When working on a construction site in Kentucky, Te’koa from Norfolk, Virginia, heard someone use the term si-gogglin to describe something that’s “crooked,” or “curvy.” Variants heard primarily in Appalachia...
Michael in Morgantown, Kentucky, is pondering his grandfather’s phrase He fotched a heave and catched a fall meaning someone “made a quick bodily movement and fell.” Fotched is a dialectal past tense of fetch. This is part of a...
In their article “My Mother, Whenever She passed Away, She Had Pneumonia: The History and Functions of whenever,” Michael Montgomery and John Kirk discuss the “punctual” whenever, a vestige of Scots-Irish usage heard in much...
In parts of the Southern United States, the leave-taking phrases come and go home with me, come go home with us, and come home with us don’t mean that the departing guest is literally inviting the host to come along. The host’s...
What we’re reading: Crystal Wilkinson, a member of the Affrilachian Poets, is author of The Birds of Opulence, a quiet, lyrical novel about relationships between family members, and between humans and nature, about things said and unsaid with...
Tennessee lawmakers have passed a resolution affirming that Appalachian English is a “fully legitimate dialect and most deserving of the respect afforded other dialects of American English.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript...