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I
wrote this about seventeen years ago. I have had little time to study
Texas dialect in any kind of formal way since then. I hope to have time
to discuss on the Texas dialect page more about how it is changing. Email
me if you have comments or questions about this summary.
The
folk speech of a particular region differs from that of other regions
in grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary. (Brunvand 29) The folk speech
of Texas is remarkably varied. Craig Carver, the respected author of
American Regional Dialects, says that Texas is "a very complex
mosaic of linguistic and cultural regions." (Carver 210) Several
dialects of the Eastern United States extend into Texas and overlap.
However, there are areas in which each dominates. The various authorities
are mostly in agreement about which dialects dominate in which places,
and these areas mostly follow lines of settlement. People from the Lower
South, from Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas settled in East Texas
from about Harrison county extending to the south. People from the Upper
South, sometime referred to as the Mountain South, from Tennessee, Missouri,
and Arkansas settled in Northeast Texas. People from the Lower North,
from Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana settled in West Texas. (Tarpley
Blinky 13)
Field
work done for the Dictionary of Regional English has enabled dialecticians
to chart more accurately the various subdialects of the major regions
overlapping in East Texas—the Lower South, the Upper South, and
the Lower North. (Carver 7-20). Some expressions are of course shared
by the Upper and Lower South and are heard throughout most of Texas,
expressions seldom or not used in the North. Some of these expressions
are like to, pulley bone, puny (meaning sick), piddles around, nicker,
hainted, ramshackledy, squinch, dike out (meaning dress up), riz (for
rose and risen), wore out or give out, amen corner, hit-a-lick, and
brogans. (Carver 103-9) Many of these Southern words and expressions
extend beyond deep East Texas, even to Austin, Laredo, and Kingsville.
(Carver 98, 145, 166)
In East Texas, south of a line running roughly from Texarkana through
Nacogdoches and beyond (Tarpley Blinky 312), some expressions of the
Lower South are heard more frequently than in the rest of the state,
expressions such as red bug, chinquapin, grind rock, chitterlings, chunk,
disremember, skinny dipping, salt meat (bacon) and buck naked. (Carver
143, 148) In this area some Southern dialect expressions are the contribution
of black speech: cooter, goober, gumbo, tote, and big daddy. (Carver
149)
In
East Texas, north of the line from Texarkana through Nacogdoches, some
expressions of the Upper South are heard more frequently than in the
rest of the state, expressions such as scoot, piece (a snack), muley
cow (hornless), hidy (hello), smothering spell (a difficulty in breathing),
bad sick, bloody flux, goober peas, blinky, to feel of, cuss fight,
bumfuzzled, cur dog, a little piece (a short distance), calf rope (meaning
"I give up."), granny woman, and fat meat(bacon). (Carver
162, 170-9)
Texas
folk speech has changed much since Texas was first settled by people
from the Eastern parts of the United States. Some of the change is a
result of the borrowings from the languages of those who were already
here, the Hispanics, and those who came later: the Cajun French, the
Polish, the Czech, the German. From the earliest times Texas English
has been influenced by Spanish. First we borrowed terms of the cattle
business, some of which are no longer recognized by those not involved
with working cattle. We still hear some of the words derived from Spanish
wrangler, lariat, vaquero, hackamore, bronc, lasso, chaps, quirt, remuda.
Other terms are no longer used much tapadero, morral, dally, hondo,
cavvy. We have over 240 place names of Spanish origin in Texas, for
example San Felipe, Lavega, San Angelo, Lamesa. (Bentley 234-5) We have
borrowed names for plants manzanita, madrona, huisache, nopal, peyote,
loco weed, ocotillo, agave, and mesquite, names for animals javelina,
lobo, loafer wolf, paisano, toro, mustang, and pinto, for actions grito,
siesta, vamoose, mosey, stampede, paseo, and fiesta, for clothing sombrero,
pancho, and serape, for people mozo, peon, gringo, pobrecito, curandera,
and hombre, for drinks tequila, pulque, margarita, and cerveza, for
constructions and construction materials adobe, jacal, ramada, and corral,
for words related to customs pinata and pilon, for foods tortilla, chile,
tamale, pan dulce, taco, for natural features arroyo, canyon, and, chaparral
(Bentley 85-218) And we are still adding Spanish words. Since the first
printing of Bentley's A Dictionary of Spanish Terms in English in 1932,
we have added many more words particularly those for foods: jalapeno,
nachos, chalupa, fajita, carne guizada, huevos rancheros, and flauta.
Texans
who speak other languages have affected Texas English much less in vocabulary.
It has been little touched by local borrowings from German and the Slavic
languages still frequently spoken in some communities in central Texas.
