Virginia Speech Ways: English Origins of the Southern Accent

Before the American Revolution, travelers from the northern colonies had begun to express surprise at the speech ways of the Chesapeake provinces. A Pennsylvania lady, for example, found herself strangely attracted to a Maryland gentleman, “who has the softest voice, never pronounces the R at all.”¹

Even more startling to northern travelers was the dialect of Virginians. In 1773, a young Princetonian named Philip Fithian came south to teach at Nomini Hall, the great Carter plantation near Richmond. In his journal he described the language that he heard there:

The people here pronounce Shower “Sho-er.”—And what in New-Jersey we call a Vendue here they call a “sale”—All Taverns they call “Ordinarys”—When a horse is frolicsome and brisk, they say at once he is “gayly.” … I piddled at my Exegesis, but (as they say here in Virginia) I did a mighty little … ²

Fithian discovered that Virginia speech ways differed from those of his native New Jersey in many ways at once. Where a northerner said, “I am,” “You are,” “She isn’t,” “It doesn’t,” and “I haven’t,” a Virginia even of high rank preferred to say “I be,” “You be,” “She ain’t,” “It don’t,” and “I hain’t.”³ The people of the Chesapeake used “like” for “as if”—“He looks like he’s dead.” Boston’s James Russell Lowell noted with an air of disdain that this construction was “never found in New England.”⁴

The Virginia dialect also had its own vocabulary. Examples, recorded as early as the seventeenth century, include bide for stay, howdy for hello, afterclap for any unexpected event, shuck for husk, porely for unwell, drag for harrow, craw for throat, afeared for afraid, cater-cornered for crooked, tarry for stay, tote for carry, passel for pack, woebegone for wretched, call for cause (“no call to do it”), chomp for chew, fresh for flood, grit for courage, lick for beat, links for sausage, bimeby for by and by, belly-ache for pain in the stomach, andirons for firedogs, flapjack for pancake, bandanna for handkerchief, botch for blunder, favor for resemble, unbeknownst for unknown, allowed for admitted, pekid for unwell, moonshine for distilled liquor, shock for a sheaf of corn, mess of greensfor a serving of vegetables, laid off for out of work, skillet for frying pan, traipse for walk, disremember for forget, right good for very good, get shut of for get rid of, mighty and monstrous for very, proud for happy or glad (as, “proud to know you”),yonder for distant, cross-grained for difficult, innards for insides, pretend for intend, angry for infected, book-learning for schooling, and jeans for cloth of a course twill weave (an old English corruption of Genoa, whence this fabric was imported). By the late eighteenth century these words had disappeared from polite usage in Britain. They are identified as archaic or provincial expressions in the Oxford English Dictionary. But they survived in Virginia for three centuries.

At the same time that these old words were preserved, new words were also created in the Chesapeake. Many terms were borrowed from the Indians and later from Africans. Novel expressions were necessary to describe the new Chesapeake environment, new techniques of tobacco farming, and the new institution of race slavery. This unique combination of continuity and change defined the vocabulary of an American region.⁵

The Virginia dialect was also distinctive in its pronunciation. In place of New England’s harsh, rapid, rasping, metallic whine, Virginia’s speech was a soft, slow, melodious drawl that came not from the nose but the throat. Virginians tended to add syllables where New Englanders subtracted them. Vowel sounds were prolonged, embellished and softened as in ha-alf for half, gyarden for garden, ke-er for care, holp for help, puriddy for pretty, fuust for first, Aah’m for I’m, doo for do, and the spectacular wah-a-tahmill-i-an for watermelon. A conversation in Virginia about a watermelon could occupy an afternoon.⁶

Consonants were also softened and prolonged, as in sebem for seven, chimbly for chimney, vahmint for vermin, holt for hold, mo’ for more, flo’ for floor, do’ for door, fo’ for four, dis for this, dat for that, dare for there, ax for ask, go-in’ for going, perserve for preserve, foller for follow, yaller for yellow, acrost for across, wunnerful for wonderful, mistis for mistress, and wid or wud for with. Redundancies were added, as in you all or y ‘awl for you.⁷

Proper nouns were pronounced in unexpected ways. The Carter family called itself Cy’ah-tah. Randolph was Randall in the tidewater, as it had been in the mother country. Armistead was pronounced Um’sta-ed; Berkeley remained Barkly as at home; and

