my grandfathers came directly to Elwood from Pennsylvania, of course because of the gas boom.
Now for the environment part of the speech dialect, from some stories that I have heard. I cannot vouch for the truth in them. During W.W.II, with the boom of the automobile and its many parts, many industries and factories were started in central Indiana. But because many of our young men were drafted into the service, these factories needed all the able bodies that they could employ. That is when women went to work, and some recruiters were sent to the south to bring share croppers and other farmers to work in Indiana. So many people from the south, including Tennessee, Kentucky, and elsewhere came to central Indiana and the mid-west for employment, and with them came that southern drawl.
When children are in school and they converse, they want to sound alike and not be different. They are inclined to pick up phrases and gestures from others, therefore we have all influenced each other, if we like it or not.
Many people can be easily be placed in certain areas of the United States by their dialect and accent.
The Easterner tends to add hard rrrr’s to their speech. They call soft drinks – sodas, submarines – grinders and Boston has it own speech entirely, as evidenced by the Kennedy’s.
The Southerner of course has its wonderful slow drawl. It is more pronounced the further and deeper south that you visit. But with the advent of travel, schooling and television, I believe it is less pronounced.
They call a soft drink – a coke or co-cola, whatever brand they want, they talk slow, move slow, have several nick-names for items, and do not get in a hurry for anything.
The Mid-West (Indiana) is a mix of all, a twang if you want to call it that, we call soft drinks – pop, have a little bit of the east and south combined, are mainly a rural background combined with industries mixed in.
The West – not Texas (its own language) – are the new guys, they tend to be more modern and trendy, think that the South and Mid-West are backwards and they have the cowboy, wide open spaces ideas mixed with the ocean and new agers. They use slang, especially Californians. I think they drink diet only – Texas probably beer.
The next time you are in a crowd or listening to someone, play a little game and see if you can discover from their speech, where they live now, and where they were born.
Ginny (Hocker) Noble '60
Tipton, Indiana
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