Zat
Yourn?
By
Conni Partridge
Aka
Adora Mitchell Bayles
My
thesis is what exposure to different languages, dialects, regional speech
patterns and peer English language correction on the school playground have
done to shape my life and develop my attitudes and communication skills. It all
began with a puzzling conversation I had with a young student in the elementary
school I attended as a child.
“Zat
yourn?”
I
turned to look into the handsome face of a little Cracker boy, the first I’d
ever encountered. His blue eyes twinkled with fresh, little boy interest.
“What?”
I said. I watched as he placed a small hand on my brand new bicycle I’d
received for my ninth birthday.
“Zat
yourn?” he repeated. His little boy sweat wafted to me as I said again, “What?”
“ZAT YOURN?” he screamed.
This
was my forst encounter with the Florida Cracker dialect.
My
parents both spoke educated English and our school encouraged the use of
correct English on the playground. Peers corrected peers. Learned students
corrected dialect students and often teased them.
Cracker
students often rebelled at correction, probably because of their parents’
fierce rejection of ‘em ‘ere rich people’s way of talkin’. Who knows where their language originated?
Old whip-cracking cattle men came from wiry Spanish stock and clung to the old
sounds their ancestors made, corrupting what remnants they could remember of
words handed down through generations of just surviving on the land. Chicken
Perlau (Chicken and rice), Joner (a bad omen) He do? (does he?) Mixed with
slave words, old English and Conquistator Spanish, the Cracker dialect has
become almost a language all its own. Plumb up yonder (all the way to the end),
Pickininny (piqueña, Micosukee child) Marshtackie (Spanish pony, descendants of
the Conquistadors’ horses.
Sometimes
I picked up on this “language” and even learned some of the Pennsylvania Dutch
words that snowbirds brought in winter to our Central Florida tourist town. I
invited a Pennsylvania girl into my home. “I dare’snt,” she declined (I don’t
dare). My father laughed and mocked her. When I learned to make my voice go up
in a question, I was surprised to hear my Pennsylvania classmates go down to a
period when asking the same question! Learning early on that there was a
difference in regional speech, I began to imitate dialects and even tried to
speak like an Englishwoman I’d seen in a movie.
Growing
up in a small southern town where black people were expected to live on the
other side of the tracks, I learned, early on., their language was different.
The white collective opinion was that “colored people” were not smart enough to
speak correct English.
As
a child, I learned a deep respect for a people whom my parents had tried to
teach me were inferior. With my own ears, I picked up the sweet sounds of a
black woman ordering meat in perfect English. At age eight, I found myself
tucking away a bit of knowledge: Not all
black people are inferior.
A
genealogy assignment required me to ask my mother about my ancestors. She told
me very little but, among others, she told me briefly of my Spanish heritage.
This
knowledge sparked my interest in the Spanish language course offered at my
school. Most students took the course because it was supposed to be an easy
credit. One of my classmates, Raymond, whose mother was from Cuba, argued
constantly with the teacher.
As
for me, Spanish was a language to be learned thoroughly and used. Consequently,
I observed the arguments between Raymond and Mr. Mullen with keen interest.
With
his Alabama guppy mouth way of speaking, Mr. Mullen spoke the worst Spanish I
have ever heard. Alabamans talk with their lower jaw bumping their upper jaw
and they look like guppies. With Raymond’s years as a child growing up in the
back booth of a Cuban restaurant, his mother a waitress, his uncle a chef, and
his siblings’ bilingual interactions, he initiated some hilarious arguments
between himself and the drawling professor.
My
love for languages began to flourish in that class with students’ various
degrees of interest, a girl extracting earwax with a pencil eraser, a boy
pitching tiny bits of bubble gum into girls’ hair, classmates acting silly, the
Florida heat, hormones raging, Raymond waving his arms and shouting Cuban
proverbs. None of these things disturbed my learning curve when it came to
pursuing the new language. And I absorbed a little Cubanese in the process.
I
was a poor student in high school. Kids and teachers alike yelled at me for
asking silly quesrions and mis-pronouncing words, such as po-littics. One day, I had to speak in class. I used the word,
“satisfactory.” My classmates chorused loudly, “Adora! Where did you learn that
great big word?”
