WEBVTT - Ep. 278: Hillbilly Speech 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:13.960 Good morning, students. My name is Professor Nucleman. 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:16.800 This is Bear Grease one O one where we study 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:19.720 thanks for gotten but relevant and look for insight and 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:23.480 unlikely places. I'm so glad that you're here on this 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:27.520 Chili December morning. Yeah, hey, will you stop doing that? 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:29.080 Quit throwing stuff? 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:29.400 Thank you. 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:32.920 Today we're going to do things a little bit different 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:38.159 than usual. We have a very distinguished guest lecture today 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:42.680 here by the name of doctor Brooks Blevins, an insightful man, 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:46.800 and he'll be talking to us about regional dialects and language, 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:52.720 but specifically our most treasured and most significant dialect in America, 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:58.280 the Hillbilly dialect of the Ozarks and Appalachian regions. But 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:02.279 we're gonna use this class period as a celebration of 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:07.880 all of America's varied and wonderful dialects. So remember this 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:12.560 is a celebration of regional dialects. If you will, are 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:14.480 there any questions before we get started? 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:19.119 Excuse me, Professor nukelemb I just wanted to know. Will 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:22.520 we have an opportunity to talk about the regional dialects 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:23.600 of where we're from as well? 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:27.720 Yes, yes, you will be able to give examples of 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:31.640 dialects of where you're from, So be thinking and paying attention. 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:42.720 My name is Clay nukelemb and this is the Bear 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:47.760 Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:51.520 for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:55.680 story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. 0:01:56.360 --> 0:02:02.040 Presented by FHF gear, American Aid purpose built hunting and 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:05.600 fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:25.960 place as we explore much. Okay, students, let's pipe down 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:30.239 as we begin our journey into the wonder of regional dialects. 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:34.800 We're all so different and so unique in so many ways. 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:38.680 Let's listen to doctor Blevens. You know, he's written like 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:41.400 fifteen books on the history of the Ozarks. 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:43.240 Very interesting man. 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:47.800 Remember we'll be using the Ozark and Appalachian dialects, but 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:51.639 really we're gonna see how regional dialects apply all over 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:55.560 the United States. Here's doctor Blevins, and he'll be jumping 0:02:56.400 --> 0:03:00.160 right in, I mean, like fast. 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:01.720 Let me let me start out by saying, we all 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:05.320 have a dialect. You may, you may. You probably only 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:08.519 recognize it from other people because most people think, well, 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.200 I talk, I talk normal, and everybody else is a 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:16.480 little a little crazy. But every language on earth that 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:19.639 there are enough speakers in that language, you have dialects, 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:23.680 and it's just a form of a language that is 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:28.280 specific to a particular region or a particular group of 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:31.600 speakers within that language. And you know, you could have 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:35.840 ethnic dialects. In our case, you're talking about regional dialects. 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:38.240 And around the United States, it's a big place, and 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:42.280 we have regional dialects. They're probably not as not as 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:47.720 pronounced today as they once were because we all watch 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:50.240 the same TV and listen. We've been listening to the 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:52.560 same radio for one hundred years, and we got the 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:55.600 same Internet, and so there's a lot of these homogenizing 0:03:56.320 --> 0:04:01.560 influences that sort of erode the corners the sharp edges 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:04.560 of our dialects and make us speak more like each other. 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:08.360 But a lot of linguists will will argue that the 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:10.960 dialects aren't going away. They you know, they might be. 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:13.960 They might seem like it, and they may we may 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:17.200 start to talk more and more like somebody on the 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:21.400 six o'clock news. But uh, you know, I've heard arguments 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:24.080 that that dialects are they're they're with us, and they'll 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:27.360 stay with us. They'll just change like language does over 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:30.440 the years. But that's but so I got interested in this. 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:34.040 And it's really what you might call an Upland South 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:37.720 dialect or a hillbilly dialect, whatever you want to call it. 