native tongue

I’m not a dialects person, but I’ve chased down people who are and the general consensus of those ‘in the know’ seems to be that it’s the Appalachian tongue that’s closest to Shakespeare’s own. That the mountains have served as an insulator and protected the mother tongue of their earliest immigrants.

In the days following the Civil War, travel writers returning from the nation’s newest state mocked its inhabitants as weird religious folk who prayed to mountains and still spoke Elizabethan English.

Speaking from personal experience, and this isn’t to do with dialect expressly but it goes to the same point, I’m amazed and excited at how often I hear my grandfather, a deep-wood, West Virginia fellow, as he’ll tell you himself, using words or phrases that are more relevant to The Bard’s time than our own.

You won’t find half of his words in a dictionary, but you WILL find them in the likes of Johnson, Raleigh, and Shakespeare. Of course.

4 Responses to “native tongue”

1. abbersnail says:

   11 March, 2009 at 22:22

   This is so true. I’m from Appalachian Virginia, and we speak a whole different language there!
2. DeannaBanana says:

   11 March, 2009 at 22:57

   Not that it is any of my business, but where have you been? I’ve missed your musings.
3. khairun says:

   16 March, 2009 at 18:11

   My parents came to London in the late seventies. They spoke little English so I grew up using a dialect from the coastal regions of Bangladesh. Having mastered the art of English however, I started to stumble abit with my family’s native language. I’ve forgotten how to say alot of things simply because there are so few who know it. It’s abit of a shame really. Nevertheless, I do want to teach what I know to my child (due in September!)Along with frequent visits from Lisbon to London…
4. steph says:

   17 March, 2009 at 21:33

   welcome back my dear…