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The way we say it

I recently read Bill Bryson's wonderful book on the English language, Mother Tongue, and it reminded me that Arkansans have always been inventive when it comes to using our language.

Albert Pike, who came to Arkansas before statehood, was fascinated by the local manner of speaking. Pike found the South and Arkansas very unusual: "Everything was radically, thoroughly, and essentially different." He continued, "The appearance of the country--the manner of living--the courts--the elections--the habits of the people--their language and expressions--was strange, singular, and odd to me."

Pike went to lengths to defend Arkansas speech, noting that frontier speech "has been too often caricatured." Nevertheless, he went on to give some examples of "the peculiarities" of local vocabulary and pronunciation: "'Splurge' is a common word meaning tumult, noise, etc." He continued: "Husking is called 'shucking'. . . a place where liquor is sold [is] a 'doggery'. . . Hair, bear, stair . . . are pronounced 'har, bar, star."

"Villain," Pike concluded, is pronounced vilyain. The word 'seen' and 'seed' are often used for 'saw.'"

Another keen observer of Arkansas speech was Tate C. Page, who grew up north of Russellville and who published his memoirs late in life. Page listed a glossary of words and terms that would puzzle modern Arkansans: "Clabber headed" described a dim-witted person. Diapers were called "hippins," and soured milk was said to be "blinky."

Wayman Hogue, who grew up in north-central Arkansas in the years following the Civil War, recalled in his memoirs that "the mountain people have a dialect and pronunciation of their own. For instance, they say 'far' for 'fire,' 'fur' for 'far,' 'fer' for 'for,' and 'hit' for 'it.'"

Hogue continued: "For the plural of you, they say 'youens,' not 'you all' as some think."

Among the scenes Hogue depicts in his memoir was a political rally deep in the backwoods. One candidate for state representative was quoted as saying: "I hain't got no book larin'. I don't know how to read and write. But I do know what is right an' what is wrong: an youens can be shore to know that, when I am elected, I'm goin' to do what is right."

Hogue's legislative candidate would have felt right at home in the Arkansas legislature. For generations, the Arkansas General Assembly has witnessed some of the most egregious malaprops in the history of the English language. Indeed, during the early 1980s Arkansas Gazette columnist Richard Allin and cartoonist George Fisher produced a very successful booklet titled Southern Legislative Dictionary based on the verbal antics of Arkansas legislators.

Allin and Fisher explain what legislators mean when they use words like "kindly" (meaning "sort of"); "wrench" (to wash in clear water); "tar" (a wheel covering); and my favorite, "stass-stiss-stics" (quantitative data--"It's got to whur we caint believe none of them stass-stiss-stics.").

While Allin and Fisher were mostly having fun with their little book, the great folklorist Vance Randolph produced a 320-page volume on Ozark speech that was based on deep research and observation over a life time. Titled Down in the Holler: A Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech (1953), Randolph's book is filled with interesting observations--and no small amount of humor.

Randolph devotes a chapter to "taboos and euphemisms," which acknowledges "the extraordinary nature of the Ozarker's conversational taboos, his verbal reactions to sexual and skatalogical [sic] topics." Modern Arkansans might be surprised to know that our ancestors avoided using the names of male animals when women were present. Instead of bull, many rural residents would say "cow-critter" or even "male-cow." Male chickens were called by a variety of names, including "crower" and "rooster" in order to avoid the word "cock."

Euphemisms sometimes became outlandish in especially prudish families. Randolph concluded that women sometimes avoided the word pain, "apparently feeling that this word refers chiefly to the pains of childbirth." Randolph noted that a neighbor woman often spoke of "a misery in her side," but she never had pains "being a respectable widow and beyond the age of childbearing anyhow."

Randolph concluded his discussion of taboos by noting that "the influence of tourists and 'furriners' is killing the old folk-speech." He expected that in "a few more years . . . the Ozark hillfolk will be talking just as 'brash an' nasty-like' as the rest of us."

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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com. An earlier version of this column was published Aug. 1, 2010.

Editorial on 04/24/2016

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