More dialect data

(borrowed from WJ, thanks buddy)

The Association of Southern Schools has decided to seek a grant designatingsouthern slang, or Y'allbonics, as a language to be taught in all southern schools.

The following are excerpts from the Y'allbonics/English dictionary.

1) HEIDI - (noun) - Greeting.
2) HIRE YEW - Complete sentence. Remainder of greeting. Usage: "Heidi,Hire yew?"
3) BARD - (verb) - Past tense of the infinitive "to borrow". Usage: "Mybrother bard my pickup truck."
4) JAWJUH - (noun) - The State north of Florida. Capitol is Lanna. Usage: "My brother from Jawjuh bard my pickup truck and took it to Lanna."
5) BAMMER - (noun) - The State west of Jawjuh. Capitol is Berminhayam. Usage: "A tornader jes went through Bammer an' left $20,000,00 in improvements."
6) MUNTS - (noun) - A calendar division. Usage: "My brother from Jawjuhbard my pickup truck, and I ain't herd from him in munts."
7) THANK - (verb) - Cognitive process. Usage: "Ah thank ah'll have abare."
8) BARE - (noun) - An alcoholic beverage made of barley, hops, andyeast. Usage: "Ah thank ah'll have a nutter bare."
9) IGNERT - (adjective) - Not smart. See "Arkansas native." Usage:" Them bammer boys sure are ignert!"
10) RANCH - (noun) - A tool used for tight'nin' bolts. Usage: "I thank I left my ranch in the back of that pickup truck my brother from Jawjuhbard a few munts ago."
11) ALL - (noun) - A petroleum-based lubricant. Usage: "I sure hope my brother from Jawjuh puts all in my pickup truck."
12) FAR - (noun) - A conflagration. Usage: "If my brother from Jawjuh don't change the all in my pickup truck, that thang's gonna catch far."
13) TAR - (noun) - A rubber wheel. Usage: "Gee, I hope that brother of mine from Jawjuh don't git a flat tar in my pickup truck."
14) TIRE - (noun) - A tall monument. Usage: "Lord willin' and the creek don't rise, I sure do hope to see that Eiffel Tire in Paris sometime."
15) RETARD - (verb) - To stop working.. Usage: "My grampaw retard at age 65."
16) FAT - (noun and verb) - A battle or combat; to engage in battle or combat. Usage: "You younguns keep fat'n, n' ah'm gonna whup yuh."
17) RATS - (noun) - Entitled power or privilege. Usage: "We Southerners are willin' to fat for are rats."
18) CHEER - (adverb) - In this place. Usage: "Jest set that bare rat cheer."
19) FARN - (adjective) - Not domestic. Usage: "I cuddin't unnerstand awurd he sed . . . must be from some farn country."
20) DID - (adjective) - Not alive. Usage: "He's did, Jim."
21) ARE - (noun) - A colorless, odorless gas containing oxygen. Usage: "He cain't breathe....give 'im some are!"
22) BOB WAR - (noun) - A sharp, twisted cable. Usage: "Boy, stay away from that there bob war fence."
23) JEW HERE - (pronoun and verb) - Contraction. Usage: "Jew here that my brother from Jawjuh got a job with that bob war fence cump'ny?"
24) HAZE - (pronoun and verb) - A contraction. Usage: "Is Bubba smart?""Nah....haze ignert. He ain't thanked but a minnit'n 'is laf."
25) SEED - (verb) - Past tense of "to see." Usage: "I ain't never seed Noo Yawk City."
26) VIEW - (verb and pronoun) - contraction. Usage: "I ain't never seed Noo Yawk City.....view?"
27) GUBMINT - (noun) - A bureaucratic institution. Usage: "Them gubmint boys shore is ignert."

TGIF

At least it's Friday. Heading out to another dance competition. Please turn your mind's energy toward a particular outcome of fortuitous happenstance for my eldest female offspring (aka please wish my daughter luck).

life is a bowl full of ...

Why does life seem so dang hard sometimes? You try and try to be positive but life reaches it's bony skeletal hand through the dark basement door and drags you down. How is it that you can want something so much that the very act of wanting keeps you from having it?

When time just isn't on your side, when your chin keeps falling down, when you try to knock on wood but find plastic instead, when you mistakenly throw sugar over your shoulder, when you try to walk around the ladder but run smack dab into the wall...

Can you force yourself to be positive by ignoring negative feelings, feelings of angst, frustration, sadness? Or does the act of ignoring those feelings allow them to fester and grow like a cancer? Can you convince yourself that "someday" will come, even when someday is shrouded in a cloud, intangible, fuzzy, blurred?

