Carolina in My Mind
As of last week, I have a temp job in North Carolina which, with a little luck, may turn into a permanent position. Moving again would suck, but if I have to move anywhere, I’d rather move within the South than out of it. Speaking of the South, Chris Lawrence is officially full of crap for describing a move to Carolina as “leaving the South.” This state is soooo south of Virginia it isn’t even funny. After about six months as a born-again Virginian, I barely noticed the accent anymore. Now I can barely communicate. Over the past week, I’ve encountered the following:
- Earlier this week around lunch time, a co-worker asked me if I’d got lynched yet.
- Last week, the same co-worker asked me if I whuckum downan eacho knees.
- The same day, a hostess at a local restaurant (complete with a nose ring, a gazillion tattoos, and all the other garb that screams out “I belong in Frisco, not here!”) asked me if I was donaninn.
- Around the same time, I called Duke Power to get the power switched to my name in my apartment. I did not understand a friggin’ word Boomhauer said, not even enough syllables to transcribe here. Next month I should find out whether I just ordered power, a new set of Ginsu knives, or something else.
- I recently learned that the Carolina School of Languages is within walking distance of where I work. I showed up there today asking to enroll in an evening class where I can learn to speak Carolina. Judging by the strange look I got, I was relieved to see that for once, someone else had no clue WTF I was talking about.
UPDATE: If you’ve ever wondered whether “Unpartisan” actually has a human reading all the blog entries it links, or if a bot scours the net for anything that matches a few keywords, Wonder no more.
UPDATE x2: Chris clarifies in comments that his “leaving the south” post referred only to the Triangle, not to the state as a whole.
UPDATE x3: D’oh! Actually, the original post made that pretty clear to begin with. That’s what I get for attacking old posts by memory - particularly a memory distorted by my own lack of exposure to the region at the time it was formed - rather than waiting until I can get the original to load properly.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Hell, i’m souther than that and i dunno what:
whuckum downan eacho knees
or
donaninn
is, ya’ll.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Dude, if you’re in the Triangle* you’re not in the south. Just because the locals talk like Southerners doesn’t mean Cary is the south anymore.
* If you’re in Charlotte or the Triad… that’s another story.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:13 am
Wanna come down ‘n join us?
Done eatin’?
(Weren’t you a linguist in a previous life?)
August 10th, 2007 at 1:54 am
State Primary Race…
South Carolina starts the domino effect of moving up primary elections.
…
August 10th, 2007 at 6:48 am
SU: are you sure you’re souther than here? Mapquest looks like you’re due west.
CL: Point taken. I don’t know the Triangle well enough to have an opinion of it. I took your original post to suggest that NC generally was not part of the South, and the Triad sure as Hades is. BTW, is your blog down? I tried linking to your “Leaving the South” entry but couldn’t get it to load.
NK: Reasonable guesses, but incorrect. Partly my own fault for a typo, which I’ve since corrected (”donandin” should have read “donanin,” as it now does). Here are the actual translations:
Wanna come down and eat Chinese?
Are you dining in?
August 10th, 2007 at 10:59 am
dude, don’t get me started.
I freaking envy you. I loved NC and I’d go back in a heartbeat, as you well know.
As for the Triangle, it IS the South…. you just need to go to the right parts. Cary (Containment Area for Relocated Yuppies) isn’t South, and Chapel Hill is only marginally South. But Hillsboro, Apex, Pittsboro, Bahama, and bunch of other small towns in and around the Triangle are in fact the real deal.
Between you and Physics Geek (posting about Cheerwine… have you tried it?) I am super homesick this week.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
I was close. I thought you were being asked to go down and eat at Shoney’s.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
And congrats, btw!
August 10th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
What I remember most about talking to people in the Carolinas was that whenever the person I was calling was unavailable the person taking the call promised to “have him to call you”.
August 11th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
I thought you were being asked to go down and eat at Shoney’s.
That was my first guess too. Do they have Chinese food in North Carolina? (jk)
August 12th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Greek spoken with a Southern accent. My daughter spent three weeks with her Florida cousins in Greece and since she came back she has been w’rin’ her bye-kini to school on water-play days.
August 21st, 2007 at 7:01 am
No problem :) Yeah, the blog was down interminably long while I moved back to the South. Well, New Orleans, which is a bit sui generis.