Savannah and the Language of the Deep South

Savannah has to be one of the most beautiful cities in North America. The United States’s first planned city is a well-designed grid of beautifully landscaped small squares, and the denizens of all its historic houses are happy to recount their city’s history to visitors. Talk about Southern hospitality! The small hotels and bed and breakfasts of Savannah have an understanding of how to make guests feel welcome in a way that is unsurpassed by even the Waldorf-Astoria or the George V. That the city is a little depressed right now only adds to its aura of faded antebellum glory.

The Atlantic Coastal Plain stretches from the Pee Dee River in the north to Savannah in the south, and the area is known as the “Low Country.” Before 1860, the Low Country was home to plantations that grew cotton, and Savannah, because of its riverfront location, was a major port for the export of cotton. 

The cooking and language of Savannah’s African and white populations were integrated before the two peoples themselves were.  Now, the only remnant of the old African/Cajun culture in Savannah is the Gullah population, the influence of whose spices, cuisine, and vocabulary continue to belie the numbers of its people. The word “gumbo,” for example, is the Gullah word for okra, and the whole tradition of slow cooking comes from the necessity for starting to cook the evening meal in the morning, letting it simmer all day, and thereby having it ready to eat after the day’s work in the fields.

Savannah, in its cuisine and its speech, is a far cry from the “back country,” but the regional speech and idioms of some parts of Georgia—indeed of much of the South—have a flavor unmatched even by the region’s fine cooking. No, the expressions don’t always use correct grammar, but they’re witty— in a slow, farm-boy kind of way that delivers the punchline just when you least expect it—and they give the Yankee quoting them license to express thoughts he might otherwise be too shy to say aloud. . . .

  

Notable Georgia Regional Expressions

Liberal Christian sects, speaking about their more conservative brethren: “Baptists never make love standing up. They’re afraid someone might see them and think they’re dancing!”

Cattily, about a woman who swings her hips exaggeratedly when she walks: “Looks like she needs some fries to go with that shake.”

Along the lines of “If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen”: “If you can’t run with the big dogs, stay under the porch.”

About a couple who had “lived in sin”: “Those two ate their supper before they said grace!”

To express a negative response to some proposed plan: “That dog won’t hunt” (a reference to some dogs’ being gun-shy and therefore not suitable to use for hunting).

A description of an impractical contraption or a lazy person: “Useless as tits on a bull.”

Equivalent to a parenthetical “Godwilling,” or “Inshallah”: “God willin’ and the creek don’t rise.”

To describe a fat man: “His belly’s so big, he ain’t even seen his own tallywhacker in years.”

To change the subject after an unpleasant discussion: “Well, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”

To describe someone known for his stinginess: “He’d steal the pennies from a dead man’s eyes.”

Ms. Picky is hard-pressed to mention grammar when the language of an expression is so colorful. . . the more so when the farewell is not simply “goodbye,” but “Y’all come back, hear?” . . . 

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Journalism Wall of Shame

The Journalism Wall of Shame displays errors in grammar, punctuation, or language that have appeared recently in the press. Submissions are welcome. Please include the publication's name and date, the story title, and the reporter's name. The publication of these errors in no way places blame for them on a particular person. Sometimes it is the reporter, sometimes the editor, sometimes the headline writer, but—somewhere in the system—somebody should have known better. 

“ . . . Pendola has written two articles on the topic and I would like to hopefully simplify the trade into a binary decision ala the popular risk-on/risk-off.”

—“Apple Poised to Pop on iPad 3 Rumors,” Paul Zimbardo, Jan. 17, 2012, seekingalpha.com

Ms. Picky comments: First of all, Mr. Zimbardo has unnecessarily split an infinitive. Sometimes there is no choice but to split an infinitive, but this was not one of those times. Next, there is the use of hopefully, which has been mentioned here before. Mr. Zimbardo does not mean that he would like to simplify the trade in a hopeful manner; what he means is that he hopes that he is simplifying the trade. Hopefully cannot be used as an ablative absolute; it is a dangling modifier. The sentence could, correctly, have read something like “ . . . I hope that I am making the trade simpler.”

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“It is going to happen. Greece is insolvent so it will default.”

—“Fitch Says Greece to Default, Believes Will Be Orderly,” Edward Parker, Managing Director for Fitch’s Sovereign and Supranational Group in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Scott E. Barbour, quoting Reuters, Jan. 17, 2012, cnbc.com

Ms. Picky comments: So is not a conjunction; it is an adverb meaning for this reason, or in this way. Mr. Parker or Mr. Barbour or Reuters is guilty of committing a comma splice. This compound sentence requires a conjunction and should have read, “Greece is insolvent, and so it will default.”

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For the Non-Print Media—A Word about Pronunciation: The article “the” can be pronounced either as “the” or as “thee.” The choice is determined by whether the noun following the article has a soft, initial vowel sound or a hard, consonant sound. One would say, for example, [the] book, but [thee] elephant. Many young announcers seem unaware of this refinement and struggle to say [the] answer or [the] idea, when using the correct pronunciation would actually be simpler.

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