For a type of breakfast roll, kolache is used commonly in central Texas
. From German some central Texans have taken into their English sangerhalle,
schlitterbahn, and wurstfest. In Southeast Texas, English speakers have
borrowed from Cajun French bukuz of from beaucoup de, and also in everyday
English bayou, pirogue, jambalaya, praline, gaspergou (a fish), lagniappe,
gallery, and gumbo. (Atwood 89, Carver 141--3)
Pronunciation
of Texas speakers is in the process of changing. But still it is easy
to hear pronunciations characteristic of the early settlements from
the Upper and Lower South. Many people in East Texas, in both the north
and south, pronounce the following and similar words identically: think
and thank, form and farm, pin and pen, ire and our, lack and like, bomb
and bum, pronounce gulf, wolf, and help and other words ending in p,
b, f without an l, say “he was telling” as “he was
atellin’,” add a t after some words, for example, oncet
and acrosst, and pronounce hoarse and horse, due and do, aloof and hoof,
boil and boy with different vowels, pronounce whip to rhyme with up,
(Stanley 13-30). Texans of the past usually aspirated the h in whether,
but it is increasingly, in some parts of Texas, coming to be pronounced
like weather, as is when of win.
Texas
folk have used numerous ways of naming places, for example places of
water, using people for the names of streams French John Creek Dad's
Creek, Deadman's Creek, Yankee Creek, Tenth Calvary Creek, Talking John
Creek, using names of colors for rivers the Blanco, the Colorado, the
Red, using size, temperature, and flow of springs Big Spring, Cold Springs,
and Dripping Springs, using the taste of the water in English, Spanish,
and an Indian language Sweetwater, Agua Dulce, and Mobeetie (Benthul,
15) and the taste of water not so sweet Mineral Wells and Copperas Creek
(Tarpley Place Names 138, 52), using animals associated with the the
water Antelope Creek, Cowhouse Creek, Cow Trap Lake, Cowskin Creek Lavaca
Bay, Cibolo Creek, Hog Holler Creek, Hog Waller Creek, Crawfish Creek,
Dry Duck Creek, Yegua(mare) Creek, using names of plants along the water,
Catclaw Creek, Chaparrosa Creek, Chinquapin Creek, using the sound of
the water, Cryer Creek, using the religious and supernatural Devil's
River, Espantosa (ghost) Lake, Espiritu Santo (Holy Spirit) Bay, Lake
Corpus Christi, using activities Dinner Creek , using numbers First,
Second, Third Creeks, using material in and around the creek Flag (flagstones)
Creek, Tierra Blanca Creek, Red Paint Creek, using the way the water
runs or divides Contrary Creek, Fool Creek, Coleto Creek, using people’s
experience or business along the creek Hard Luck Creek, Scrub Creek,
Whiskey Creek, Swindler Creek, and even using Spanish phrases Yo-lo-digo
(I say it is) Creek. (Tarpley Place Names 25-222)
Texas folk speech is as varied as Carver said and marked by words that
are part of its people's general cultural experience. The folk know
the phrase the twelfth man and the story behind the phrase. They know
that the Longhorns are in Austin, that the Santa Gertrudis cattle are
from the King ranch, that roughnecks work on oil rigs, that the caprock
is in West Texas, and that chile con carne has no beans.
Bibliography
Atwood, E. Bagby. The Regional Vocabulary of Texas. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1969.
Benthul,
Herman F. Wording Through Texas. Burnet, Texas: Eakin Press,
1981.
Bentley,
Harold. A Dictionary of Spanish Terms in English. New York:
Octagon Books, 1973.
Carver,
Craig M. American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography. Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1987.
Cassidy,
Frederic G., ed. Dictionary of American Regional English. Cambridge,
Mass:Harvard University Press, 1985.
Conklin,
Nancy Faires and Margaret A. Lourie. A Host of Tongues: Language
Communities in the United States. New York: The Free Press, 1983.
Norman,
Arthur M. Z. "A Southeast Texas Dialect Study." Orbis
,(1956) 5:61-79.
Sawyer,
Janet B. "A Dialect Study of San Antonio, Texas: A Bilingual Community."
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas Press, 1957.
Stanley,
Oma. "The Speech of East Texas," American Speech
XI (1936) 3-36, 145-166, 232-251,327-355.
Tarpley,
Fred A. From Blinky to Blue-John: A Word Atlas of Northeast Texas.
Wolfe City, Tex.: The University Press, 1970.
-----------.
1001 Texas Place Names. The University of Texas Press, 1980.
Walsh,
Harry, and Victor L. Mote. "A Texas Dialect Feature: Origins and
Distribution." American Speech (1974) 49:40-53.
Wheatley,
Katherine E. and Oma Stanley. "Three Generations of East Texas
Speech." American Speech (1959) 34:83-94.
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