Coming home to my “hillbilly” dialect
Explanations and reflections from a former Smoky Mountain local
Over the years, I’ve brought many friends back to the county where I grew up. These people came from a variety of backgrounds — different regions, countries, native languages, ethnicities— but one consistent thread between the experiences has been their surprise at the local dialect.
See, I’m originally from a region of the United States known as the Great Smoky Mountains. It comprises the highlands of southern Appalachia, split between western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. The mountains are, in a word: beautiful, a nature lover's wonderland. Millions of people flock to witness the fall foliage and explore the most visited national park in the United States. The region’s largest city, Asheville, has a thriving art and music scene, embraces diversity, and boasts a lovely, walkable downtown.
And while those traits may seem positive to many people, for a long time, I was embarrassed to say I came from the Smokies. For most of my life, I really didn’t want to associate with the identity. I even made the subconscious decision as a teenager to adopt the manner of speech that I heard in movies and TV shows. This meant that by the time I was an adult living elsewhere, my origins were not immediately apparent to those who met me, and I liked it that way.
It was only during this past year that my thinking began to change. Through a series of events, my partner and I ended up spending three months in my hometown after the global pandemic struck. It was the most time I had spent in the Smokies since I turned eighteen, and it was a different me who returned to my hometown. I was reintroduced to the people with whom I grew up, as well as their accent.
The Smoky Mountain Dialect
“Accent” may, in fact, not be the right word to convey the number of differences between standard American English and Smoky Mountain English. If you listen to a video of native speakers or visit western North Carolina, you’ll realize that the dialect is even distinct from other Southern dialects of American English. (I’d recommend checking out the link above for examples.)
The Smoky Mountain dialect, or “mountain talk,” is often characterized as having a sing-songy nature because the speaker’s pitch changes more frequently than in standard American English speech. Stressed words sound like bursts of music, specifically when it comes to vowel sounds. Many vowel sounds are elongated. For instance, the “a” in “water” is elongated and stressed, becoming “waa’-der.” The verb and noun “talk” becomes “taw’k,” and the word “right” is pronounced a bit like “rah’t.” Some vowels even are broken into two. The word “meal” becomes “me-yuhl” and “hill” = “hee-yuhl.” Other words that have distinct pronunciations in standard American English are merged together in the Smoky Mountain Dialect. Examples that come to mind are the words “fire,” “fair,” and “far.” In my hometown, these three words are all pronounced “far.”
The most interesting and unique aspect of the dialect to me is the slang. As a matter of fact, there are so many non-standard words in the dialect that my friends from out-of-town struggled to understand strangers. Some of the slang was cultivated locally and is completely unique to the region, while other slang was imported by Scots-Irish colonists. For instance, “to reckon,” which means to suppose or think, is a verb both understood in the Smoky Mountains and the British Isles. Meanwhile, “you’ns” (pronounced like “yunz,” similar to “y’all”) isn’t even used in the rest of North Carolina. I thought of a few sample sentences to further demonstrate Smoky Mountain slang:
“It’s right airish.” = “It’s chilly.”
“I’m fixin’ to fetch her.” = “I’m about to go pick her up.”
“Totin’ a poke.” = “Carrying a bag.”
“They’s up in that cove over yonder.” = “They [live] in that valley over there.”
As a child, I often heard these words and assumed that they were used by other American English speakers. Now that I’m an adult living in Southern California, I’ve realized that the speech I grew up around was unique. And that I’m not ashamed of it.
How Others See Us, and How I See Us
That change in thinking only came to me recently, though. For most of my life, I was aware of and affected by how the outside world perceived the Smokies, which compounded my own feelings of alienation.
If you’re from the United States, you likely know that my home region is stereotyped as backward and uneducated. People refer to us collectively using the term “hillbillies,” which is, of course, offensive. Our accents have a long history of being used as comedy devices, sometimes even by other Appalachian people. The only representations of the Smokies that I’ve seen in the media are Cold Mountain (which was mostly filmed in Romania despite the real location being in my home county) and Deliverance, the latter of which was not flattering, to say the least. These perceptions naturally influenced my adolescent thinking about my home.
I’ll never unconditionally love the Smokies, but I’ve realized that I no longer hate my roots. Even amidst the political polarization and tensions of 2020, I did witness the humanity and community that I’d overlooked as a child. In a large part, this was due to my partner, who was seeing and hearing my home with fresh eyes and ears. As a Japanese national, he was unaware of the American cultural baggage, as well as my own.
“I like the dialect,” he said one evening while swinging on my parent’s front porch. “It’s musical. It’s sweet, and warm, too.”
“Really?” I blurted out as a response.
It was the first time I had heard anyone from the outside compliment us. Suddenly, I found myself revisiting old memories and impressions, thinking of the voices I’d heard throughout my life. He didn’t know it, but he had gifted me a new lens with which to perceive the Smokies. Because of him, when I now hear the sounds of my hometown, it actually puts a smile on my lips.