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.200 It's a dialect that that people and a lot of 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:43.599 Appalachia would have, and a lot of the Upper South 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:46.560 and the Ozarks and even parts of Texas and Oklahoma 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:50.080 and stuff like that, and just one of many dialects 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.760 around the country. But but it would sound pretty pretty similar. 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:57.119 And we can trace a lot of these influences back 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:03.279 to English settlers from centuries ago, to the people that 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:07.000 we call the Scots, Irish people from Ulster, northern Ireland, 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:10.240 who came over in the seventeen hundreds, and a lot 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:14.960 of their language patterns and eccentricities have survived into the 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:17.400 modern day. We can even go all the way back 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:21.240 to the Vikings. And that's always you know, everybody likes 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:26.000 talking about Vikings, I guess, and you can because a 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:28.480 lot of people don't realize is that, you know, any 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:31.960 language is organic and it's always evolving and stuff like that. 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:35.159 But if you look back at beginning of the late 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:39.320 seven hundreds and continuing into the ten hundreds, there were 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:43.520 these periodic Viking invasions and settlements and stuff in the 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:48.520 British Isles, and even their language seeped its way into 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:53.800 English over time, and a lot of the weird words 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:56.120 that have survived, and you know, if you want to 0:05:56.120 --> 0:06:00.120 call it hillbilly dialect or up in the South dialect whatever, uh, 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:04.120 we can even trace back to to to old Norse 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:09.440 or or Viking words. But one of the things that 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:13.560 that I've noticed over the years is and pretty much 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:17.080 everybody in the United States notices this, that there are 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:22.040 certain dialects that we associate with intelligence, and certain that 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:26.280 certain dialects that we don't. And the dialect that I 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:29.640 grew up with here in the Ozarks is one of 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:34.120 those that we don't necessarily associate with with great intelligence. 0:06:34.240 --> 0:06:38.760 It's it kind of falls into that greater Southern dialect thing, 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:41.680 where you know, people from other parts of the country 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:45.760 hear you and often just jump to the assumption that 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:49.839 and this, you know, this person is uneducated or maybe 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.480 they don't know that much. And and so what what 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:54.440 a lot of us end up doing is when we 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:57.679 go off to college or we start a career or something, 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:01.839 we've become very self concent about the way we sound, 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:05.919 and we start working on our own dialect to be 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:08.279 to kind of tamp it down and to sound more 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:12.240 like everybody else. And I'm pretty sure I've done that 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:14.880 to some degree in my life. I know I did 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:18.080 it a lot earlier. You know, you can form a 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:21.880 little bit dialectically and try to sound like other people. 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:26.800 But what often happens is once you get more comfortable 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:30.320 in your career, once you've achieved something or another, once 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.720 you don't have to worry about seeming to be stupid 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:37.760 to somebody else, that who's whose opinion you value. I 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:40.440 find that a lot of people are are then more 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:44.560 comfortable to kind of slip back into that dialect and 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:48.560 sort of pick it up and maybe value it more. 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:54.480 Maybe think of the way your your grandparents, your your 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:58.120 elders said certain words or the way they phrase things, 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:02.640 and there's a certain pride in that and a certain 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:05.200 value that you don't want to let go of. And 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:08.040 so so I think a lot of people, uh are 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:10.640 probably like me, and they and they feel, you know, 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:14.360 more confident, and in talking that way, there's there's certain 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:18.080 there's certain code words that linguists would tell you, like 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:22.200 the word own O N which I which I pronounce 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:25.360 own with a with a long oh. That's one of 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:27.920 the first ones I think that you would if you 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:31.840 were trying to lose your southern accent or your hillbilly 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:34.760 accent or whatever, you know, you would you would switch 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:37.880 that to on. There are various ways that you can 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:41.839 say the word O N. And sometimes that's a that's 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:44.840 kind of an indicator to other people of where you're 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:47.880 from or where you're trying to sound like you're you're from. 