Down South
Monday, 10.08.07 @ 12:06AM 
One problem with living in a “border state” is that everyone in the blue states and the West think I’m in the South. People in the Deep South do not quite look at Kentucky as being in the club. I can tell the difference myself, and would classify Kentucky as not-quite-South, but full of people who understand how to be Southern. The restaurants serve sweet tea here. However, I lived in Tennessee for several years as a child, and for ten years as an adult, in several locations. So I am well familiar with the Southern way of life. There is a change of culture as soon as you cross the border. It’s not hard to switch back-and-forth for a Kentucky native, but I can imagine how difficult it would be for a true Yankee. Those of you outside the United States may be confused by all this; sorry -I’ll make it up to y'all tomorrow.
Southern Piece
After having been served in a Las Vegas cocktail lounge, a real southern gentleman beckoned the waitress back and said quietly, "Miss, y'all sure are a luvly, luvly lady; can ah persuade y'all to give me a piece of ass?"
"Lord, that's the most direct proposition I've ever had!" gasped the girl. Then she looked around the room, smiled and added,
"Sure, why not? You're nice lookin' too and it's pretty slow here right now, so why don't we just slip away up to my room?"
When the pair returned half an hour later, the man sat down at the same table and the waitress asked, "Will there be anything else, sir?"
"Why yes," replied the southern gentleman. "Ah sure 'preciate what y'all just did for me; it was real sweet and right neighbourly, but where ah come from in Albama, we lack our bourbon real cold, so ah still need to trouble y'all for a piece uh ass for mah drink."
(Note from Miss C: In real life, this fellow would never say y'all to one woman. "Y'all" is plural.)
Blog of the Day: Dew on the Kudzu
Breaking the Language Barrier.
Beautiful Dixie. (via the Presurfer)
The Mason-Dixon line never made any sense. The South begins where all the restaurants serve sweet tea.
The music video I really wanted to include here cannot be embedded, but you can hear Sweet Southern Comfort if you like at YouTube.
THE DIFFERENCES
The North has coffee houses, The South has Waffle Houses
The North has dating services, The South has family reunions.
The North has switchblade knives, The South has Lee Press-on Nails.
The North has double last names, The South has double first names.
The North has Indy car races, The South has stock car races.
The North has Cream of Wheat, The South has grits.
The North has green salads, The South has collard greens.
The North has lobsters, The South has crawfish.
The North has the rust belt, The South has the Bible Belt.
FOR NORTHERNERS MOVING SOUTH . . .
(Thanks, April!)
In the South: If you run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four men in a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a tow chain will be along shortly. Don't try to help them, just stay out of their way. This is what they live for.
Don't be surprised to find movie rentals and bait in the same store....do not buy food at this store.
Get used to hearing "You ain't from round here, are ya?"
Save all manner of bacon grease. You will be instructed later on how to use it.
Don't be worried at not understanding what people are saying. They can't understand you either. The first Southern statement to creep into a transplanted Northerner's vocabulary is the adjective "big'ol," truck or big'ol" boy. Most Northerners begin their Southern-influenced dialect this way. All of them are in denial about it.
The proper pronunciation you learned in school is no longer proper.
Be advised that "He needed killin" is a valid defense here.
If you hear a Southerner exclaim, "Hey, y'all, watch this," you should stay out of the way. These are likely to be the last words he'll ever say.
If there is the prediction of the slightest chance of even the smallest accumulation of snow, your presence is required at the local grocery store. It doesn't matter whether you need anything or not. You just have to go there.
Do not be surprised to find that 10-year olds own their own shotguns, they are proficient marksmen, and their mammas taught them how to aim
In the South, we have found that the best way to grow a lush green lawn is to pour gravel on it and call it a driveway.
AND REMEMBER: If you do settle in the South and bear children, don't think we will accept them as Southerners. After all, if the cat had kittens in the oven, we wouldn't call 'em biscuits.
TRUE SOUTHERNERS
1.) Only a true Southerner knows the difference between a hissie fit and a conniption, and that you don't "HAVE" them, --you "PITCH" them.
2.) Only a true Southerner knows how many fish, collard greens, turnip greens,peas, beans, etc. make up "a mess."
3.) Only a true Southerner can show or point out to you the general direction of "yonder."
4.) Only a true Southerner knows exactly how long "directly" is - as in: "Going to town, be back directly."
5.) All true Southerners, even babies, know that "Gimme some sugar" is not a request for the white, granular sweet substance that sits in a pretty little bowl on the middle of the table.
6.) All true Southerners know exactly when "by and by" is. They might not use the term, but they know the concept well.
7.) Only a true Southerner knows instinctively that the best gesture of solace for a neighbor who's got trouble is a plate of hot fried chicken and a big bowl of cold potato salad. (If the neighbor's trouble is a real crisis, they also know to add a large banana puddin'!)
8.) Only true Southerners grow up knowing the difference between "right near" and "a right far piece." They also know that "just down the road" can be 1 mile or 20.
9.) Only a true Southerner both knows and understands the difference between a redneck, a good ol' boy, and po' white trash.
10.) No true Southerner would ever assume that the car with the flashing turn signal is actually going to make a turn.
11.) A true Southerner knows that "fixin'" can be used as a noun, a verb, or an adverb.