Blount was Blunt. The family of Lincoln’s mad assassin John Wilkes Booth was called Bowthe. Botetourt was the rhythmic Boat’a‘tote, Chisman was Cheeseman, Dinwiddie was De-in-wood-y, Fantleroy was Fantilroy, Fauquier was Fawkeer, Gooch wasGouge, Hackett was Haa-yak-it, Heyward was Howahd, Langhorne was Langon, Napier was Napper, Sclater was Slaughter, Semple was Sarmple, James was Jems or Jims, Yeardley was Yardly, and the family of Virginia playright Robert Munford was known as Mumfudto his contemporaries. Some of these tidewater pronunciations bore no recognizable resemblance to the written word. Crenshaw improbably became Granger, and Enroughty was somehow transformed into Dahby. A Florentine adventurer named Taliaferro so twisted Virginia tongues by the Tuscan rhythms of his name that he and his many descendants were always called Toliver in the tidewater.⁸

These Virginia speech ways were not invented in America. They derived from a family of regional dialects that had been spoken throughout the south and west of England during the seventeenth century. Virtually all peculiarities of grammar, syntax, vocabulary and pronunciation which have been noted as typical of Virginia were recorded in the English counties of Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Oxford, Gloucester, Warwick or Worcester.⁹

In the mid-nineteenth century, for example, an English antiquarian published the Song of Solomon in a Sussex dialect which sounded remarkably like the speech ways of both whites and blacks in tidewater Virginia:

De Song of songs, dat is Solomon’s,

Let him kiss me wud de kisses of his mouth;

for yer love is better dan wine

Cause of de smell of yer good intments, yer naum is lik intment tipped out; derefore de Maldens love ye …

Look not upan me, cause I be black, cause de sun has shouun upan me; my mother’s childun was mad wud me; dey maud me kipper of de vineyards; but my own vineyard I han’t kept …

My beloved spoke, an said to me: Git up, my love, my fair un, an come away …

Jest a liddle while ahter I passed by em, I foun him dat my soul loves …

This Sussex accent was reported to be “almost extinct” in 1860. In the twentieth century, dis and dat were rarely heard in any part of rural England, but they persisted among both poor whites and blacks in the American south.¹⁰

Thomas Hardy described the deliberate destruction of these dialects in The Mayor of Casterbridge, where Elizabeth says in a Wessex drawl, “Bide where you be a minute, father!”

“Bide where you be,” he echoed sharply. “Good God, are you only fit to carry wash to a pig-trough, to use such words as those?” She reddened with shame and sadness. “I meant, ‘Stay where you are,’ Father,” she said in a low, humble voice. “I ought to have been more careful.”¹¹

Five generations of Wessex children learned to be “more careful,” just as Elizabeth did. But traces of these archaic speech ways still survive in the American south.¹²

Much of Virginia’s vocabulary (as well as its pronunciation) also appeared in word lists of Sussex speech, for example: atwixt, bandanna, bimebye, bide, dis and dat, wud for with, fambly, favor, flapjack, fust, his ’n, holp, holt, hotted up, innards, lay-off, leastways, such-

like, mess of greens, moonshine, passell, pekid, shock, skillet, traipse, and unbeknownst.¹³

The dialect of rural Sussex in the nineteenth century startled American travelers by its resemblence to Virginia speech. One visitor from the United States wrote of a Sussex countryman that “but for his misplaced h’s—and he dropped them all over the road in a most reckless and amazing manner—he might have been a Southern or Western American.”¹⁴

Sussex speech belonged to a family of regional dialects in the south and west of England. Every county had its own linguistic peculiarities; so also did many small villages. But students of language have observed that these local speech ways throughout the south and west of England were closely related to one another. Sir William Cope concluded from long research that “the language or dialect of the counties which formed the kingdom of Wessex has in many respects great similarity. And of these the people of the district formed by West Sussex, Hampshire and Wiltshire have many words in common.”¹⁵

