Thursday, February 26, 2009
Ain't and Cain't
My wife says that she notices something whenever I call my poor sweet mother still living in the Appalachian house where I grew up - my dialect begins to change. A drawl becomes more pronounced. Irregular sentence constructions seep in. A few words like 'shoot' as an interjection might pop out.
And yet, my speech is rather flat. Part of it is because I have overgrown adenoids, not so overgrown as to require surgery but enough to give my voice a flat nasal flavor, like that of an Indiana anchorman.
Another reason is that when I grew up, everybody "talked country". Your voice marked you as a member of your community. And one of the first things I could see what that my community wasn't going anywhere. Maybe it's part of being a self-hating Appalachian, but if that's the case I became a self-hating Appalachian at the age of five years old. I would watch TV - TV was my religion - and I noticed that all the cool people on TV don't talk like us. All the people that speak like us - "us" - are stuck living on dirt roads. All those other people speak differently.
(Notice: when I wrote this passage the first time, I wrote "all of those people that talk like us". And "are stuck down here living on dirt roads". See, it's starting to creep in already.)
So I began to speak differently. I must have figured that if I could speak like Lee Majors I'd become the Six Million Dollar Man.
However, there is one word that I hang onto religiously, or at least try to. The word is written "can't" - can not - but is pronounced to rhyme with "ain't" and is best spelled "cain't".
It seems natural to me that "cain't" is the obvious pronunciation of this word. All of the "good speakers" tried to teach me to prounce the word as "cAHHnt" to rhyme with, say, Immanuel Kant. But "caHHnt" sounds ridiculously hoity-toity. "Puttin' on airrrrs" they might say down in the holler, or better yet, "stuck up". I couldn't imagine tossing a "caHHNt" out of my mouth; I'd never live it down.
The only other alternative was "caaaaan't", with the "a" sound rhyming with "rasp" or "had". There's nothing wrong with a good caaaaan't. But my mind's first alternative to "can not" is "cain't".
"Cain't" just sounds right. I like "cain't".
So if you're reading this and are Appalachian, or southern, or black, or Hispanic, or whatever...locate a few words that you like for storage and use them at all opportunities. "Cain't" is my word of choice, a Jethro Bodine marching into the Commerce Bank of Beverly Hills, not knowing enough to be ashamed of itself and damned happy to boot.
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7 comments:
I've never had that problem - rather, the opposite. Because I wasn't out in the street (so to speak), and spent my time reading, I spoke in the manner of people on television, and also with a more formal manner. Oh, I got teased for that; even now, many other Black people look at me when I speak with an attitude of 'oh, he's trying to be better than us,' or 'he's trying to sound White'. I specifically remember one time when a cousin said that 'I spoke with an accent.' When I asked her what she meant, she said 'well, you sound like someone from out-of-town'.
There was also the time in my last year of college when I lost a job because the school administrator (who had only spoken to me on the phone) thought I was white, and was visibly stunned when she met me and saw that I was black.
My personal favorite was a girl backin college who had read a lot of my stuff back then and was dating a classmate. When he introduced us, she said, 'I've read all of the stuff you've written, and I really like your work - and until I met you, I had no idea that you were Black!'
Oh, yeah. People do tend to categorize you by language and speech.
There's a PBS special called 'Do You Speak American?' that deals with this subject; the book version is also available.
Oh, yes. I've been told that, in the nine months that I've been living with my brother and his family (and the two teens watch rap/hip-hop videos constantly), the word 'Yo' has popped up in my speech a great deal. (I am actively working to delete THAT hideous addition.) I'm also painfully aware of the word 'like' in my speech for over a decade - one of the vestigial remnants of my college days.
BG, you might be interested in this linked essay. As they say about Metafilter, it's about the concept of 'polyvocality' with everything from George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion ("My Fair Lady") to Barack Obama's gift for capturing dialect in his autobiography.
It inspired the "Ain't and Cain't" post, and it's a good read.
Cahn't is ridiculously hoity-toity.
My mom is forever warshing things. I used to warsh things, too, until I was made fun of over it. Now I wash things as all sensible people do.
And, yo, BG, I'll, like, cure you of the 'yo' thing, yo! As we did with my sister when she went through a stage of stinkin', we said stinkin' every other stinkin' word, yo. It worked, yo.
There was also the time in my last year of college when I lost a job because the school administrator (who had only spoken to me on the phone) thought I was white, and was visibly stunned when she met me and saw that I was black.
Jesus Harley Davidson Christ! It's not true! You're kidding me! You went to COLLEGE?!
snicker snicker snicker :P :P :P
All seriousness aside, I had the same problem when I spoke with my parents by phone. People at the place I worked in Wisconsin became hysterical listening to me drawl.
My accent has gone back and forth over the years. Somehow, even raised in the South with very Southern-speaking parents, I never had much of a Southern accent as a child; and the older I got, the less of one I had (in fact, after getting heavily into the Beatles in high school, my accent became more English than anything, and I had several people ask me if I was from Britain). But, as I grew up and became more appreciative of my heritage and family history, my accent made a come-back (in a completely unconscious process). I still don't sound anything like Andy Griffith, but I have a definite twang to my voice that wasn't there just a few years ago.
As for "cain't", I've never said it. However, I habitually use "y'all", and I can't see myself ever getting out of that habit. Anything else just wouldn't feel right to me.
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