WHAT’S THAT BOY SAYIN’?

by John M. Floyd

It’s easy sometimes to tell whether someone is from the South. And no, it has nothing to do with pickup trucks or chitlins or RC Colas. I’m talking about speech.

Some of the tipoffs are obvious. When a guy tells you he tikes a brike beside the like, or staahted to drive his caah to the baah, you know he’s not from Podunk Springs, Alabama. But there are a few other hints, too, that your new neighbor might be from somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon.

One of them is taking a word like rule or school or pool or tool and making it into two syllables. As an example, listen carefully to the way people say the word “cool.” If they pronounce it KOO-wull (two separate syllables) you can bet the ranch and the cattle that they’re not from good old Dixie. Native southerners usually say cool using only one syllable. As if they’re saying “koo” and then, as an afterthought, sticking an “l” onto the end.

Another clue is the way a person pronounces a word like dog or log or hog. Southern folks don’t say it with an “ah” sound, as in “jog.” It comes out sounding more like “aw,” as in “Paul”: dawg, lawg, hawg. It’s not exaggerated quite that much, but it’s definitely more of an “aw” than an “ah.” This is ironic if you consider that most movie actors are instructed to add an “ah” sound to many words in order to sound more southern, like “Wheah is my beeah?” or “Come ovah heah and eat youah coahnbread.” The truth is, folks in the South don’t speak that way and have never spoken that way. It pains me that one of the worst offenders was Tommy Kirk in Old Yeller. I remember thinking, when I saw that movie as a kid, Why’s that boy talking like that?

Another dead giveaway is the pronunciation of a word like center or winter or hunter. Folks from the north usually make the definite hard “t” sound in the middle (which is proper, probably) when saying those words: sin-ter, win-ter, hun-ter. Southerners usually leave that out, and make the word sound like sinner or winner or hunner. A lieutenant from Brooklyn who worked with me in the Air Force (George Valentino, if you’re reading this, I hope you’re a retired general now) was always talking about our compu-ta cen-ta at the base. To me it was always just the computer sinner. Not a big deal, but a sure indicator that Lt. Valentino had probably never seen a cotton boll except on TV at the end of football season.

Possibly the most foolproof way of knowing that a person (in this case, a writer or screenwriter) isn’t from the South is the mistake often made in movies and stories and novels, when an actor or character who’s supposed to be southern looks at another person and says “y’all.” Most southerners don’t do that, at least the ones I’ve known. “Y’all” is used only to address two or more people. “How y’all doing?” is fine if you’re talking to a group — but the same question sounds wrong if you’re speaking only to your cousin or the mailman or the lady standing behind you in the checkout line. So when the plantation owner says to the lovely Miss Violet, “Y’all sho do look pretty today,” you can only hope that several of her sisters are visible to him as well, somewhere off-screen. Otherwise, Paw, that guy ain’t who he says he is.

One thing that’s always puzzled and amused me is that many folks not from the South think all of us down here speak with a drawl. Some of us do; my grandfather talked in the same easy, drawn-out, slow-as-molasses way that Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy did in Driving Miss Daisy. But most southerners don’t speak every word slowly and lazily. Most of us talk pretty darn fast, and that always seems to surprise new neighbors who’ve moved here from elsewhere. It’s the words themselves that sound different, not the speed with which they’re spoken.

In closing, here’s a poem on the subject, that I published in a magazine called Wordplay a few years ago. It’s called “A Way (Down South) With Words”:

Where I live, “tea” means iced tea (the sweeter the better),
We don’t say “bush” beans, we say “bunch,”
And the evening meal isn’t dinner, it’s supper —
To me, the word “dinner” means lunch.

And when actors in films try to copy our lingo,
A southerner always can tell;
It’s the easiest accent to imitate wrong
And the hardest to imitate well.

By the way, y’all help yourselves to Moon Pies before you leave . . .

Whoops, almost forgot: Here are some more results from the movie-quote quiz of two weeks ago. (In #26, imagine the words being spoken with a southern/Texan accent, which is easy if you consider who’s saying it.)

21. What are you looking at? / I was just wondering where you hide your firearm. Don’t tell me, let me guess.
IN THE LINE OF FIRE (Rene Russo, in an evening gown / Clint Eastwood)

22. Moneypenny, what would I do without you? / My problem is, you never do anything with me.
ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (George Lazenby / Lois Maxwell)

23. Roger O. Thornhill. What does the O stand for? / Nothing.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST (Eva Marie Saint / Cary Grant)

24. Whenever we needed money, we’d rob the airport. To us, it was better than Citibank.
GOODFELLAS (Ray Liotta, narrating)

25. How’d you do it? / Do what? / Manage to give a woman flowers and be President at the same time. / Well, it turns out I have a rose garden.
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT (Annette Bening / Michael Douglas / Bening / Douglas)

26. What in the wide, wide, world of sports is goin’ on here?
BLAZING SADDLES (Slim Pickens, to his singing, dancing railroad work crew)

27. I coulda been a contender.
ON THE WATERFRONT (Brando, to Rod Steiger)

28. When I was nineteen, I did a guy in Laos with a rifle shot at a thousand yards in high wind.
LETHAL WEAPON (Mel Gibson, to Danny Glover)

29. How would you feel about another year of high school? Under my close personal supervision.
FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF (Principal Jeffrey Jones, to Matthew Broderick)

30. You go in, find the President, bring him out in less than 24 hours, and you’re a free man.
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (Lee Van Cleef, to Kurt Russell)

31. I have a new play. / What’s it called? / Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter.
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (Joseph Fiennes / Rupert Everett / Fiennes)

32. Here are your names: Mr. Brown, Mr. White, Mr. Blond, Mr. Blue, Mr. Orange, and Mr. Pink.
RESERVOIR DOGS (Lawrence Tierney, to the group)

33. You got ten seconds to run like hell. Then dynamite, not faith, will move that mountain into this pass.
THE PROFESSIONALS (Burt Lancaster, to Robert Ryan)

34. I should probably tell you that I’m taking the bus because I had my driver’s license revoked. / What For? / Speeding.
SPEED (Sandra Bullock, while driving / Keanu Reeves / Bullock)

35. Don’t start flirting with me — I’m not one of your plantation beaus.
GONE WITH THE WIND (Clark Gable, to Vivian Leigh)

36. The report read “Routine retirement of a replicant.” That didn’t make me feel any better about shooting a woman in the back.
BLADE RUNNER (Harrison Ford, narrating)

37. Why, you speak treason! / Fluently.
THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (Olivia DeHavilland / Errol Flynn)

38. I keep telling you, this isn’t “a few birds”! These are gulls, crows, swifts, . . .
THE BIRDS (Tippi Hedren, to local fisherman)

39. Please welcome, the very excellent barbarian . . . Mr. Genghis Khan!
BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (Keanu Reeves, to the assembled students)

40. Here we are, millions of miles from earth, and we can still send out for pizza.
CAPRICORN ONE (Sam Waterston, to the other astronauts who faked the launch)

(NOTE: The final group of answers will be featured in next week’s column.)