This cluster of Wessex dialects bore a strong resemblance to Virginia speech ways. Hampshiremen, for example, used words such as chitterlings or chittlins for entrails, no-count for worthless, dawg for dog, passel for bunch, poke for thrust, andwhopper(pronounced whoppah in Hampshire) for anything of large size. The people of that county also used the preterite instead of the participle in auxiliary verbs—“he was took bad,” or “he was drove to it”—much as in Virginia.¹⁶ Devon folk said ha’af for half, marsterfor master, keer for care, yaller for yellow, and a-go-in for going. Natives of Somerset had a way of saying bide, taters, porkers and holler.¹⁷ Wiltshire people used words such as craw, cross-grained, drag, handy, and purserve. In counties around Oxford, countrymen said holt, gyarden, sebem, vahmint, priddy and chimbly. All of these usages were carried to the Chesapeake during the seventeenth century.¹⁸

The Virginia dialect as it developed through the years was not merely a simple replication of Wessex speech. The transfer of language was a dynamic process of linguistic selection and recombination. Moreover, the speech ways of southern and western England were not monolithic, but comprised a complex family of local dialects. A Sussex countryman commonly dropped his h’s; but neighboring counties tended to sound that consonant clearly. Somerset folk had a way of turning s into z, and o into u, so that their county name became Zumerzet. This usage did not occur in other parts of southern England.¹⁹

Other linguistic differences existed even between English villages and even neighborhoods. A case in point was Berkeley Hundred in Gloucestershire, where an antiquarian wrote in the seventeenth century,

In this hundred of Berkeley are frequently used certain words, proverbs and phrases of speech which we hundreders conceive of as we do of certain market moneys, to be not only native but confined to the bounds and territories thereof; which if found in the mouths of foreigners we deem them as leapt over the wall, or as strayed from their proper pasture and dwelling place.²⁰

“Berkeley Hundreders” as he called them preserved many old Saxon words such as geboren for born and wenchen for girls. An initial ν was pronounced f in the Saxon way, so that venison became fenison; at the same time f became v, so that folks were volks. In the same fashion, a hard c became a g, as grabs for crabs. This and that became thicke and thucke, and a y was commonly inserted between words and especially names that ended and began with consonants, so that a name such as Bill Carter became Bill-yCarter in England’s Vale of Gloucester.²¹ Some of these Berkeley speech habits became part of the American southern accent—the nominal y between consonants, for example. But it is interesting to observe that most of Berkeley Hundred’s special speech ways did not survive in Virginia, despite the fact that so many inhabitants migrated there.

Here is an important clue to the dynamics of linguistic transmission, and to the complex process by which the Virginia accent was born. From a mixed family of dialects in southern and western England, local peculiarities tended to disappear and general characteristics survived. The dropped h of Sussex and the hard s Somerset did not take root in Virginia. But most countrymen throughout the south and west of England said Ah be for f am, and that usage became an important part of the Virginia accent. In this manner, a new speech way was manufactured out of old materials.

Other types of change also occurred. In the New World, English country accents tended to be overprinted with a layer of London uniformity—a common tendency in many parts of British America. “In general,” observed the German traveler Johann Schoepf, “the dialects of the English speech in the several American colonies are not as sharply distinct as those of the sundry districts and counties of England itself.”²² Differences between a southern drawl and a Yankee twang became more muted than those between the Wessex broad and the Norfolk whine, in part because they added a common element of London speech.²³

Another complexity appeared in the development of subregional dialects in America. Virginia speech ways rapidly created their own local variations in such number and variety that by the nineteenth century the birthplace of a native could be located within a few miles by subtle distinctions in the way that he sounded a and r. Other variations also developed between Virginians of different ranks; the speech ways of Virginia’s first families were closest to educated London speech.

Yet another layer of complexity was added later when African expressions began to enrich southern speech. Africanisms were adopted throughout the southern colonies, especially in the Carolina lowcountry. In Virginia the borrowings were not so numerous, but as early as 1783, a German traveler observed that “here and there a few negroisms have crept in, and the salmagundy of the English language has here been enriched even by words of African origin.” The major features of the Virginia accent, however, were established before African slaves could possibly have had much impact on language.²⁴

Altogether, the creation of this speech way was a cultural process of high complexity. On balance, one may conclude that the southern drawl developed in a new American environment from the dialects of southern and western England, just as the Yankee twang evolved from the speech ways of the East Anglia.