Chelsea in Plano, Texas, remembers her mother using an interjection that sounded like sigh after a repeated question, meaning roughly “Did you hear me?” Her mother’s family was from the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, area, and the usage may be related to dialectal s’I, a reduced form of says I or said I. A 1930 Central Kentucky note in the Dictionary of American Regional English gives a similar use: “sigh, Tom, you better not do that,” carrying the force of “I said.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““S’I” Sounds Like “Sigh” and Is a Prompt Meaning “Did You Hear Me?””
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Chelsea and I’m calling from Plano, Texas.
Hi, Chelsea. Welcome to the program.
Hi, Chelsea.
I have a question about a word that I grew up hearing my mom use, and it’s the word sigh.
And she used it a little bit differently than you might expect the word sigh to be used.
She would use it as like a question. Say if she was asking me a question and I was zoning out or not listening to her, as teenagers are apt to do, she would go, you know, she would repeat her question and go sigh as if to ask me to answer the question.
Or as in, did you hear me, sigh, that type of wording.
And, you know, my dad and I always kind of thought it was kind of odd, and we had asked her about it, and she actually didn’t really know where she got it from.
Her family was from the Tuscaloosa, Alabama area, and we kind of conjectured that maybe it came from say, but we never really had any luck tracking it down.
So I was wondering if maybe you could help me find the etymological root of it.
Really interesting.
So she says something, and in order to check that you were listening or to prompt your response, then she says sigh after it.
Yes.
And she doesn’t have any recollection of anyone else in her family using it?
No, I mean, she kind of guessed maybe a great-grandmother or something that she had heard it from that she wasn’t entirely sure.
She didn’t grow up around the family.
They had moved to Texas when she was quite young.
And so after we kind of brought it up, she kind of stopped using it, I think, out of embarrassment of not being able to explain where she got it from.
But I have very distinct memories of that phrase, and I’d always kind of wondered about it.
Can you give me another example of what that would sound like?
Would she be telling you a story and throw it in?
No, it would be more of like asking me a question.
So did you water the dogs?
And I would, you know, not be paying attention.
And she’d go, sigh.
Chelsea, sigh.
Like, tell me, did you water the dogs?
Oh, really?
Really?
Because to me what it sounds like is a contraction of said I, which you see a lot in dialects.
Sigh.
Oh.
Especially if you’re telling a story.
You know, instead of saying I said to him, you say sigh.
You see that a lot in Mark Twain.
There’s a lot of, and he spells it S apostrophe capital I, sigh, like says I.
Oh, very interesting.
But it’s usually when you’re reporting what you said at a previous time, right?
Right.
You’re relaying a conversation that you’ve already had.
Right.
Yeah.
That’s interesting.
So she would say it for more emphasis, like are you listening?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Don’t touch that apple pie, sigh, or something.
Interesting.
Did you hear what I said?
Sigh.
Say sigh.
That’s what I’m thinking.
I’d be interested to know if any of our other listeners have had that experience.
I would, too.
Particularly our listeners in the South.
We’ve got listeners all through the southern United States or people who are from there and now live elsewhere.
Does anyone in your family use sigh in this way as a way to emphasize something they’ve just said or as a way of kind of asking you a question about something they’ve just said, drawing attention to the need for a response from you?
Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.
Chelsea, we’re going to have to throw this out to the masses, to the mob, and see what they come up with.
All right. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Thanks, Chelsea. Bye-bye.
Thanks a lot, Chelsea. Bye-bye.
All right. Bye.
You know, this quote in the Dictionary of American Regional English from 1930 from Central Kentucky looks like it might be that kind of thing.
It goes, with the mountaineer, sigh does not merely mean say, but carries the meaning of I said.
Example, sigh, Tom, you better not do that.
Sigh, Tom, you better not do that.
Interesting.
It’s sort of emphasizing what Chelsea was saying.
That sounds like the right thing.
Yeah.
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