One of the things that’s good when I go to the Kentucky Appalachian Mountains for a story or when I stay in a rural area is that I can let my characters talk country. That’s pretty easy for me since I talk country. Many of the things you might have heard in the hills of Eastern Kentucky back some years ago, I grew up hearing and saying. So no wonder I can hear my characters talking.
Somebody sent me some examples of southern country talk a few years ago. I stumbled across it tonight and nodded my head on many of the expressions. Of course, some of the mountain lingo is a bit different that I’ve been able to use in my stories. Some of it is a little more poetic too like the edge of dark for evening time. Or getting a soon start for being out and going early. Others can be amusing. One I remember reading but didn’t use in my stories is that someone said a certain man was so slow it didn’t hurt him to fall out of a tree.
But here are a few expressions that are right here at home in my own dialogue.
“I reckon” is a handy way of saying quite a few things like I suppose, I think, I imagine, I guess. I reckon it works fine when you’re sharing what you are thinking with a neighbor or maybe agreeing with what he might be telling you by saying “I reckon so.”
“If I had my druthers” is a way of saying if things would just go the way I think they should everything would be better. For example, I’d druther be reading a book than chopping out the garden any old day.
And have you ever known anyone who was “madder than a wet hen?” You didn’t have to tell country folk that you’d best step away from somebody like that. And maybe stay away from that hen that got doused in a sudden rainstorm.
“It don’t amount to a hill of beans.” Beans are pretty common out in the country. We grow them in our gardens and the mountain folk strung them up on strings to dry for shuck beans. So a hill of beans never seemed worth much and if something didn’t amount to a hill of beans, it wasn’t worth thinking or worrying about. Of course, sometimes a person might be said to not be worth a hill of beans too.
“Till the cows come home.” If you’re doing a task that is going to keep you working until the cows come home, you know you’re in for a long day’s work. Cows don’t get in a hurry to come home unless they know somebody is chopping up some corn or pulling out a bale of hay to feed them.
Then there’s “over yonder.” I’m not sure a true southerner can give directions without telling you something is over yonder somewhere. Over yonder so and so lives. Over yonder you can find the blackberry patch. And if you say something is “way over yonder” then you can reckon on it being a good ways to get there.
I’m sure I used some of these in my new book, The Song of Sourwood Mountain. I like it when I’m “fixin’ to” get my characters talking in my stories because that means I can hear their downhome voices in my head. I might even shake that head when they get in trouble in my stories and let somebody tell them “bless your heart.” Can’t get much more southern than that.
What country expressions make you smile?
