Native Tongue

Day 175 (Written Monday June 4) ~ While I was back home I got to spend a lot of time with a lot of different people in a lot of different settings. I noticed how many different expressions and words we use that are unique to the South. During one conversation I sat listening to some “old timers” speaking and thought to myself, “If I was from somewhere other than here, I don’t know if I’d have any idea what these guys are saying.” When we were in Panama a couple of years ago, my translator would occasionally say to me “Say a different word” which was his way of telling me that whatever I had just said, he didn’t know how to translate it into Spanish. Below are a few words and expressions I have heard my whole life that I’d like to translate for my not quite so hillbilly friends. I’ll start with a few easy ones that you’re probably familiar with: reckon, as in, “I reckon I’ll go fishing at the river in the morning.” Reckon means, “I guess so, probably, yes.” Yonder, as in, “We’re heading up yonder tomorrow afternoon.” Yonder refers to any place that you have previously been discussing. You can go down yonder, up yonder, over yonder, in yonder and even out yonder. Ya’ll, as in, “Ya’ll come back now, ya hear.” Ya’ll simply means “you all” and can be used to refer to any number of people. Coke, as in, “Ya’ll want a coke?” Coke refers to any carbonated beverage: Pepsi, Sprite, Coke, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, whatever. If you specifically want an actual Coke, you need to specify “Coca Cola.” Those were the easy ones, the ones you hear mentioned by Jeff Foxworthy and others all the time. Now I want to share with you a few really deep cuts that you won’t hear on My Big Redneck Vacation or any of the other homogenized hillbilly’s on CMT. Words like: geehaw, as in, “We tried out a new preacher, but he just didn’t geehaw with us.” Geehaw means “to fit in, connect with, get along with.” It comes from two words “Gee” and “Haw” which were the right and left commands for farmers plowing with a horse, ox or mule. An animal that wouldn’t gee or haw, wouldn’t work with the farmer. 40 forevers or a month of Sundays, as in, “ I haven’t seen ya’ll in 40 forevers” or “We haven’t been down there in a month of Sundays.” Both expressions are pretty simple. They just mean “a long time.” My two favorite, deep south, old school, country expressions are “drectly” and “trompsin” (no clue about how to spell those because I’ve only heard them spoken, never written). These two expressions were favorites of my Big Mamma. Drectly, I believe, is a contraction of the word “directly”. She used to say things like, “We’ll be down there drectly.” It was used to denote a time frame that could mean in a few minutes or a few hours. I loved hearing my grandmother say this word. On the other hand, I hated to hear her use “trompsin”, as in, “Don’t ya’ll come trompsin through here after I just finished mopping this floor.” Trompsin was to track up a just vacuumed, swept or mopped floor. It meant you were walking through there making a mess like you owned the place. When I hear someone use one of these expressions I know they are as country as collard greens, and not just a midwesterner playing hick (I'm talking to you Larry the Cable Guy).