Pin It
Image SMART TALK
By  Dr. Viva Palaver

A VERY ODD ACCENT: Recently, as staff psychologist at the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired, I traveled north from warm and dry Underbelly, Texas, to cold and damp Ivy, in Upstate New York, for a conference at the university that the town is famous for. It’s also famous for bowling with rutabagas at the local farmers’ market, but I found something even stranger.

While attending the conference, I was the houseguest of a gracious writer friend and his family in the semi-rural town of Deer Crossing, just north of Ivy. My host introduced me to some fine local people, which gave me a chance to hear the peculiar speech of the area.

Of course, every place has its peculiar accent and expressions. Around Underbelly, for instance, the oil companies have all wails instead of oil wells. But Deer Crossing natives demonstrated a vowel shift that fascinated me.

Many Southerners shift short E’s to short I’s, as in pencil to pinsle, but in Deer Crossing, a short I often turns into a short U. That often produces Davud instead of David, or wershup instead of worship.

Sometimes, the short I becomes short E. For instance, they may not say vanilla but vanella, or not milk but melk.

One man I met, a local pastor, combined both shifts consistently to say intel instead of until.

And many folks there put shigger in their coffee, not sugar, a vowel shift of the U back to a short I.

I love discoveries like this and enjoy trying to work out the pattern behind the sound shifts. Once I do, I can publish an article in a scholarly quarterly, thus making my hobby add to my resumé.

----
v2i11
Pin It