Language snafus - more about the moonshine incident

The following is a further fleshing out of the prior post, the moonshine language snafu. My friend, WJ emailed it to me and I just had to blog it.

Here you go.

Hi Lisa. I read your blog and noticed the short blurb about the language and dialect snafu's that happen. You even wrote something about the moonshine story I explained once . Below is the write-up of the actual event.

A couple of weeks back, B.S. and W.J. were discussing the comet Malechek (sp)that was in view at the time..... and other astrophysics talk. WJ mentioned a calendar from Celestial Products which shows all the phases of the moon during the year. It was called a" moonshine" calendar.

Here is the conversation between B.S. and W.J.:

B. S.: "I saw Debbie over the weekend and asked if she is interested in a moonshiner calendar. She said no....it wouldn't go over too well, what with all the bible study and all.

W.J.: [Sitting in chair, shaking and scratching head, thinking to self-- "jeez... Debbie can't hang her calendar up because it offends the religious beliefs of her co-workers.....what the DEVIL do they think; that the moon is all about witches and werewolves and evil urges at night???? Good Grief.....it's just the MOON!!!! Well..maybe Debbie could still hang it up at home or give it to someone she likes or something."]

W.J.: "So... did Debbie say she didn't like it herself or what"?

B.S.: "what?"

W.J.: "Did she not want the moonshine calendar?"

B.S.: "She got a moonshiner calendar?"

W.J.: "Well sort of....I sent her one."

B.S.: "You did??? You sent her one?"

W.J.: "Yeah, I thought they were really cool and thought she would like it but I can't believe it would bother anyone to see it. Bill....it's not called 'moonshiner'. It's just called 'moonshine'."

B.S.: >long pause<..."I don't think Debbie would have a problem...but the locals wouldn't think much of the moonshine thing." W.J.: "How can they have a problem with the moon shining.....oh, wait.....you mean.....moonshine?????

B.S.: "yeah Moonshine."

W.J.: "OOOHHHHHH! like the liquor and the still and the white lightening thing"!

B.S.: "yeah isn't' that what....."

W.J.: "no, no, no Bill. It's just called that because it refers to the moon light during phases of the moon --in a lunar cycle. It's got NOTHING to do with the drink. Remember, we were talking about Moonshine?....well....I don't mean moonshine.......I mean moonshine.....like the actual moon and phases and it .....shines.....you know???.

B.S.: "Oh. I completely misunderstood. I was picturing a calendar with neat pictures of old stills and old backwoods moonshiners tending them or something".

W.J.: "I can see why that wouldn't go over real well on the front lobby wall of the bible study school. But that WOULD be a really cool calendar too. They should call it 'moonshine' and I would buy one of those too, and hang it next to the other 'moonshine' calendar.

W.J.: [This was a very eye-opening discussion for both of us.]

thanks w.j. for your contribution

ampersand

I have three events and topics to cover. The first is how dialect and prounciation of words in the so-called English language can twist up a conversation; you know, who's on first, what's on second. Secondly, I thought I would write briefly about this past weekend when I attended the Greater Cincinnati Grotto museum rotunda climb. Third, is my recollection of how my coworker startled me this morning.

LANGUAGE

I have some clients who live in another Kentucky county far away. They have a series of TOWERS on their land, which are the subject of a legal dispute. I went to visit them a few years ago. It was a hot summer day and we sat on their porch, drinking lemonade and swatting away gnats. Several of the pesky bugs ended up falling to their death in my lemonade and I patiently fished them out, one by one. I wish I had better known my bug drinkin' fella back then.

Anyway, one of my clients asked me "what are ye gonna dooo about them there TARS?" Hmmm, I wondered. What could they be talking about? "TARS"? As I asked that, it occurred to me that they were probably talking about the pile of TIRES which lay in their front yard about 40 feet ahead of us (this is rural Kentucky we're talking about). "Well", I said, "you should probably clean them up". I was thinking about the environmental, safety and fire concerns related to tires. "Clean them up?!" my clients exclaimed. "How we gonna do that?" "I don't know", I said. "Aren't you worried about mosquitos breeding in them, water collecting, fire?" "Are you crazy?", one of the bolder clients asked, swatting away a particularly troublesome gnat. "Skeeters hanging out in TARS, water collectin? I just don't understand", she continued. I can understand how the TARS could cause FAR, I just don't understand the skeeters and water thang."

