Current Weather in Indianapolis: Clear and Mild Temp: 66 F (19 C)
My Current Mood: Happy and TiredI placed a catalog order over the phone today. I decided to start my Christmas shopping a little early this year. As I was reading off my address to the guy taking my order, he acted surprised when I told him I lived in Indianapolis, Indiana. He said, "do you really live in Indiana"? I told him I most certainly did. He told me he thought I was a Southerner! What? No. I live in Indiana and it is in the North. He was making fun of my accent I think. My accent? What accent?
We Hoosiers do have a funny way of saying certain things. I caught myself doing just that very thing later when I called in my pain pill refill at the pharmacy. I told the pharmacist I "needed to get a refill on my pain pill subscription". Yeah. I said "subscription" instead of "prescription". The pharmacist new perfectly well what I meant. After all, he is a Hoosier too.
Here in Indiana, we often say "DEEshes" instead of dishes, "FEESH" instead of fish, "POOsh" instead of push, and even "subscription" instead of "prescription".
We even say "y'all" instead of you all.
I was reading a book about Indiana a few weeks ago, and I came across something funny. Well, I thought it was funny. Here is what it said:
"How do Hooisers sound when they talk? There is a Hoosier accent, surely, and to an outsider it can seem suspiciously Southern, but this is due more to its rhythms and trace words than its pronounciation or tone. The way Hoosiers speak English depends to a considrable extent on patterns developed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in western Virginia and the Carolinas. These areas provided the greatest number of pioneers who came over the mountains to the Ohio River Valley seeking new land in Kentucky and Indiana.
The way many Hoosiers talk today is full of words which show this kinship. They still use a "skillet" for fixing breakfast, see a "snakefeeder" hoovering on the waters of a "crick" and are likely to have "roasting ears" for dinner. All of these terms have Southern origins. Yet there are boundary lines within the state. North of Indianapolis, on the way to Fort Wayne, one will probably hear the bone from a chicken's breast called a "wishbone". Below Indianapolis it is likely to be called a "pulleybone". In general, the farther north one lives in Indiana, the more Hooisers begin to sound like people living in Chicago or Detroit; the farther south, the more like Louisville or Paducah. In between, the typical Hoosier will still put an "r" in the first syllable of "Washington" and say "whenever" when he means simply "when". For the most part it's "bucket" rather than "pail", but "bag" rather than "sack' or "poke".
(Later, the book goes on to explain how the early Hoosier settlers sounded when they spoke}
" Eggleston (while writing his book "The Hoosier Schoolmaster") listened to how Hoosiers talk and wrote it down in a quasi-phonetic way. "It takes a right smart man to be a schoolmaster in Flat Crick in the winter. Howsumderever, ef you think you kin trust your hide in Flat Crick school-house I ha'n't got no bjection". Eggleston's ear for such speech patterns produced one unexpected result. Cultivated Hoosiers of the day were horrified at the book's success in the East and immediately appropriated considerable amounts of money to the state's schools. For a time, in the 1800's, Indiana's per student expenditure for secondary education was among the highest in the nation".
(Text taken from "Indiana" by Darryl Jones and Jared Carter. Published by Graphics Arts Center Publishing Co.)
So you see? There IS a reason we talk the way we do!
Now, it's time to take in the "warsh", put the "deeshes" in the machine, and go get my "subscription" at the drug store. I'll be back directly, so don't y'all worry none, ya hear?
Edit: Spelling errors suck!