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:51.480 And and I've heard people say, well, that's you know, 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:54.600 I started saying on when I was in grad school 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:57.880 or med school or whatever and instead of own, because 0:08:57.880 --> 0:08:59.880 that's you know, that's one of those kind of trigger 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:03.920 words that people. We turn a lot of short vowel 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:07.480 sounds into long vowel sounds. And it's the same way 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:12.000 if if you ever watched Andy Griffith show, Uh Andy's 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:15.199 uh has ain't be. It's not it's not aunt b 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:19.280 or aunt be in Mayberry, it's ain't b. And when 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:21.520 I grew up, it was always ain't so, and so 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:24.520 it was you know, you didn't. You didn't say aunt 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:27.280 uh it was it was ain't. That's another one of 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:31.400 those examples of a of a word that we've taken 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:35.120 what would normally be in standard English a short vowel 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:38.640 sound and turned it into a long vow sound. 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:45.480 Okay, students, that was downright fascinating. I know, for instance, me, 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:48.120 I used to have a much thicker accent before I 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:52.440 began my distinguished career here at Cornell University in New York, 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:56.199 where I have been surrounded by the greatest minds in America, 0:09:56.400 --> 0:10:00.160 including Andy Bernard, who now lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He's 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:04.840 in the paper business, and Boone biographer Robert Morgan, dear 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:08.080 friend of mine. I know over the years my language 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:11.679 has been honed like a bowie knife on Arkansas whetstone, 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:14.600 polished like a slick rock on the outside bend of 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:18.800 the Caddo River. Now, I'd like to take some questions 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:22.520 from the class. Have you recognized a regional dialect where 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:24.559 you live that you'd like to discuss? 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:27.040 Yes, young man, with your hand up. 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:32.560 My name is Josh and my family is from northern Michigan. 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.640 And a couple of things that I've noticed about the 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:38.840 way that they speak is anytime they use a word 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:42.160 that has a short o sound, that short o sound 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:45.440 comes from not the back of the throat, but more 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:49.199 from the nasal passages. For instance, my grandfather when he 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:51.960 would go cut firewood, he would say that he wanted 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:57.480 logs cut twenty four inches. So I've noticed that. Another 0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:01.360 thing is that there's a few slang words that they 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:04.560 would also use as well. For instance, if something was 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:08.880 notable or caught your attention, you'd say op op, and 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:11.839 then might you might follow that up with oh, look 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:15.240 it over there, not look at it, but actually look it. 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:18.959 Are those the kind of regional dialect idiosyncrasies that you're 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:20.439 talking about, Professor Nukem. 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:28.560 Hmmm, that's that's interesting, very interesting. But no, no, man, 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:32.120 that that's just hogwash. You're gonna need to wash your 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:34.280 mouth out with bear grease Lys soap on that one. 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:34.600 Son. 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:38.839 But let's get back to doctor Blevin's and remember we'll 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:40.840 be taking more questions later, so we'll get back to 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:43.439 the rest of the class. Doctor Blevin's gone. 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:51.360 Any dialect consists of three parts. There's accent, that's how 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:53.880 you pronounce words, how you sound. That's the first thing 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:56.360 that we noticed when they come into contact with anybody 0:11:56.520 --> 0:12:00.160 is their their accent, and some of those are more 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:02.760 pronounced than others. So that's one part how how you 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.400 sound when you talk. Then there's what we call the 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:11.000 lexicon or vocabulary, and this is most dialects will have 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:16.680 certain words or phrases, especially certain words that you might 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:21.480 not hear in standard English. And we've certainly got some 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:25.160 of those words here in the Ozarks and an Appalachia 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:28.400 in the South and that that you would probably not 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:33.640 here in New York or California or or somewhere like that, 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:38.319 but are are still kind of standard words in our language. 