Why Don’t You Have the Same Local Accent as Everyone Else?

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Elijah in Fayetteville, West Virginia.

How’s my wordy friends today?

We’re delightful and delighted to have you here.

So let me tell you, I’m here in West Virginia, and I was born and raised in West Virginia.

But I often go to a job to do an estimate because I own a small painting company.

And people say, so where are you from?

And I say, I’m from West Virginia.

And they say, I don’t think so.

I say, I’m pretty sure.

They say, it’s because you have no accent.

I use some of the nomenclature, but not really.

I mean, y’all is just kind of convenient, but I don’t say it like y’all, you know?

And so I am looking for a word that means I am from here, but I don’t sound like I am.

All right.

I want to explore this a little bit.

First, what part of the state is Fayetteville in?

Fayetteville is about an hour south of Charleston.

It’s actually in the New River Gorge National Park.

All right.

So just on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains.

In the Appalachian Mountains, yeah.

In the Appalachian Mountains.

Okay.

So that’s important, I think.

And so you say that you don’t have an accent, and we’re going to put an asterisk on that and get to that in a minute.

But did you spend a lot of time away when you were growing up?

No, no.

I just grew up about two and a half hours north near the northern panhandle of West Virginia in a town that is full of accents.

But that’s next to Pennsylvania, isn’t it?

And Ohio?

It’s right next to Ohio, yes.

And did you act in theater productions?

No, no.

I was homeschooled all 12 years, but I still interacted with the community a lot and had friends that didn’t talk the way I did.

And so I’m from here.

I just don’t sound like it.

What do you think happened?

Yeah, I was going to ask you that, but I think you’ve already given us the answer.

I think the two things are that you lived in the panhandle and you were homeschooled.

And so we tend to speak like our peers more than we speak like our parents.

And schooling is one of the ways that we pick up the local dialect more than just about anything else in this country.

And it may be the reason that you don’t sound like your peers.

Also, your education would be different than theirs.

So you may have had a different kind of maybe perhaps even more book-oriented English classes than your classmates or your age-appropriate group.

But that panhandle thing is going to put you largely in a different isolate, as it’s called, than most of the rest of the state of West Virginia.

But that’s still not my question.

My question is, is there a word that says, I’m from here, but I don’t sound like it?

Stranger. Outsider. Somebody from away.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Maybe that’s what I’ll say.

Well, there’s a passage in the book, Talking Appalachian, Voice, Identity, and Community by Amy D. Clark.

It’s a very good book.

And she writes in the preface about growing up in the heart of Appalachian near eastern Kentucky, western North Carolina, and southern West Virginia.

And she says that while she grew up surrounded by the Appalachian Englishes, and she uses the plural there, she says she was never introduced to Appalachian literature in her high school English classes.

And she says she did not identify as Appalachian, and she did not understand that she spoke a regional dialect.

But she understood that the rules of standard American English, and she knew about code switching, that she needed to adjust her speech to sound more like your average American versus sounding more like a local.

And she could turn off that local dialect when she wanted to.

But she also says she was always at the risk of teasing from friends and family who believed that standard American English was for people who thought they were too good to be associated with their neck of the woods.

And so the question I have for you, do you encounter this kind of rejection or even subtle bias from people because you don’t sound like you’re from there?

No.

More of what I run into is I hear people say, you enunciate really well.

I just run into that a lot, which I think is part of what caused people to say, you don’t sound like you’re from around here.

You’re too clear.

Do you feel like your homeschooling perhaps was more rigorous than what other people went through in the public schools?

In my area, yeah.

Yeah.

My homeschooling grade was a grade or two ahead of the public school that I was in or that was around.

Yeah, and I’m wondering what the folks who homeschooled you sounded like.

Were they West Virginians as well?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it was my mother and other homeschoolers around me.

They sound like they’re from the area.

I just don’t sound like I’m from the area.

It might be that your mother was very good at it, and you had one-on-one attention, which is hard to get in a public school.

Which would make sense.

And having that kind of direct attention when you’re doing pronunciation exercises and English oral reading and speaking exercises, that can make a lot of difference.

But you’re seeking a word for this, and I don’t know that we’re going to have one for you.

Okay, okay, that’s fine.

I’ll just continue to say, I am from here, but I don’t sound like it.

Would you like the job?

I wanted to address the point that regional accents and regional dialects do change, but you actually do have an accent.

I hear it.

And any linguist who listens to you for more than 30 seconds will hear it.

And it’s not necessarily in the words that you use.

It’s in the vowels.

And West Virginia is particularly known for more than 200 years.

West Virginia and its dialect features have been known and studied.

It was interesting that you brought up you all because West Virginia has traditionally been a yuns, second-person plural state.

Do you hear people say yuns there?

No, I’ve never.

Now, when you talk about vowels, I think about warsh.

I hear people talking about, you know, warsh and things.

That’s not what I say.

It’s wash.

Yeah.

Most of what happens that makes West Virginia stand out is in its vowels.

Vowels.

Okay.

A great resource is the West Virginia Dialect Project at West Virginia University in Morgantown, led by linguist Kirk Hazen.

You can find that at dialects.wvu.edu.

That’s dialects.wvu.edu.

Okay.

Well, guys, I appreciate your time.

We didn’t find a word, but I had a fun time.

So thanks for talking with me.

Well, it’s possible.

We have a lot of creative listeners that they’ll all come up with a word for you, and we’ll share that out.

A word for somebody who doesn’t sound like they’re from where they’re actually from.

Exactly.

Perfect.

Thanks, guys.

Good talking with you, Elijah.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Let’s talk about language.

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