[Magdalen] Speaking of the Carolinas

[Jay Weigel]

"You ain't from here, air ye?" The question I was routinely asked by my
patients in east Tennessee, especially when I was doing home health. That
was after I'd lived there almost 20 years. Of course when I went back to
Wisconsin I was accused of having a southern accent (they don't know from
Appalachian up there!), despite the fact that the minute I got back there I
started talking like the people I grew up with again. You just can't win. I
did, however, learn to speak a pretty creditable version of rural east
Tennessee English before I left the home health gig; after all, you do need
to speak the language of the people you serve! I took that with me when I
left there and it used to amuse my co-workers when I spoke of a "pee jug"
instead of a urinal, or said a patient was "right bound up" instead of
constipated.

On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 7:53 PM, ME Michaud <michaudme at gmail.com> wrote:

> At hme, we would have said "He's from away." And for someone
> absent "He's away off" with a distince pause between away and off.
> Seafarers had amazingly complex ways of describing time, distance
> and absence.
>
> I understand that down-Mainers refer to summer tourists
> as "The Bostons."
> -M
>
> On Tuesday, October 6, 2015, Jon Egger <revegger at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > People would say "Oh, you're from off!"  Is that an expression South
> > Carolina uses for people not from SC?
> >
> >
> >
>