shibboleths
May. 5th, 2020 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twoeleveni recently called a company located near lexington, kentucky. i was surprised that the woman answering the phone had a relatively neutral accent -- close to general rural midwestern -- and i wondered if i misremembered the regional dialect, or if she just wasn't from there.
but when i said something like, "when i hadn't heard anything for a week, i wondered if y'all were shut down", the bluegrass sprouted in her voice, and her word choice changed to match. because i'd proved i was one of them, or rather, one of all y'all.
(whether i count as a southerner depends on where the south begins, but that's somewhat incidental to my usage of "y'all". i learned the term from army brats growing up, and started using it even in professional contexts to specify the second person plural after a series of misunderstandings about who did what to whom.)
but when i said something like, "when i hadn't heard anything for a week, i wondered if y'all were shut down", the bluegrass sprouted in her voice, and her word choice changed to match. because i'd proved i was one of them, or rather, one of all y'all.
(whether i count as a southerner depends on where the south begins, but that's somewhat incidental to my usage of "y'all". i learned the term from army brats growing up, and started using it even in professional contexts to specify the second person plural after a series of misunderstandings about who did what to whom.)