Talkin' Texan

When my family moved to southern California, I was a homesick under-sized fourth-grader on the wrong side of a language barrier. Born and raised on the Gulf Coast, I was an uprooted daughter of the Lone Star State, and my native tongue was Texan.

“But that’s English,” you may say. And I may say the same, except I’ll extend some syllables and ignore others, and twist vowels into sounds that aren’t listed in any pronunciation guide. I know. I researched it when Small Child’s homework instructed him to circle pictures of items with the short ‘a’ sound. Cat, yes; rake, no; a paper container used to carry groceries -- “Well, that depends,” I said. “Did your teacher call this a bag or a sack?” He didn’t know.

I consulted Large Child. He rolled his eyes and explained that both words have the same vowel sound. Not when I say ‘em, they don’t. The ensuing argument made up in volume what it lacked in vocabulary:

“No, listen! Bag! Sack! Same!”

“No! Baaag! Sack! Diff’rint!”

Small Child wandered off to supervise the on-going battle between Power Rangers and assorted super-heroes, while Large Child and I pulled out reference books. They all supported his position but I remained unconvinced, especially since they failed to acknowledge the dual-syllabic ‘a’, as in “Bayad dawg!” and “Dayam!”

I considered asking my English teacher colleagues, but decided not to risk it. At a faculty meeting I’d said that our new schedule left me feeling like I’d been rode hard and put away wet. It was fourth-grade all over again.

Learning to speak West Coast English wasn’t my only challenge at Midland Elementary. There were also cultural differences waiting to blindside the unwary newcomer. The first time the teacher called on me I leapt to my feet and responded, “Yes, Ma’am?” (Ma’am is a two-syllable word, by the way. It rhymes with dayam.)

There was a moment of stunned silence before the room erupted. I sank into my desk, willing the San Andreas Fault to open up and swallow me. The teacher, bless her heart, managed to keep a straight face as she restored order. I resolved to hush up, watch and listen until I mastered the dialect and customs of my new home.

I have a quick ear and I think I’ve purt’ near mastered English as spoken outside my home state, but traces of Texas linger. ‘Y’all’ has a permanent place in my lexicon because it’s so useful; I don’t know how y’all manage without it. Other words are not so easily employed. I’ve had to explain caddy-wampus and kitty-corner, play-purties and stink-purty, chiffarobe and monstrosity. (Translations: off-kilter; diagonal; toys; perfume; a wardrobe; and any large piece of furniture with multiple purposes. Mine is a desk/china cabinet.)

The word ‘tired’ remains troublesome. I just can’t muster up the energy to enunciate tie-erd when I am, in fact, tahred. (“And feathered, too?” wags enquire.) I’ve tried to navigate around it, but substituting ‘plumb tuckered’ just brings new problems.

I’ve learned that confusion and/or hilarity ensue if I neglect to utilize my internal Texan-English translator. If I say, “I might-could-oughta hang fire on buyin’ a new chiffarobe ‘til I can get over to Ikea. It’s a fur piece, but worth the trip,” people think I’m planning an indecisive fiery protest against the fur trade. (“But Ikea doesn’t even sell chiffarobe fur!” they whisper.)

Telling my sons “Y’all hush” has the opposite effect, and asking Large Child to “reach me down” something from a high shelf invites a gleeful grammar lesson.

I must admit, sometimes I’m not even sure what I mean. I’ve always used ‘It don’t make me no never-mind’ to indicate neutrality, but a friend from North Carolina is adamant that it means ‘I don’t want to.’ I’ve been unable to find a rule about triple negatives, so she may be right. But she also insists that ‘cut on the light’ makes perfect sense as the opposite action of ‘cut off the light.’

Many expressions have outlived their origins. Few of us tote muzzle-loaders nowadays, but ‘hang fire’ hangs on. My tattered Joy of Cooking makes no mention of egg-sucking (although it does offer instructions on how to skin a squirrel) but ‘Teach your grandma to suck eggs’ remains a useful response to unwanted advice because today’s know-it-alls have no idea what it means. Confused, they vanish like ninjas.

I retain a fondness for many sayings that drawled through my childhood, even though experience has taught me not to voice them. My Okie Daddy often declared something or someone ‘useless as teats on a boar hog.’ It’s a perfectly fine expression. Lincoln used it, but I can’t recommend that you do the same. People fall about laughing, which is also the response you’ll get if you complain that you feel like you’ve been ‘shot at and missed, and shit at and hit.’

Texan is a colorful language. Even the colors are colorful; fish-belly white, shit-brindle brown, goat-vomit green. And Texans cuss. They cuss cheerfully, creatively, and habitually. Cussing is natural as breathing, and just about as hard to stop for any length of time. Conversations with preachers are, of necessity, brief.

This creativity vanishes when naming, or nick-naming, people. Every family in my small town had a multitude of Bubbas and Sissies. To distinguish between them, at family gatherings you’d hear “Ask Aunt Sissy where she keeps her big spoons” and “Tell Cousin Bubba we need more ice.” This may have given rise to the belief that Southerners intermarry with casual abandon.

Despite the overabundance of Bubbas and Sissies, accurate identification could be achieved through context:

“Sissy, are you sitting down? You’ll never believe what I heard from Sissy at the beauty shop! She said Bubba at the bank run off with that red-headed Sissy.”

“Ohmylord! The one from the café?”

“No, you know the one, that tall realtor gal.”

“Ohmylord! Does Sissy know?”

And so on.

I’ve heard that language shapes culture, and my native tongue certainly shaped me. To this day I’m reluctant to travel north of the 35^th parallel, thanks to the alarming expressions that sprang to shivering lips every time a blue norther chilled Nueces County. If it got cold enough in southeast Texas to freeze certain intimate appendages off a metallic simian, I shudder to think what life must be like on the frozen steppes of, say, Missouri. Given my druthers, I’ll stay in southern climes. Being parboiled in sweat may be uncomfortable, but you won’t lose any body parts, and that’s a fact.

With a short ‘a’.