Mary Belk: English language not the same here

Sometimes I read British mysteries. And when I do, I’m amazed at how much we’ve altered the English language. Seems we don’t speak English at all.

We wait in lines. The British stand in queues. We call or phone. They ring up. Our cars have tires, mufflers, windshields, trunks and hoods. Their motor vehicles have tyres, silencers, windscreens, boots and bonnets. We use gas. They use petrol. We have flashlights. They have torches. Americans mail packages. The British post parcels.

But there’s an even greater discrepancy between American dialect and Southern jargon. Southern speech is much more colorful and descriptive. We try never to say with one word what we can say with two.

We use a dishrag in the kitchen and a washrag in the bath tub.

For grooming, we have hairbrushes, and instead of moisturizers there’s cold cream. To cover up a shiny nose we use face powder.

We zip up pants, fill up water glasses, fix up the spare room, wash up the dishes, eat up the leftovers, climb up the stairs and tear up paper. And we never reverse. We back up. We don’t do research. We read up on a subject. A house either burns up or burns down. And we sit down, turn around, and jump off of, out of, on, over, up or down. Sweaters don’t shrink in the dryer. They draw up.

Our cars don’t come with accelerators. They have gas pedals. For outside watering we use hosepipes. And red bugs, not chiggers, make us itch to death.

If Southerners lose something, we wouldn’t be caught dead searching. We’d hunt for it or look all over the place for it. If we’re tired we say we’re tuckered out, or give out. And we’re never annoyed. We have pet peeves.

Our expressions of surprise go way beyond golly or gee. We prefer: my word, well I’ll say, have mercy, I’ll swanee, or great gobs of goose grease.
Instead of saying, “He almost died,” we say, “He liked to have died.” And we much prefer greeting a friend with, “Hey there,” rather than “Hi” or “Hello.”

If a neighbor comes calling, we don’t ask them to come in, we tell them to come in the house.

Our foods are descriptive too. We eat light bread, table salt, black pepper, sliced tomatoes, layer cake, table syrup, sweet tea and sweet milk.

Even weather conditions are described with colorful phrases. If it rains, it’s a gully washer or toad strangler.

In the summertime, it’s not just hot, it’s hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk.

Northerners go to the market and push a buggy while selecting vegetables. Southerners go over to the grocery store and push a grocery cart while they pick out a mess of collard greens.

Wish I could chew the fat a while longer, but I’m fixin’ to have to go.

Mary Belk lives in Auburn and writes a column for the Opelika-Auburn News.