River travel has long fascinated me. While I’ve never been able to do the trips I still hope for, on a boat slowly traversing the waterways that divide states or countries, I do often choose to drive along the river rather than on the big efficient but boring interstate or motorways.
There was this trip through Vevay, IN, down along the river, a place in which everyone knew everyone, but not much more than the local happenings. In the local lunch spot, orders were put in to the kitchen the moment the person walked through the door as the staff knew the personal preferences of all the regulars. As I awaited delivery of my lunch, the
cook shouted out, “The preacher’s wife’s lunch’s up!” I had only to watch who took delivery to identify this local personality.
The farmers sat down at a long table in the middle of the restaurant, caps of and tucked under their chairs. Most had the name of a tractor or seed company on it's crest. Coffee came almost instantly with rolls in baskets quickly following. News was shared; news of the land, the people, the river.
I took out scrap paper and a pen and tried to capture the flow of the local language. Oh, it was an American form of English, but many of my international friends would have needed an interpreter. I knew a professor of linguistics at Indiana University who could listen to a person speak for up to 15 minutes and discern the county in which the speaker had grown up. Fascinating how local idiom, regional dialects and specific word choice can give you away.
If you live in Cincinnati long you’ll likely say, “Please?” when asking someone to repeat something you didn’t hear or understand.
If you live in Anderson, Indiana you might say “supposebly” even though it is correctly spelt ‘supposedly.”
In some places in Kentucky and Tennessee you “ast” for something instead of asking for it. Having lived in New Zealand for several years, I now say “heaps” instead of ‘a lot’ or 'a bunch'.
Don’t even ask me how to pronounce that red round fruit that many people think is a vegetable.
There was this trip through Vevay, IN, down along the river, a place in which everyone knew everyone, but not much more than the local happenings. In the local lunch spot, orders were put in to the kitchen the moment the person walked through the door as the staff knew the personal preferences of all the regulars. As I awaited delivery of my lunch, the
cook shouted out, “The preacher’s wife’s lunch’s up!” I had only to watch who took delivery to identify this local personality.The farmers sat down at a long table in the middle of the restaurant, caps of and tucked under their chairs. Most had the name of a tractor or seed company on it's crest. Coffee came almost instantly with rolls in baskets quickly following. News was shared; news of the land, the people, the river.
I took out scrap paper and a pen and tried to capture the flow of the local language. Oh, it was an American form of English, but many of my international friends would have needed an interpreter. I knew a professor of linguistics at Indiana University who could listen to a person speak for up to 15 minutes and discern the county in which the speaker had grown up. Fascinating how local idiom, regional dialects and specific word choice can give you away.
If you live in Cincinnati long you’ll likely say, “Please?” when asking someone to repeat something you didn’t hear or understand.
If you live in Anderson, Indiana you might say “supposebly” even though it is correctly spelt ‘supposedly.”
In some places in Kentucky and Tennessee you “ast” for something instead of asking for it. Having lived in New Zealand for several years, I now say “heaps” instead of ‘a lot’ or 'a bunch'.
Don’t even ask me how to pronounce that red round fruit that many people think is a vegetable.
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