In fact, the linguists say that each region has its own speech patterns and that most of us allow our situations to govern our speech. Just because I don ’t use the same words as my grandmothers doesn ’t mean that I don ’t have an Appalachian accent. In addition, we Appalachians use variants of our own speech patterns. We realize that the same immigrants who settled here settled land elsewhere, but the linguists tell us that our speech patterns will not be found in any other dialect to the extent that they are in Appalachia. Now, I don ’t want you to think we in Appalachia are a bunch of snobs. By the 1950s, highways and telephones were more prevalent throughout Appalachia, bringing the modern world another step closer to its rural inhabitants. Then in the 1940s, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was created and that brought tourists to the area. At the time, physical boundaries kept modernization out.

The Scots-Irish settled the entire region known as Appalachia (all of West Virginia and portions of Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia) in the mid-1700s. Linguists call it “Appalachian English ”. So, I did a little research and learned that the Appalachian region has its own language. And, yet, in Jamaica, everyone I met asked, “What part of the South are you from? ” Ain’t I the berries? I couldn ’t possibly have a hillbilly Appalachian accent. Plus, I ’m well read, and I ’ve authored several books. I studied French for three years, and I did some self-study of German and Greek. Unlike my mother-in-law, I say “they fought ”, not “they fit ”. “You mean, carrion? Kyarn is carrion? ” “Yeah, ” he said. I told him, “Grandmother used to say, ‘That stinks like kyarn.

In fact, I had no idea what she was talking about until recently when I mentioned the word to my husband. Unlike my maternal grandmother, I say “carrion ” rather than “kyarn ”. Have ye some co-orn-bray-ed ” whereas I might say, “You want some corn-bread? ” See? Two syllables on the cornbread “you ” rather than “ye ”. You see, unlike my paternal grandmother, I don ’t stretch the word “cornbread ” into four syllables. Imagine my surprise when I went to Jamaica a few years ago and learned that I do, indeed, have an accent.

Carrion pronunciation