12.) Only a true Southerner knows that the term "booger" can be a resident of the nose, a descriptive, as in "that ol' booger," a first name or something that jumps out at you in the dark and scares you senseless.
13.) Only true Southerners make friends while standing in lines. We don't do "queues", we do "lines," and when we're "in line," we talk to everybody!
14.) Put 100 true Southerners in a room and half of them will discover they're related, even if only by marriage.
15.) True Southerners never refer to one person as "y'all."
16.) True Southerners know grits come from corn and how to eat them.
17.) Every true Southerner knows tomatoes with eggs, bacon, grits, and coffee are perfectly wonderful; that redeye gravy is also a breakfast food; and that fried green tomatoes are not a breakfast food.
18.) When you hear someone say, "Well, I caught myself lookin' .. ," you know you are in the presence of a genuine Southerner!
19.) Only true Southerners say "sweet tea" and "sweet milk." Sweet tea indicates the need for sugar and lots of it - we do not like our tea unsweetened. "Sweet milk" means you don't want buttermilk.
20.) And a true Southerner knows you don't scream obscenities at little old ladies who drive 30 MPH on the freeway. You just say, "Bless her heart" and go your own way.
Previously at Miss Cellania: Dixie Talk, Texas, and Georgia
Thought for today: Do Southerners laugh at different things than Northerners do? Yes--Northerners. -Roy Blount
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Reader Comments (16)
A couple of additions.
A true southerner knows that the proper way to thank a travelin minister is with fried chicken.
A true southerner does not put thier crazy relatives in homes, but keeps them around to entertain guests.
While Y'all is plural the singular is you'uns.
Anyone who comes from a southern state further north than yours can be viewed with some suspicion.The exception being Florida which is viewed with some suspicion by all the other southern states.
I was waiting on my boyfriend to get off work at a pizza place when an older gentleman went up to him at the counter and said, "Y'all got any fireworks?" My boyfriend (also a Southerner) said, "No, sir, this is a restaurant." This went on for several iterations, until finally I said, "He means 'forks.'"
Only in the South could "forks" be 3 syllables and the accents be so thick that other Southerners can't understand you. :)
Two busty coeds—a Southern belle and a New England yankee—are in Florida on spring break. The belle turns to the yankee and asks, “So, where y'all from?”
The yankee turns up her nose and says, “I’m from a school where we don’t end sentences with prepositions.”
Without missing a beat, the belle replies, “So, where y'all from, bitch?”
And PS--I'm from Hattiesburg, Home of Robert St. John, the author of that "Deep South Parties" book up there.
Actually, never mind. *G*
But, as we Southern folk say, I do go on.
is like the Scottish Edinburgh Joke.
A Fish and Chip Shop in Edinburgh.
A Japanese tourist walks in adn says to the young girl behind the counter.
"You show me hairy twat please?"
"Whit?" says the girl.
"Show me hairy twat"
Now the girl thinks a while and decides athat he is a pretty bonny looking lad, she hasn't sold a thing all day and decides to be a scandal and oblige the nice man.
"Alright then sunny JIm" she says "C'mon back here and I'll show you a lot mare that that."
They go through to the back room where she whips off her dress and drops her knickers saying
"There's your dinner ya lucky boy"
The Japanese gent shakes his head violently pulls out his tourist guide to Edinburgh and says with great deliberation
"No,Herriot Watt University"
I didn't say it was any better.
Cop pulls over guy from Ky,asks,got any ID?guy,,bout what?
Teacher asks new students their names,,1st one says,Sam. Teacher says no its Samuel..2nd says Dan,teacher says no its Danuel. Dan turns to 3rd one says,,may as well sit down Jim,, she won't believe you neither...
also, in the south you blow your car horn only if you are about to hit someone. up here they do it ALL THE TIME. i call it the music of the island. ive been honked at a redlight before (the light had been red and i was not in a right turn lane)
Living in Massachusetts now, and it's taken some adjusting. For instance, the strangest thing for me about yankees' famously aggressive driving habits is the assumption of competence. These people will blithely pull out into traffic or cut people off and give all the responsibility for not causing an accident to the reactions of the other driver.
Now, this assumes that the driver of the oncoming car:
a) has a set of brakes in good working order;
b) would rather brake and save their pickup from body damage than slam into the japanese compact car that just cut them off;
c) isn't drunk, on the phone, yelling at the kids in the back, closing their eyes to sing along with the country music, doing their nails while driving, beating their wife while driving, being beaten by their husband while driving, huffing spraypaint while driving, or in any other way distracted from occurrences on the road;
d) won't fly into a homicidal rage at being cut off, or, if they will, then
e) isn't heavily armed.
Coming from the south, I'm not comfortable making ANY of those assumptions.
And yes, I've seen all the distractions in "c)" at least once.
My favorite thing to do is to watch movies where actors are imitating people from the south. There's /always/ a difference in accents & you can tell when someone is faking it :)
I know someone from even farther out in the country in South Carolina than me, and where he lived, "a soda" meant "a Coke."
And it took all my new friends here in California a long time to realize that when I said "do y'all got any coke?" I wasn't asking for cocaine.
Where I live in Charleston, "y'all" is always plural. The "old Charleston" accent, an odd mixture of British and Gullah, is gradually disappearing, I only know about 3 old people who have it. It's quite distinct from the other southern accents of the area.
Georgia - they usually seem to add about 3 extra vowels onto words like "you."