North Georgia Mountain Dialect

Our mountain dialect is dying out as our young people grow up and go away to school, new families settle where once we had the same neighbors for a lifetime. But there are still folks who use the same dialect that was used two hundred and fifty years ago when the Scotch Irish settled in the North Georgia mountains. The Scotch Irish were driven from Northern Ireland by the Stuart Kings and landed in Maryland and Virginia. They migrated as far west as the hostile Indians and French allowed, then moved southward to the rugged mountains and fertile valleys we know as the Appalachia. The Scotch Irish were acompanied and followed by Virginia English, Huguenots, Pennsylvania Quakers, Polatine Germans and various dissatisfied Protestants sects.

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They settled in isolation from the rest of the world. Their language, tools, and knowledge were isolated with them. Suspended in time they relied on their skills and their own culture. For more than 250 years the only changes they knew were those of birth and death. They were independent and rugged individuals. Honest and shrewd they worked hard on the ridges and valleys to support their families. They were a proud dignified people.

In their archaic tongue they would say of home and themselves; ” We’re pore folks and it ain’t much but you are welcome to what they is.” If Shakespeare had been there he would have felt right at home. If ungrammatical, the Elizabethan English would still have been very familiar. Mountain speech is a spoken rather than a written language and needs to be heard to be appreciated.

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The use of double nouns is common in mountain dialect. Such as’ hose-pipe, biscuit-bread, church-house, widow-woman, preacher-man, rifle-gun, pork-meat.

Examples of Chaucerian English; beasties, nesties, costes, postes, the plural of nouns and verbs with “es” and “ies” instead of s. Another well know mountain usage is a final “n” instead of “s”. As in; his’n, our’n, your’n, her’n, instead of his, ours, yours, hers.

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The use of Elizabethan terms were very common. I heard these terms every day as I was growing up, and still do occasionally. “afeared” instead of afraid,”stove” instead of jabbed, “ashamed” instead of bashful, “drap” instead of drop, “spell” instead of time or while, “fix” instead of prepare, “reckon” instead of think, “aim” instead of intend, “kiver” instead of cover, “nigh”instead of near, “betwist” instead of between, “heap” instead of many, “puny” instead of sickly, “plunder” instead of possessions, “misery” instead of pain. “ingern’s instead of onions. Remember how Shakespeare had Othello say, “I aim to”

I love the mountain dialect because I grew up with it and when I occasionally hear it it’s like coming home. I seldom speak it myself and as the old ones pass away it is disappearing forever.

http://www.gomestic.com/Cooking/Good-Mountain-Cooking.623447