Backcountry Notes

Recently a coal company has been running television ads made in someplace "away" in which a narrator mis-pronounces the word "Appalachia," making it "appa-LAY-chuh." Chalk screeching on a chalkboard, to my ears.  Or screechy flute music, like the guy in the picture. For guidance in the correct Southern Appalachia pronunciation, see How To Pronounce 'Appalachia.'

If you haven't visited Blind Pig & The Acorn, I implore you to go there for Tipper's educational and entertaining series on speaking the language of Southern Appalachia.  Start with Speak Like An Appalachian, then go to Speak Like An Appalachian II, and then work your way through the  tests, starting with Appalachian Vocabulary Test and running to the most recent post, Appalachian Vocabulary Test 17. Music to my Backcountry-loving ears. The vocabulary turns up all through the Backcountry, including metropolitan Whynot, NC, where my siblings and I spent summers on our grandparents' farm.

The unenlightened assume that the Backcountry accents and usages are a “hillbilly” corruption of the flatlands Southern drawl.  This is not so; the accents and usages of the Backcountry developed contemporaneously with the versions of English spoken in the other areas of European settlement. . . .

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