[78-L] Pronunciations and odd label misspellings

[Jim Whipkey]

My apologies if this thread has  been long  discussed and  dismissed. I'm
several days behind on reading my digests. However,  Gregg's remarks about
re-learning  the Virginia way re-kindled my memories of  re-learning
English   in the tidewater fashion when I  moved to the Norfolk area in the
late 50s.
While it takes some  mental discipline, it didn't take long to  catch on to
the local idioms.   Basically,  every   word with   "OU" in it, which I
always had pronounced as  "out"  is  pronounced   by  local tidewater folks
as   "Oat", I.e.  they go oat and aboat the hoase. We had neighbors  who
were from the outerbanks islands,  Hatteras, Portsmouth, Ocracoke in NC
and  at the time there were no  bridges  to these islands and their
language  had   endured,  pretty much like the original Elizabethan English,
have been told   the   building of  the bridge to Hatteras as well as   the
homogozenation of our language with   sattelite  TV, etc, not to mention
travel and inter-marriage, has  caused   much of the  uniqueness of the
coastal  language pronunciations to  fade.  I see similar  back here in the
hills of WV where I returned  a few years ago, but   thankfully, many of the
old  phrases and pronunciations  have lingered on.  I'm glad to find  folks
who still "Warsh their  britches in the crick"
RE:  Tidewater VA     accents and  their   "Oat the hoase" preferences,
recall  the only other place I ever heard similar   pronunciations was
southeast Ontario,  how did that come about?
Jim Whipkey

> Subject: [78-L] Pronounciations and Odd Label Misspellings: Deep Ellum
> Blues

>
> > What did people get water out of:  tap, spout or spigot?
>
> I got mine from the faucet.
>
> Being a New Englander, I had to re-learn many words the Virginia way.
> Staunton is STAN-ton here.  Buchanan is BUCK-an-on, and Buena Vista . . .
> well, I'm not even sure how to write that out. There is also a really
> interesting Richmond-Tidewater accent, especially among the FFVs, that
> pronounces words like house something like: HOOS.
>

>
> Gregg
>
>
>
>