Some of your comments regarding my awkward years reminded me of an anecdote that ties together my 6th grade year and our parallel discussion about dialects:
It was the start of the first school year after we had moved to Kentucky, which meant that on the first day of 6th grade I had had only about a month to get used to the Southern twang. As I sat at my desk with my purse-sized pencil case, filling out the usual first-day-of-school forms (did any of us really know our dad's work phone number or that of our family doctor?), the little girl at the next desk spoke.
"Could ah borry a pin?" she politely asked.
"I'm sorry," I said. "A what?"
"A pin," she repeated, as though to a piece of wood. "Kin ah borry a pin?"
"A pin?"
"Yeah, a pin."
We traveled a couple thousand miles around the earth's axis* while my brain feverishly tried to make some sense of what this cute little blonde girl was asking me. Ultimately, it failed.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't have any pins."
"Yes you do," she said, now infuriated. "You've got a whole bunch of 'em, ah reckon."
"What... pins? Why would I have pins in my pencil case? All I have are pencils and pe--"
I blushed.
"Oh. You mean a pen, right?"
"Yeah," she muttered, certain I was mocking her. "An aynk pin, so ah kin fill out this here paper."
I sheepishly handed her a brand new Bic ballpoint. What in God's name kind of place had I landed in, where Es were Is and Is were As? Most perturbatory.
I did terribly on my spelling tests, that first year.
* In fact, it was probably more like 2 or 3 miles, but sometimes applying science to something just sucks all the fun right out of it. Or pops it with a pen.
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6 comments:
See? Thas what happened to me, only in reverse, when I moved from Tennessee to Kansas. I aksed for a pin and nobody'd gimme one. ;-) I had to lose the accent real quick like.
Allez says that I talk that way :-( I have a friend named Ryan and everytime I say his name, she says I say "Ruuuun"
When I moved to Florida I couldn't get over the phrase "Fixin' ta." Like, "I'm fixin' ta go to the store."
Make me think of the following:
Park the cah in the Hahvahd Yahd
*giggle*
Lou: I sometimes say "ayup", but only ironically. But that's a little farther up the coast from you, I suppose. You know... Lion's Maine. <*snort*>
Just realised I hadn't responded to some other comments:
Gwynne: Wow! I don't think I've ever heard of a Southerner actively trying to lose her accent. Unless she was going into broadcasting. Most just strut around radiating righteous indignation over the fact that all my Northern relatives think everyone from the South sounds like a "heeyick". They don't hear their dialectic oddities.
Lance: I didn't think your accent was particularly heavy. Maybe I just don't register it any more. When I hear "ruuuun", though, I think of Tom Hanks. And Forrestry.
Tink: There could be a lawsuit. Native Texans (he said, thereby excluding himself) seem to be of the opinion that "fixin' ta" is the unique invention of the Lone Star State.
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