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Dialects

The Source

I’d been busted. The rules clearly stated that in speech contest the judge shall not be allowed to know where the contestant calls home. “The contestant shall in no way identify his home school or residence.” The year was 1967, I’d made it to the state finals in extemporaneous public speaking and had just finished what I assumed was an award-winning presentation on “Should parochial schools receive federal aid?” The judge smiled at my grand finale, then said, “You’re from Pike County, aren’t you?” Busted. How could he know? I’d just given a speech that would have gone equally well at the United Nations or the Nobel Prize acceptance ceremony and this guy guessed that I’d come from Perry! Hey! I showered! I wasn’t wearing my overalls and chore boots! What was the deal? I stumbled a bit in my answer, thinking of the “do not indentify yourself” rule. The judge saw my consternation and said, “That’s okay. It’s what I study. You have a Pike County accent.” The man’s area of expertise was the various regional dialects of Illinois. He told me, “Oh, I can’t identify every county, but Pike’s speech is pretty unique. Your county was founded by southerners and you don't have much of a transportation system. That gives you a bit of a drawl and allows your county to keep much of its original speech pattern.” I was amazed. In later years the amazement turned to delight. Pretty cool coming from an area backward enough to retain its linguistic roots. Growing up in Central Illinois has afforded many of us the opportunity to taste a varied menu of dialects. Not accents, as in Italian or Greek or German, but dialects..variations on a single language. And I’m not talking about the various mispronunciations rampant in our part of the world… New Berlin, Athens, Versailles, etc. But dialects…that slight slurring or inflection that marks your birthplace. The best way to tell a liar from Pleasant Hill is if he says, “I’m from Pleasant Hill.” No one from Pleasant Hill is from Pleasant Hill. If you’re truly a born and bred “P-Hiller,” you’ll say “Plenn Hill.” Only a transplanted Murrayvillian would say “Murrayville.” Anyone from that sweet little conclave south of Jacksonville knows it’s “Murr-ville.” For years while teaching at Triopia I tried to correction generations of young Trojans that they were not from “Tro-pia.” The folks from Chandlerville had the “dl” surgically removed years ago. And Arenzville is completely schizophrenic about the town’s pronunciation. Named after a man who according to reliable sources was named Francis Arenz (Aa-renz), most residents refer to their town as ARnz-ville, or if you’ve been around the Burgoo pot a long, long time it’s “Ernsville.” Of course these strange pronunciations are not so much a result of dialect but years of use, much like the shortening of “neck lace” to “necklace.” What I really love about our culturally mixed corner of the world is true dialect…the slight inflection given to all words. I recently attended a church meeting where folks from Jacksonville, Kewanee, and Metropolis were in attendance. Three groups, all from Illinois, and speaking with distinctly different dialects. The northern Kewaneeans sung their perfect vowel sounds… “abouut… douuubt…shouuut” while our southern cousins from Superman’s hometown dropped their g’s from “ing” all over the church floor. Of course we Central Illinoisians spoke absolutely normal. It reminded me of when my parents took us to a convention held in the Deep South. The next day’s local headlines read, “The town is full of strange-talking people.” Dan Rather once wrote that by the turn of the 21st century most traces of regional dialect will be gone, the victim of what’s called “flattening.” Mass media…TV, radio, movies, has rubbed the roughest edges of most regional inflections and that’s sad. Who wants to speak like everyone else? I suppose that we’re among the most dialect-free of all the country’s regions since broadcasting schools still teach their future newscasters to intone what’s called “Midwestern flat” dialect. Dan Rather himself began his career with a broad Texas accent until it was flattened out with voice training. If it is dying, then I mourn the dialect’s passing. I fondly remember an old episode of the TV show Candid Camera where Alan Funt pulled into an Alabama filling station and simply recorded the conversation. “I need some oil.” “Awl?” “Yeah. Do you have enough to fill my car?” “I got awl the awl you’ll need.” “All what?” “Awl.” “All?” “Yep. Awl the awl. That be awl?” I’ll miss that.