brogue

[Wilson Gray]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> quoted:

> If you shut your eyes you would
> think from their jargon you was talking to a lot of "niggers" as they call
> the blacks.

Ain' *dat* dih troof?

I didn't have my eyes closed when I heard what I thought was the
language of soul coming through a closed door, but my mind certainly
was. Well, the real reason was lack of experience, I not having a lot
of experience with the speech of rural - or urban, either, for that
matter - white Southern-speakers. Thinking that I was hearing the
dulcet drawlings of the mammy-loshn (forgive me, Yiddish-speakers, but
Al Jolson asked for it), I didn't even bother to knock. I opened the
door and just barged my ass right own inta dih room - there's no
expectation of privacy inside a barracks - only to find myself
confronted by a group of white Southerners. I don't know who was the
more taken aback.

However, given that, in the Security Agency, the better class of
Northern-WASP GI, vastly overrepresented in the Agency, really looked
*seriously* down upon its Rebel brethren, said Rebels tended to regard
the sight of a cullud fella as a letter from home. So, I said sumpm
lak, "Ah hoid y'all a-tawkin' and I was wundin is y'all fum dih Souf?"
When they replied, "We fum Loozana," I said, "She-it, y'all, ah'm fum
Maasha, not theddih mall 'cross dih bawda fum Sreepote!"

All's well that ends well.

My late father always referred to his own dialect as "my Alabama
_brogue_." I've never heard or seen "brogue" used except in the
phrase, "Irish brogue," otherwise. Except in these  pages, of course.
Well, both "brogue" and "brogan" (bro-GAN) are used to mean "heavy,
over-the-ankle workshoe," also known as a "Li'l Abner."

--
-Wilson
–––
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

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