Cackalacky (1972), "Calinky" (1974)

[Wilson Gray]

I don't know anything about nicknames for the Carolinas, but the type
of pronunciation represented by the eye-dialect spelling

yeyas!

(presumably [jeij at s] or something similar)

is quite or, even, extremely common in Black English. Cf., e.g. any
recording by the hip-hop artist, Li'l John, and the parodies of his
speech by Dave Chappelle. It's one of the features of Be that I had to
train myself not to use "in public," so to speak.

-Wilson

On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 3:06 PM, Bonnie Taylor-Blake
<taylor-blake at nc.rr.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Bonnie Taylor-Blake <taylor-blake at NC.RR.COM>
> Subject:      Cackalacky (1972), "Calinky" (1974)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Previously, I hadn't found "Cackalacky" or its variants, all slang terms for
> "Carolina," in anything published or printed before 1991 ("North Cak-a-laka"
> appears in the lyrics of a song by A Tribe Called Quest).
>
> But now I find that "Cackalacky" appears in Kathleen Kimball's play "The
> Meat Rack," published in May 1972.
>
> ----------------------------
>
> Pg. 19:
>
> ANGEL 2:  [...] where d your people come from?
>
> SADIE:  charleston i think
>
> ANGEL 2:  south cackalacky!  yeyas!  [...]
>
> [From _Scripts 7_ (New York:  New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater,
> 1972; pp. 5-28).]
>
> ----------------------------
>
> In 1972, Kimball was living in Asheville, North Carolina.
>
>
> "Calinky," a form Grant Barrett mentioned in 2002, appears in James
> Michener's _Centennial_ (London:  Secker & Warburg, 1974).
>
> From Chapter 8, "The Cowboys,"
>
> Pg. 448:
>
> 'M'name's Coker,' the young man said, 'Who's boss?'
> 'I am,' Poteet said, 'Where you from?'
> 'South Calinky,' the stranger said with obvious defiance, and when Poteet
> heard this pronunciation for South Carolina, the first state to secede from
> the Union and foremost in heroic actions, he paid attention.
>
> Pg. 493:
>
> 'Lotsa men with one arm make it,' Coker said.  'You disqualify all the men
> with one arm or one leg, hell, you have to thrown out half the men in South
> Calinky.  We had a bad war.'
>
> ("North Calinky," used by the same character, appears on pages 487 and 488.)
>
> -- Bonnie
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org