For more than 20 years now, I’ve faced an unusual occupational hazard almost every time I’ve met someone new. When I’m being introduced, there’s usually a moment when the person introducing says, “Dave is an English teacher.” The reply is almost invariably some variation on “I guess I’ll have to watch what I say.” That’s usually followed by good-humored laughter on everyone’s part.
What people mean by “watching” what they “say” — which cracks me up — is that they think I’m judging their grammar and syntax. No, I’m not. I’m actually delighting in it — like when people “watch” what they “say,” as if the words flowing from their mouths are visible. It “sounds” incorrect, but it’s not at all since the word “watch” also has the meaning of “pay close attention to,” in addition to its meaning of “observe with the eye.” Then there’s “sounds correct,” when it’s actually an entirely different mental faculty at work. The way we say things is an entirely and endlessly fascinating subject.
Another thing that new friends mean when they “watch what they say” has to do with pronunciation of words. That makes me laugh, too, but for another reason. Southerners pronounce words differently than other English speakers, and often we cannot even “hear” the difference.
The one word that we “mispronounce” most prominently down here — and we cannot “hear” it — is “pen.” To us, “pen” is pronounced exactly like “pin.” In other regions, those two words have two different pronunciations. When I use this example in person and pronounce “pen” as it is pronounced everywhere else, a majority of Southerners say, “But it sounds the same.” The difference is so slight to the Southern ear that we cannot hear it, but it’s glaringly obvious to, say, a Northern ear.
Honestly, I never knew the difference until I went off to college. One of the more fascinating classes I ever took was “Voice and Diction,” which really opened my eyes to how I spoke English. For a while there, I was truly self-conscious about pronouncing words “correctly.” That is, until I realized that “correctly” to the American ear means “Midwestern.” We generally “hear” the Midwestern accent as being the most “correct.” I quit worrying about it then.
Down here in the South, we love our dialect to the point of exaggeration, but we’re also more than just a little bit self-conscious about it. There’s no reason to be. Our dialect is full of endless delights, both in what we say and how we say it. It’s often the pronunciation that’s the most prominent feature, but we do structure our sentences in truly original ways.
The other day, I used one of my favorite phrases in conversation and realized later how much I naturally mispronounced the words that I ordered in some non-standard syntax. The phrase? “That dog is not going to hunt.” To our cousins outside of the South, it means loosely “that idea is not going to work.” To those in the South who did a double-take on reading that phrase, there’s a reason.
There’s a big difference between what I write and what I say. When I wrote it down, I rendered it in fairly standard English. When I say “That dog is not going to hunt,” however, it seems like an almost entirely different phrase — “At dawg ain’t gone hunt.” That is exactly how I would say it if I were among friends and family, just talking.
But I’m supposed to be an English teacher. Well, yeah, and I speak a different English when I’m teaching than when I’m at home. We all do. All of us possess different “Englishes” — the one we speak informally to family and friends and the one we speak or write formally to people we don’t know (and are usually trying to impress). It’s completely unconscious, and we switch back and forth between them almost effortlessly. It’s also truly a testament to the resilience and adaptability of the human mind.
Writing this column for the last (oh, my goodness, has it been that long?) 12 years has taught me a thing or two about writing. My earliest columns sound much more “correct” than the ones I write now. At some point — with trial and error, with practice — the column started sounding more like I talk. One of the nicest compliments I’ve ever got was from an older friend: “Reading your column is like listening to you talk.” At that point, I knew I’d accomplished something (presuming, of course, she likes listening to me talk.).
Then, there is the famous “Lost Column.” The editors at The Gadsden Times have only ever turned down for publication one column I wrote. The reason? It didn’t “sound” like me. Why was that? It was the most formal thing I’d ever submitted. It sounded more like the “English” I teach than the “English” I speak.
David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. The opinions reflected are his own.