We don’t need a law to keep on talking Southern, y’all

I’m a little late getting around to this, but there is a survey out by a group called Writing Tips Institute, a website that teaches people how to write correctly. (An aside from the editors: Please consider joining, and if they will also teach you to put commas where they belong, we’ll kick in with the tuition.)

According to the survey, 51% of Georgians would like our dialect protected by law. I would have thought the number would be higher, but then most everybody here is from someplace else and can’t understand us anyway, let alone make the effort to protect the way we talk. Fuhgeddaboudit.

If we are going to talk about passing a law, we should pass legislation that says if anybody from north of the Mason-You-Know-Who line so much as snickers at the way we talk, we will put them into baggy white shorts and ship them off to Guatemala as illegal aliens. Let’s see how they snicker then.

There’s not much that will sull me up quicker than somebody telling me I talk funny. I will remind them that there is nothing wrong with the way I talk. They are the ones with the strange accents. And I would laugh at them, except that is impolite, and in the South, it’s all about good manners. That’s the way our mommas raised us.

I’m really not sure why we talk like we do, but there is no question we are economical with the language. Unlike other parts of the country, we don’t find it necessary to stick extraneous letters on our words. Like putting the “g” at the end of words. If you haven’t figured out that we are saying “fussin’” or “fightin’” by the time we get to the end of the word, sticking a “g” on it ain’t goin’ make much difference.

Same with the letter “r.” We use them on the front end of important words like “Readin’” and “Ritin’” and “Rasslin’,” but we don’t feel compelled to put them on the end of words, like “over” or “under.” We just say “ovuh” and “unduh.” Even the Supreme Being doesn’t rate an “r.” We just call him “Lawd.” He doesn’t seem to mind.

We use the same words everybody else uses. We just assign them a different meaning. Bard, for example. According to my personal lexicographers, Barney Funk and Porter Wagnalls, bard is defined as a poet. Around here, bard means you took something that doesn’t belong to you. (“Honey! That sorry brother of yours bard my riding mower again without asking.”) In the West, a ranch is a lot of acreage with horses or cows on it. We have ranches in the South, too, only we have more of them. We have pipe ranches and box-end ranches and socket ranches. We use our ranches to fix things.

Speaking of “fixing,” that is one of our favorite words in the South. We use it like everyone else when we are going to repair something, as in “Darlin’, where’s my ranch? I’m gonna fix the leak in the sink.” However, we also use fix as a substitute for “preparation,” which has too many “r’s” and takes too long to say. We “fix” supper (In the South, supper is dinner and dinner is when we eat lunch) and then announce to the family to wash up, that we’re “fixin’ to eat” or “I’m fixin’ to sit down and watch me some Andy Griffith on TV.”

When others talk about “war,” they have visions of bombs bursting in air. When we say “war,” we are describing what goes around fence posts to keep the cows from running loose. “Barbed war.” In other parts of the country, “moan” means “to utter a low dull sound.” Not here. When we say “moan,” we mean to get the lead out and move it. (“Moan, Clarence, we ain’t got all danged day.”) Same with “far.” To a lot of folks, far is a long way off. Far keeps us warm.

Frankly, I don’t think our dialect needs to be protected by law. It’s fine like it is. Besides, I don’t trust the Legislature to get it right anyway. As my sweet momma, Southern to the core, used to say, “If brains were dynamite, they couldn’t blow their nose. Bless their hearts.” What’s hard to understand about that, y’all?

You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@dickyarbrough.com or at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.