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  • From: <eureka AT hctc.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Geography was: Tell me again why Republicans are good for peo...
  • Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:04:08 -0600

And I could go on all day reading about it, very interesting. I remember when I first moved here people wanted to introduce me to some of the "cow poners" and I honestly didn't know what a cow poner was, I thought it might be some form of cowboy. However, I soon found out what they were saying was "camp owners". Ha ha.

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008 11:51:10 EST
Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:


>I just recently found out I have Cherokee ancstors. How would you describe the Cherokee influence on southern speech? I have not heard about this influence before.


I have a collection of recordings of native Oklahoma Cherokee speakers and of course Morganton, NC, is close by where most of the Eastern Cherokee are located. After having lived in Oklahoma for 180 years (after the removal) the people's speech, whether speaking Cherokee or English, has the pure Appalachian twang to it.

The people who first populated the wild craigs and ridges of this part of the world (I say 'first' because the place is so hardscrabble that even the Indians didn't live here, they just visited) were not in the majority English speakers. They spoke various forms of German, French, Gaelic, and there were even enclaves of speakers of Portuguese and Italian. Each of those left its mark on the lingua franca that developed. For example, in Scottish Gaelic there is no actual present tense of the verb. The present tense is expressed thus: instead of saying "I am drinking" one says "I am at drinking" (Tha mi ag ól. Pronounced roughly 'ha me a goal'). This pattern carried over into Appalachian version of English as "I am a thinking, I'm a going.") From the Romance languages Southern English and Appalachian English in particular absorbed the copious use of the reflexive which is common in those languages "I'm a thinking I'll get myself down to the store and have myself an RC."

But back to the Cherokee. When the folk looked around for an example of common English speech, the best English speakers were the Cherokee. Cherokee has six vowel sounds and no diphthongs. The vowels are the continetal values of a,e, i, o, and u, plus a completely nasal vowel written in translitertions as 'v' (since that letter has no other use in Cherokee). English, however, has no pure vowel sounds. ALL vowels in English are either diphthongs or glides or both. For example, the word 'they' is pronounced in English as "thay-ee" and "note" is pronounced "noh-oot". This feature of English makes it a somewhat difficult language to learn to pronounce if you weren't born to it.

So the Tsalagi speaker came into contact with the English speakers and heard them saying two vowels with every syllable. But the Tsalagi speaker didn't use diphthongs so they took the one vowel sound and said it twice imitating the glide.

When we say "I" we are saying vowel that does not occur by itself in common English but is sort of like "ah" then followed by "ee". Try saying "I" but cut it off short before you add the "ee" on the end. The Cherokee heard the rhythm of the glide, but said the "ah" part twice as "ah-ah" (no hiatus between them, say it as a glide). Thus Appalachian English acquired the characteristic of holding and gliding the same vowel twice rather than making a diphthong out of it.

That's why you hear "boh-oh" and "oh-ohl" instead of "boy" and "oil".
The Cherokee word (one of them) for "yes" is "hv-hv" and this carried over into common speach here and is used to this day often writen "uh-huh".

Around here you will most often hear the expression "ever where" and "ever what" and "ever when" instead of "where ever", "whatever" and "whenever". This traces back to a Low German influence.

Could go on all day but mustn't. Got to get a going, uh-huh!



James




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