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:41.680 And again, any any regional dialect is going to have 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.960 their their own little lexicon. It's not going to be extensive, 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:47.400 but there are going to be unusual words. And then 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:50.880 the last one, the one that's not the funnest one 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:53.160 to talk about, but it's one that that linguists say 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:57.480 is the one that that holds on the longest, is grammar. 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:02.720 Every dialect has these peculiar grammatical features, uh, and usually 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:06.320 that's a code word for bad grammar. Peculiar grammatical features 0:13:06.440 --> 0:13:10.520 just means people who use bad grammar, but it's bad 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:14.320 grammar that is, uh, that can be standard to a 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:17.679 certain place. So if I say, if I'm talking about 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:22.199 my garden and say what my peas growed great last year, 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:25.720 our house got a gas leak and load up, you 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.520 know that that kind of thing. In other words, bad grammar, 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:32.600 bad subject predicate, you know, linking up there. 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:33.120 Uh. 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:36.480 And there are there are plenty of those in in 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:40.000 the dialect of the of the South and the hillbilly 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:55.160 dialect in general. My kids have always had great fun 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:57.959 making fun of me because I talk. I tend to 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:00.720 talk one way at home, and you know, I've slipped 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:03.880 very easily back into israc County ease when when I'm 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:06.200 at home. But they will hear me like giving a 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:10.480 speech or something at a at a college and and uh, 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:13.800 and that's my that's my smart voice, you know that. 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:16.280 And they like making fun of me over using my 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:19.880 smart voice. But I've tried, I've tried not to make 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:24.400 those so starkly, you know, separate from each other. But 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:27.640 it's it's sometimes, it's sometimes again, it's just kind of 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:31.800 that that process of code switching where where you slip 0:14:32.080 --> 0:14:35.480 into comfortable speech when you're at home, whether it's bad 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:39.560 grammar or using unusual words that most people don't know. 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:42.920 When I was a kid growing up here on the farm, 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:45.800 I don't know that my grandparents ever use the word 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:48.200 sack or bag. It was always a poke, you know, 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:51.120 put that in a poke or carry that over, you know, 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:54.400 go grab that potent and fill it up. Like a 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:56.760 lot of words, we can trace, you know, the origins 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:59.560 that word back, and we know it. You know, it 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:06.040 entered English probably through Norman French poque, which was a 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.640 word for pouch or pocket, and then of course the 0:15:09.800 --> 0:15:12.560 Normans were if you trace them back far enough, they 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:18.680 were Vikings at some point, and even in Old Icelandic 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:21.960 into the early twentieth century, if you had been in 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:24.960 an Iceland at that time, again a kind of a 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:30.080 descendant of a Viking language, if you carried something in 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:32.600 a sack or a bag, it was a pokey, and 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:37.600 so our poke and the the Icelandic people's pokey came 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:42.080 from the same root word. And so it's probably just 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:47.840 an old Viking word that survived in this one place 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:50.720 in the in the United States, where it died out 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:53.880 in most other places. But that's a word that you 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:57.040 could you could still hear in the rural Ozarks and 0:15:57.120 --> 0:15:59.520 rural Appalachia today. You're probably not going to hear it 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:02.080 all that often, But a paper poke. 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:15.320 Okay, class, that was an invigorating exploration of oratory energy 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:18.520 by doctor Blevins. You know they say he wants lectured 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:21.360 a summertime bear gorge and on blackberries right into his 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:24.400 winter den. The sucker went to sleep right there in 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:29.440 the spring. Can you imagine doctor Blevins's grandparents. 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.560 Calling a sack of poke? That is hilarious? 