Going Greene: Talkin’ Greene

There’s nothing better than sitting down and having conversations with our grandparents, great- grandparents and other family members to get a perspective on life back in the “good old days.” The way of life was different then and people spoke even differently. Our accents and dialect here in Greene County have sometimes been a point of ridicule and confusing, but they are something we should celebrate as a long-standing part of our heritage.

Over the course of the last several decades, travel, television, and technological advances in communications have led to the diminishment and loss of our northern Appalachian accents. 

When our earliest European ancestors first arrived in the lands beyond the Allegheny Mountains, they brought with them their culture, tools, foods, and everything else that made up their way of life including their language and dialect.  English was the most common language spoken on the western frontier, now Greene County, but several early settlers spoke German and the occasional family spoke French. This mix of languages influenced how the early settlers spoke and communicated with one another; additional influences came from native languages, mostly from the Iroquoian, Siouan and Algonquian language families.

The “folk speech” that our ancestors used – that many of our parents and grandparents still use today – has often been classified as corrupted, archaic and improper forms of English that should be avoided.   However, examples of this type of speech can be found in some of the greatest literary works of all time, in writings such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the works of Shakespeare and even the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

Revolutionary War pension applications, court depositions and the rare instances of surviving diaries and journals illustrate this beautifully, and although language is constantly evolving, the geographical isolation experienced in this area and Appalachia as a whole has preserved these old-fashioned ways of speaking well into the modern era.

Many of us have heard, or perhaps used, the phrase, “He done me wrong!” This exclamation is often used to describe the actions of a friend or loved one who has treated us unfairly, cheated us, or well, done us wrong.  It is something you commonly hear today and any English teacher reading this would insist that such a phrase is improper grammar. But this very phrase can be found in King Lear, and many other works by William Shakespeare.  Even the word “yonder” now largely absent from use in modern English was a common word used by the previous generations that can often be found in the writings of Shakespeare.

It has often been argued that the Appalachian dialect and our unique subset of “folk speech” is a proper variant of the English language and, like the Shakespearian and Elizabethan English it is often compared to, is a beautifully descriptive and eloquent language that is poetic in its own way.

The Civil War and Industrial Revolution brought with them their own changes to our way of speaking.   Soldiers intermingling with men in their regiments from other parts of Pennsylvania and regions further away no doubt added words to their vocabulary that can trace their roots to other variants of the English language.  But country folk in the rural areas still retained their traditional speech.

Greene County is at the very northern extent of the Appalachia and shows influence from more northern areas such as Pittsburgh. The word “yinz” is something most of us are familiar with, as well as the word “y’all”, but Greene County has its own variant on the word that seems to be the product of a marriage between the two. “You’uns,” is a drawn-out form of “yinz,” that still captures the relaxed feel of the southern Appalachian word “y’all,” that hearkens back to another Appalachian word “Young’uns” a term with incredibly old roots that seem to be related to contractions used during the time of Shakespeare.

During my research, I conducted a poll and found that people in Greene County used a wide mix between the words “yinz,” “y’all,” and “you’uns,” often using one or more in regular speech depending on various contexts or just plain old preference.

The “A” prefix also has its origins in Middle English, a predecessor to Elizabethan and Shakespearian English.  Always used in words ending in “ing” (often abbreviated to “in’”) a phrase like “he was out a’huntin” would have been commonplace several centuries ago, and still remains in use in different parts of this area, especially the more rural ones.

Like Manx, Gaelic, Welsh, and other Celtic Languages that were once common on the British Isles, our very own unique variant of the English language is very much on the decline. For an exceptionally long time, many have been made to feel ashamed of the way they speak and taught to learn a better form of English, but is it fair to eradicate the traditional way of speaking that has been used for centuries along the Monongahela River and the rolling hills surrounding it? Or is it better to preserve this age-old form of “folk speech” for future generations in the same way as the efforts in the British Isles to preserve the dying Celtic languages that were once commonly spoken in homes all across the islands?  

The next time you’re reading something written by William Shakespeare, consider it in less in the formal British accent often presented to us in today, and instead, read it like it was being spoken in the mountains of West Virginia or some old “holler” in the wilds of Greene County. You might even be a little closer to experiencing Shakespeare in the way he intended than you realize. And this older way of speaking may even take the intimidating language of Shakespeare and make it a more accessible and enjoyable.