This was getting tedious, I thought. Somehow we weren't connecting. "No", I said. "They don't cause fire but they could catch on fire. The mosquitos lay eggs in the water that collects inside them. Once a pile of the tires catch on fire, they are hard to put out".

These people aren't stupid, they just have a very heavy dialect. One of the savvy ones immediately figured it out, once I used my northeastern (hah) more or less correct pronunciation of tires. "You mean TARS", he said, "them things right THAR (gesturing toward discarded rubber wheel covers) we are talking about the lectric TARS, them tall things right THAR" (gesturing toward a string of really tall electric TOWERS). When it all became clear, we went on to bigger and better misunderstandings.

I was telling this story at a party in order to demonstrate how easy it is to miscommunicate. A friend (thanks NJ) told a story of how her brilliant husband (WJ) and a Kentucky rural resident miscommunicated regarding the lunar unit versus an intoxicating beverage. Apparently, the Kentuckian was talking of MOOOONSHINE and the brilliant husband was talking about the moon's illumination. The two went on for quite some time before it occurred to them that they were discussing two very different topics. Not that too much MOONSHINE can't make you halucinate that you see the MOON SHINE or that you may want to drop your pants and MOON someone.

TOUCHING THE ROTUNDA

Are those arachnoids overhead

or the tiny web-dried and sucked-withered carcases of unfortunate insects?

Butterflies in my belly as I tilt my head back.

The spiders are framed against a lit tiered ceiling;

spring colors of melon, coral and orange.

I hear the rope whap-whapping against the tiled floor.

Close up the life-line appears substantial and strong

but scan it with your eyes upward and it nearly disappears from view.
"Oh, this rope". I touch it, caress it, thank it.

"Take care of me Rope", I utter, as I click my cams and ascender into place.
Shall I be the spider or the spider-food?

Shall I be a hero or a side-kick?

When it comes to vertical practice, I am less than a side-kick.

I am a moocher, a mollycoddle.

"Oh my, that’s high", I uttered as I walked into the expansive Cincinnati Museum rotunda. I had decided to attend the Greater Cincinnati Grotto annual rotunda climb after hearing about it for years.

I had been practicing change overs in my living room and felt pretty comfortable with them at 4 feet off the ground. I had fine tuned my technique and 90% of the gear switches were accomplished smoothly and without difficulty.

I drove to Cincinnati a few days before the rotunda climb and practiced at the Eden Park wall. 100% of the changeovers were accomlished easily and cleanly; except that I wacked myself in the mouth with my rack.

Once at the museum, I climbed the ropes about a dozen times, each time getting a little higher. I didn't climb all the way and touch the ceiling until it was about time to leave. A friend (M. Killerwhale) told me that in prior years, he too, hesitated to climb all the way and touch the ceiling until the very last time. I noticed that another friend (T. Otter) who is more vertically experienced than I, worked her way up to a full celing climb. Doing a change over isn't different at 50 feet than 100 feet so you might as well do it at the top. However, I have so much vertical fear that I sometimes have trouble breathing, I panic, my heart rate goes haywire. Thanks to the kindness, calmness, skill, reassuring words and, frankly, distraction of a pseudoangel (J. Bandicoot), I did, in fact, climb to the ceiling. Some of the other climber/exhibitors were B. Dogs, R. Barbet, G. Marukopta, B. Solenodon, D. Woodrat, M. Damagazelle, M. Huemal, B. Arachnoid. (If your animal name isn't on here, is a combination of my memory and lack of sticktuitiveness). My brain is like a pinball machine today (tax season) so forgive me for the misfiring.

MY COWORKER

The same coworker who told me the story of sideshow ponies (in an earlier post) nearly scared the pants off me yesterday. I was minding my own business and deep into brief reading when a sudden large flying flash of blue came at me. I screamed at the top of my voice, jumped up from my desk and began suffering from a significant adrenaline rush. It's a good thing I didn't have a gun or some other weapon in my desk. I would've been shooting knee-jerk rounds and rounds of ammo into the flying flash of blue.

Once my heart and respiration rate returned to normal, I found the blue flash was merely the coworker himself, running to tell me some exciting news. It seems that he was so excited, he ran into tell me about having achieved a landmark goal, wanting a hug or congratulating pat on the back. Hey, all I saw was a rapidly encroaching flash of blue. I didn't imagine it was the coworker. He hasn't moved that fast in 10 years.

And that's the truth, psthhhhhhbbsbbs