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:34.880 Does any one of you have an example of a 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:38.640 word or phrase or thing that maybe your grandparents said, 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:41.200 or just people in your areas said that might be 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:43.239 kind of old timmy or regional? 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:46.920 Anybody? Yes, yes, you young. 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:52.760 Man Chester Floyd from central eastern Wisconsin. Kind over by 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:59.400 fond Laccari, you know Leakeuinnebagol. Anyways, Uh, you know people 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:03.960 always see there like look over there, But in Wisconsin 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:07.680 we said deer, like, hey, look out the window, there's 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:10.800 some deer over there. Is that kind of what you're 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:11.719 talking about? 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:13.080 Well? 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:20.600 No, that was ridiculous and a butchery of a beautiful 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:24.399 language that took thousands of years to develop. Man has 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:27.840 sculpted the English language like a glacier carving out a valley, 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:29.960 and what you just said was more like the work 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:32.800 of a cat five bulldozer with a Marlborough red hanging 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:36.080 out of the driver's mouth. Son, Thank you for sharing 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:37.120 about Wisconsin. 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:40.399 But let's get back to doctor Blevin's Okay. 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:45.240 There are a handful of things that help dialect survive 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:48.680 in certain places where it might die out in other place, 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:52.280 or at least, you know, strong dialect survive. One of 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:56.320 those is being in a rural place. And so you know, 0:17:56.359 --> 0:18:00.439 we got that covered in most places like where we 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.440 are now, and in a lot of places where if 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:07.199 you're in a rural area, dialect is more likely to 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:09.719 you know, a strong dialect is more likely to survive 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:13.399 if you're in a place that has a low formal 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:17.720 educational attainment level, so where people, you know, we're less 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:20.800 likely to have gone to college than in other places. 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:25.360 That's another thing that ensures that these regional dialects or 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:28.359 ethnic dialects or whatever they are, they will survive more 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:32.639 into the future. And then the third one is poverty, 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:38.760 and of course these all often work in tandem. Low education, poverty, 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:43.320 rural areas, and that's why if you go looking for 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:48.399 a hillbilly dialect or any sort of strong regional dialect. 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.320 You're more likely to find that in a place that 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:54.760 has at least a couple of these factors working in 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:58.520 his favor. And you're especially likely to find it if 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:01.200 you've got all three of them where. But one of 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:04.040 the things I like to do when I when I'm 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:08.359 talking about dialect is I'll I'll put up words on 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:12.240 a screen. I'll ask people how they pronounce them and uh, 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:14.760 and then you know, we'll see how you pronounce it 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:19.200 in the Ozarks or Appalachia or something like that. And 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:22.800 and another one was the word uh directly. When I 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:24.560 was in high school or even in college, if you'd 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:27.840 asked me to spell the word that I said directly, 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:29.880 I guess I would have spelled it d R E 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:34.679 c k l Y. But it's it's actually directly. So 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:38.760 if you tell somebody I'll be over there directly, it's 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:40.960 you know, basically, you're saying I'll be over there whenever 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:43.879 I get ready to. That's one of the things about 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:48.160 a lot of regional dialects is they tend to be 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:52.919 efficient and economic. You often cut out a syllable or 0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:55.359 two in the process of saying things, and it just 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:57.760 you know, it makes it quicker and easier to say 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:02.159 all bowl. You know, you don't say boil and oil. 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:07.000 That's too much trouble. Why would you go through all 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:10.200 that trouble to say extra syllables. So there's a lot 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:10.480 of that. 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:14.399 Doctor Blevins. I'd just like to interrupt for a second. 