80s and 90s. I was a millennial when we were called Gen Y but like I said, west NC. I think being closer to Appalachia and thus Appalachian probably matters. So sometimes pants or jeans were ‘britches’, though not used by people my age then, “fixin’” was used a lot (“I’m fixen to come over yonder (‘over’ being optional here)” or perhaps ‘reckon’ in “I reckon that’s about a mile down that ways” where you ‘think’ it might be a mile over there. ‘Y’all’ was outpacing ‘you’uns’ by then. ‘Foot’ instead of ‘feet’ specifically for measurement was still used. Like “That’s about 2 foot thick.” Holler could be used two ways, one of those being to ‘yell’ or talk to someone or to describe a small valley. A toboggan was those knitted hats (stocking caps) you’d wear rather than the sled you’d typically be riding on wearing one of these. When you’re a young kid they’d sometimes have those stupid puffy balls on top of them. One of my grandmothers would use ‘I swunney!’ as an exclamation of being appalled or surprised by an outcome. I have no idea where that came from. ‘Chaw’ was used by older folks to describe a wad of chewing tobacco like “You have some chaw I can get?” A ‘bald’ was a the top of a mountain without trees and usually mostly rocks like “You can see 3 states from any of them balds over there.” Sometimes old people would call a backpack a ‘tow sack’ or even ‘clean’ is used kind of odd like “He knocked it clean out of the park!”
We were still taught that slaves had it better off in some plantations and that many came back from the ‘silent North’ (implying blacks were straight up ignored and at least down South where they’d be beaten, lynched and tortured some thought that this attention was somehow better I guess) and that the Civil War was about States Rights and the issue of slavery wasn’t actually important. I’m not sure if it still is but I hope not. I assume it isn’t the way my family goes on and on about indoctrination of children outside of homeschooling.
Huh, where I am in Australia, we use ‘I reckon’ a lot. We also still casually refer to height in feet, and use ‘foot’. Eg. ‘I’m six foot one’. Everything else we measure in metric, and medical records list height in centimetres. Using ‘clean’ like that is pretty normal here too.
Edit: To be clear, the height of a person. Nothing else.
I’m not sure how true it was but an anecdote my social studies teacher told us was that the dialect was closer to victorian/older (not quite Old English) English and that’s how Britain used to speak. However, in my opinion, they probably confused that with Britain specifically changing to non-rhotic English annunciation post the Revolutionary War with the, now US, to further separate culture. I don’t study linguistics so maybe she was right and I am wrong though. I’ve just never happened across anything of repute backing that up.
My oldest son thought Roadapiece was a place and eventually complained that I always said we were going to Roadapiece and never actually went there. Wife and I still laugh about it over a decade later.
80s and 90s. I was a millennial when we were called Gen Y but like I said, west NC. I think being closer to Appalachia and thus Appalachian probably matters. So sometimes pants or jeans were ‘britches’, though not used by people my age then, “fixin’” was used a lot (“I’m fixen to come over yonder (‘over’ being optional here)” or perhaps ‘reckon’ in “I reckon that’s about a mile down that ways” where you ‘think’ it might be a mile over there. ‘Y’all’ was outpacing ‘you’uns’ by then. ‘Foot’ instead of ‘feet’ specifically for measurement was still used. Like “That’s about 2 foot thick.” Holler could be used two ways, one of those being to ‘yell’ or talk to someone or to describe a small valley. A toboggan was those knitted hats (stocking caps) you’d wear rather than the sled you’d typically be riding on wearing one of these. When you’re a young kid they’d sometimes have those stupid puffy balls on top of them. One of my grandmothers would use ‘I swunney!’ as an exclamation of being appalled or surprised by an outcome. I have no idea where that came from. ‘Chaw’ was used by older folks to describe a wad of chewing tobacco like “You have some chaw I can get?” A ‘bald’ was a the top of a mountain without trees and usually mostly rocks like “You can see 3 states from any of them balds over there.” Sometimes old people would call a backpack a ‘tow sack’ or even ‘clean’ is used kind of odd like “He knocked it clean out of the park!”
We were still taught that slaves had it better off in some plantations and that many came back from the ‘silent North’ (implying blacks were straight up ignored and at least down South where they’d be beaten, lynched and tortured some thought that this attention was somehow better I guess) and that the Civil War was about States Rights and the issue of slavery wasn’t actually important. I’m not sure if it still is but I hope not. I assume it isn’t the way my family goes on and on about indoctrination of children outside of homeschooling.
Huh, where I am in Australia, we use ‘I reckon’ a lot. We also still casually refer to height in feet, and use ‘foot’. Eg. ‘I’m six foot one’. Everything else we measure in metric, and medical records list height in centimetres. Using ‘clean’ like that is pretty normal here too.
Edit: To be clear, the height of a person. Nothing else.
Dicks.
Okay, yeah, those too.
I’m not sure how true it was but an anecdote my social studies teacher told us was that the dialect was closer to victorian/older (not quite Old English) English and that’s how Britain used to speak. However, in my opinion, they probably confused that with Britain specifically changing to non-rhotic English annunciation post the Revolutionary War with the, now US, to further separate culture. I don’t study linguistics so maybe she was right and I am wrong though. I’ve just never happened across anything of repute backing that up.
“We’re just fixin to go down the road a piece.”
My oldest son thought Roadapiece was a place and eventually complained that I always said we were going to Roadapiece and never actually went there. Wife and I still laugh about it over a decade later.