Seaking Northern as a Second Language

Northern as a Second Language---------------------------------------------------

I speak Northern as a second language; I didn’t mean to, it just happened. I was trying to make a living with General Motors and that required me to spend 35 years in the frozen north. Of course Southern is my native tongue, being born in Jackson County and raised in Smith County, and it comes to me as easy as a lie to a politician. But I read Jack McCall’s piece in the Carthage Courier about “Paying Attention,” and it reminded me to pay attention to the difference in the way we talk Down South and the way things are said up north.
Of course, it is more than just what you say, it is the way you say it and when it is said. For instance, those folks up north like to jump right into business and skip all of the “small talk,” as they call it. I was a face-to-face negotiator for a good part of my career with General Motors, and it would just drive the other side crazy when I wanted to ask about their daughters upcoming wedding, inquire after their granny, whom I had learned was in a nursing home, or tell a little story I had heard that might or might not relate to anything we were going to discuss when the negotiations had begun in earnest. After all, they had often flown in from New Jersey or Plano, TX or Palo Alto, California on the morning flight, or better yet the corporate jet, and felt they needed to get down to business in the first three minutes. Not me, I had learned in the South that it is hard to be nasty to someone who had just inquired about your little boys tonsillectomy, and opined that, “well, kids get through these things, but I sure hope the little fellow will feel better tomorrow. You be sure and let me know.” That kind of conversation is hard to follow-up with red faced yelling and cuss words.
My cousin Marva and I were talking about how much difficulty the folks around Franklin, Spring Hill, and Columbia had adjusting to the brusque manner of the northerners who moved down to work at the Tennessee Saturn facility. Those folks wanted to get right down to business while the southern folks were still wanting to find out how they slept last night, and whether they thought the weather would change or not. It was something of a culture clash for the first few years.
The Northern language is dry, as dry as a bone in the desert, while Down South we try to spice it up with a simile whenever possible. I personally was known for the use of barnyard animals in speech.
“Negotiating with you folks, is like trying to teach a pig to whistle – it don’t accomplish a thing, and it just irritates the pig.”
“Negotiating with this company is like wresting with a pig – you both get nasty, but the pig likes it.”
“What is this, some kind of Goat Rodeo?”
“I’m going to work this bunch like a rented mule.”
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him take a bath.”
I once was in negotiations with a company in Short Hills, NJ and a great deal of the work was done by conference phone. The leader of the opposing team later told me that they kept a whiteboard in the room for the sole purpose of noting the barnyard animal similes and analogies I used each day.
A Jewish lawyer from Washington D.C. who sometimes supported my side of negotiations, called me a few years after I had retired and told me he had tried to memorize a lot of my saying and use them himself. “It was going pretty good too,” he said, “until I came to the term Goat Rodeo. I lost them there and someone wanted an explanation and I had nothing.” It is one of those sayings that is best delivered with a Southern accent, I guess.
Well, those fellows from New York and New Jersey are pretty slick, “as slick as a puppy’s navel,” my daddy would say, so I figured that it was just fair play to put them a little off guard with a little Southern speak. One of my friends told me when I retired that when I ever started out a sentence with, “Now I’m just a farm boy from Middle Tennessee….;” that everyone in the room automatically put their hand on their wallet. (By the way – that’s Northern for billfold.) Speaking of which, takes me to the next segment of Northern as a second language.
Down South, we go to the grocery store, nearly have a wreck, push the buggy through the store we trade at, have the groceries put in a bag (or poke) and the boy wheels them out to the car for us.
Up North, they drive to the supermarket, narrowly avoiding an accident, push the shopping cart through the store where they shop, have the groceries put in a sack and wheel them out to their vehicle themselves.
We say you all (pronounced Y’all) – they say “you guys.”
We say “ya hear” – they say “huh, or eh.”
We say creek – they say crick, we say aunt (like the bug) – they say aunt (rhymes with want); we say caught (kawt) – they say caught (cot); we have yard sales (focus on where the sale is) – they have rummage sales (focus on what is being sold); we catch crawfish – they eat crayfish.
We drink coke or co cola (no matter that it is orange or grape) – and they drink pop (unless you are from down east and then it is soda) And not one of my Northern friends would even know what a Yoo-hoo is
We travel on interstates – and up north one drives on the freeway. The night before Halloween is Devil’s Night up north and down South it is “the night before Halloween.” By the way, we carve punkins into Jack-o-lanterns and wear false faces; but they use pumpkins that look just like a punkin and wear masks.
Up north if someone were to say “bless her heart” it would mean they are thinking kind thoughts about her, down South it means what the person who says that is thinking is too awful to repeat in polite company. Some Southern words do not translate directly into Northern lingo. For instance, cattywampus, skygogling, whamperjawed, thingamadiger, doohickey, whatchamacallit; and other like, perfectly good but made up words. Other words, like booger means one thing down South but that same thing is called boogie up North. Boogie Man or Booger Man, you decide.
Down South people have conniptions, and pitch hissy fits, while up north they only “have a hemorrhage” when things go wrong. Up North, all of us are considered “crackers,” “briars,” or “hillbillies”, down South we know that a cracker is from “Jawja,” a briar is what blackberry cobbler comes from, and the hillbillies are on TV.
Down south we also like to run words together into a single syllable or to break words into as many syllables as possible. Like “Momenems”. Used in a sentence it would be “After this thing is over we’er going over to Momenems to get something to eat.” Or words which take on their own meaning like “Laisleb” which is a short form of “Well I will be”; or adding syllable as in Mis-ris, for Mrs or Jewl-er-ry for jewelry.
In the Movie “I Remember Mama” Uncle Kris tells his sick and suffering young nephew that he needs a swear word to use when the pain comes but that he must not use one in English, since people will be offended, rather he teaches the boy a swear word in Swedish – whether actually a swear word or not the audience is left to wonder. Southerners are particularly adept at using “light” swear words, For instance, my mother-in-law’s swear word was “well foot.” When she was disappointed, up-set, or surprised, she said, “well foot.” Dang, dog gone, dern it, Goodness Gracious, Gracious Me, well I’ll be _____, dag nab it, this blamed thing, are all euphoniums used by Southerners for swear words – Northerners are generally more direct.
While I noticed a sizeable erosion in the Southern tongue during my 35 years in the North, primarily I suppose, as a result of the man on the six o’clock news, there is still a big difference. As I often told my friends at work, “Yawl talk at 45 and I listen at 33 1/3 – but now no one under 35 would even understand that term anymore. I only know that when I got south of the Ohio River my tongue relaxed.
I never made a conscious effort to lose my Southern accent, since in a company as large as GM being remembered, even for your accent, was a good thing. I remember once being sent to a large meeting at the GM Technical Center in Warren, MI where 22,000 people worked. I was to make a presentation to a group of executives. When I arrived back at the plant, my boss called me in the office chuckling. “Well,” he said, “you made an impression, the Assistant Comptroller called to complement “that guy” who made the presentation. When I asked him, what guy, he replied, “the one who talks like Catfish Hunter.”
I suppose it doesn’t matter whether our speech is Northern or Southern but I do wish it was a little more sprinkled with civility. That we were more careful about the use of our Creators name in vain, that we were a little more polite and kind to one another, that we were less quick to be blunt and hurtful in our comments.
The Apostle Paul admonished us to speak the truth in love, but my granny just said, “If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.” Let’s look for those “apples of gold in pitchers of silver.”
Have a blessed day, Bob