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:19.080 Here at Cornell University, our student body is the elite 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:22.800 of America. You know, these children's parents are doctors and 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:26.359 lawyers and people involved in the tech industry, big oil 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:30.240 and gas. You know. You referencing poverty and rural life 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:33.359 and low education would be things these students would have 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:36.760 just seen in movies. But I'd like to take another 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:40.159 question from the class. Though, we're focusing on what some 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:45.240 might call the hillbilly dialect. Remember we're celebrating all of 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:47.560 America's unique dialects. 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:49.720 Who has a question, just raise. 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:51.920 Your hand, professor. 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:57.920 Professor Professor nukeom Malachi here from Midland, Texas. The things 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:00.640 that I would have heard is show enough. My grandmother 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:04.720 used to always say show enough baby. That means for real, 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:07.080 are you for real the story you're telling me? Show 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:10.920 enough baby. The second thing I would have heard is overchair, 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.920 but passing them things overchair, that means over there, passing 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:18.760 those things over there. And then the last thing is 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:24.520 over yonder, over yonder. That means way over there, over yonder. 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:27.000 That's that's what you're looking for, right, that's what you 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:28.080 that's what you're looking for. 0:21:29.640 --> 0:21:31.600 Hmmm, Texas. 0:21:31.840 --> 0:21:37.040 Uh huh, that's that's that's interesting and a very compelling story. 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:43.440 But no, Nope, that's not really even what we're talking about. 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:46.359 I'd say that's taking a lot of creative liberty with 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:50.199 the English language, young man. Uh but but thank you, 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:52.600 uh doctr Blevin's. 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:52.800 Just carry on. 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:57.000 When I'm talking to people about about dialect, one of 0:21:57.000 --> 0:21:59.320 the things I often do is I'll have what I 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:04.280 call the steps to speaking ozark or speaking hillbilly or whatever. 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:06.199 And one of the steps I tell people, you know, 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:10.560 one of the basic ones is changing the us sound 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:14.919 at the end of words to an ease sound. So, 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:17.639 for instance, in my garden out here, one of my 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:19.399 favorite things to eat out of the garden is okra, 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:23.320 And of course most of the English speaking world would 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:27.639 call that okra, but it's it's an old tradition and 0:22:27.840 --> 0:22:31.800 linguists date that style of speaking, of changing that US 0:22:31.800 --> 0:22:33.600 sound to an E sound on the end of words, 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:36.920 all the way back to colonial America. They really don't 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:41.840 know exactly where where this originates and why, but it 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:45.560 apparently was kind of a fad in colonial America, maybe 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:49.480 to differentiate American English from British English. I'm not really 0:22:49.520 --> 0:22:52.720 sure what was going on, but apparently a lot of people, 0:22:53.040 --> 0:22:55.760 you know, started talking that way, and it died out 0:22:55.960 --> 0:22:59.360 in most other places in the country, but it survived 0:22:59.680 --> 0:23:03.800 actually in places like Appalachia and the Ozarks and these 0:23:03.960 --> 0:23:08.920 kind of rural, somewhat isolated places, and still does today. 0:23:09.080 --> 0:23:12.320 So there's, you know, there's all kinds of instances in 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:16.600 which we take what ling was called the schwa, which 0:23:16.640 --> 0:23:18.960 is the US sound on the end of a word, 0:23:19.000 --> 0:23:20.600 and just turned it into an e sound. So you 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:24.240 got a Oakrey got the grand O Opry, that's where 0:23:24.280 --> 0:23:29.320 that comes from. There's all kinds of women's names that 0:23:29.560 --> 0:23:32.480 ended A, and when I was a kid, most of them, 0:23:32.960 --> 0:23:36.800 so he got ain't Brthy instead of Bertha, and Marthy 0:23:36.960 --> 0:23:42.879 instead of Martha. And there's My grandma was Alberta. But 0:23:43.000 --> 0:23:45.880 if anybody ever called her at Alberta, you knew they 0:23:45.880 --> 0:23:48.119 were from off they weren't, you know, they weren't from 0:23:48.160 --> 0:23:51.719 around here, because she was always Alberti to everybody who 0:23:51.840 --> 0:23:56.240 knew her well, and almost every woman whose name ended 0:23:56.280 --> 0:23:58.919 with an a was that way, and some men. There 0:23:58.960 --> 0:24:02.719 aren't as many men names that end in that chuaw sound. 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:06.920 But I can remember my grandpa talking about his uncle Noe, 0:24:07.119 --> 0:24:11.040 and that was Noah like Noah's Arc, but in the 0:24:11.080 --> 0:24:14.640 Hill country it was Noe. And you can even if 0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:18.520 your name was Ira, I r A. Now that one 0:24:18.640 --> 0:24:21.119 changes on the front end and the back end, so 0:24:21.160 --> 0:24:25.520 it doesn't become necessarily Iri. It does become e on 0:24:25.560 --> 0:24:29.000 the end of it. But another one of those, and 0:24:29.080 --> 0:24:32.439 this is more of a Southern pronunciation, tick, is turning 0:24:32.480 --> 0:24:34.720 that eye on the front into a kind of an 0:24:34.760 --> 0:24:39.040 owe sound. So you got instead of Ira, you've got Ari. 0:24:39.720 --> 0:24:43.320 And that's the same that's the same rule that gives 0:24:43.400 --> 0:24:48.320 us tar instead of tire, far instead of fire, war 0:24:48.760 --> 0:24:52.800 instead of wire. You know, you arn your clothes instead 0:24:52.800 --> 0:24:57.480 of iron them. And one of my favorite stories relating 0:24:57.520 --> 0:25:01.280 to changing that long eye sound into kind of an 0:25:01.320 --> 0:25:05.439