I
went home crying and told my mother. She hated it when the kids made fun of me.
It was almost summer. Mama said, “You will look up two words every day, all
summer long. And you will read one article a day in the National Geographic.”
That
discipline opened a whole new world of language for me! I neer stopped at two
of Webster’s definitions. My
curiosity took the reins and drove me with my new appetites for definitions of
hundreds of words and for new means of expression.
I
learned, above all, that happiness is an informed brain and a higher means of
communication than the mundane blather and constricted mentality of a small
town.
Yes,
I had learned to strive for excellence!
I
went on to graduate high school, excelling in essay writing and working hard to
learn as much Spanish as I could.
When
I was in college fifty years ago, I had already had two years of Spanish and
had learned to speak English with a very convincing Spanish accent. I met a
handsome student who was taking courses at Florida Southern college in Lakeland
to supplement his master’s degree at John’s Hopkins. What a catch he would have
been, if he’d had a sense of humor! Flirting, we exchanged names. I was Adora
(roll that r) from “Sous Amettica.” Every time we met in the commissary we
would sit together and flirt. This poor guy was absolutely charmed by my long
brown hair, flashing dark eyes and Latina persona.
I
told my friends about the mischievous game and was sitting with them when he
entered the commissary one day. He came to speak and I talked sweetly in my
Spanish accent. My friends shouted with laughter.
When
I saw his puzzled expression, I explained, in my most southern of drawl, that I
was an American. He walked away and never spoke to me again.
This
prank led to other, funnier trick playing, which I developed into a science,
all because my developing language expansion was opening broader new horizons.
Not only did I play pranks, I began to play on words with people who used big
words out of context, and would challenge them.
“Don’t
eat no food what done fell on the floor, you’ll get hysterphobia,” a Tennessean
said to me.
Hyster, the root for
womb, gave me hilarious ammunition. “You mean I’ll be scared to get back inside
my mother’s belly if I eat off the floor?” Their angry reaction was always
titillating.
Many
Tennesseans are unable to pronounce a diphthong,sounding
two different vowels side-by-side. Ruin is run. lesbian is lesban. Past tense
for ruin is runt. (You mean the least one of the litter?)
I
married an Appalachian. I should have known better. His dialect was the most
bizarre mixture of misused words and fractured grammar I had ever heard. He did
not speak English. He spoke Tennessee. His word for illegitimate was
illiterate, deliberately was delli brately, wedlock was whetlock, chichés were
all mixed up and meaningless and rich people were “Higher than thou art. His
favorite slogan was, “Them that has, gits.”
By
this time I had been exposed to new dialects, dabbled in Russian and French,
and tried tro practice my Spanish with whomever I could corner. During a long
marriage, my husband enriched my repertoire of the widely-used Appalachian
dialect until I had mastered this colorful lingo.
When
I began to write my first historical non-fiction, “Wagons South!,” which is
based on the truth about my own family, I researched old census records. There,
to my enormous delight, I found that mysterious Spaniard, Cora Mitchell!
Cora
came to life under my excited hand and I conjured a hi8gh-spirited female
character who outshone my intended protagonist—my own mother. Cora was my great
grandmother. I never knew her. According to the census, she was born in New
Orleans to parents who had immigrated from Spain. I patterned her speech after
what I considered a first generation American who grew up without schooling on
the wharves of New Orleans, learning what she could from the natives and from
her Spanish parents. I have heard rhis kind of street English in second and
third generation Italians who lived in thickly-populated Italian immigrant
neighborhoods and had never really become Americanized.
Armed
with my collection of regional attitudes and nuances of speech, plus thick and
thin dialects, I played with my characters until I had written a rollicking
saga of three families with one goal—to settle in Florida for a new life. Each
character has his own speech patterns and verbal color.
I
chose a nom deplume using my maiden name as a middle name to identify myself to
the many people who’ve known me as Adora Mitchell through the years. This
tri-name sets me apart, giving me uniqueness.
Also,
with this collection of dialects, hick talk, brogues, high school Spanish and
bits and pieces of foreign languages, I have enriched my own language enough to
fall into virtually any pattern of speech with ease.
.jpg)