It has been insisted by loyal Indianians that the speech of the later generations of natives is almost normal English; that the rough vernacular of their ancestors has been ground down in the schools, and that the dictionaries are rapidly sanctioning new words, once without authority, that inevitably crept into common speech through the necessities of pioneer expression. It may fairly be questioned whether, properly speaking, there ever existed a Hoosier dialect. The really indigenous Indiana words and novel pronunciations are so few as to make but a poor showing when collected; and while the word “dialect” is employed as a term of convenience in this connection, it can only be applied to a careless manner of speaking, in which novel words are merely incidental. A book of colloquial terms, like Green’s “Virginia Word Book,” could hardly be compiled for Indiana without infringing upon the prior claims of other and older States to the greater part of it. The so-called Hoosier dialect, where it survives at all, is the speech of the first American settlers in Indiana, greatly modified by time and schooling, but retaining, both in the employment of colloquial terms and in pronunciation, the peculiarities that were carried westward from tide water early in the nineteenth century. The distinctive Indiana countryman, the real Hoosier, who has been little in contact with the people of cities, speaks a good deal as his Pennsylvania or North Carolina or Kentucky grandfather or great-grandfather did before him, and has created nothing new. His speech contains comparatively few words that are peculiar to the State or to communities within it; but in the main it shares such deviations from normal or literary English with the whole Southwest.
In his book “The Wabash” Beste describes his interview with an Indiana carpenter, who questioned whether the traveller was really an Englishman, because his speech was unlike that of the usual English immigrants whose trouble with the aspirate had evoked derisive comment among the Americans. This occurs in his chapter on Indianapolis, in which the carpenter is quoted thus:
“‘You do not say ‘ouse’ and ‘and’ for ‘house’ and ‘hand’; all the children, and all of you, pronounce all these words like Americans, and not as real English pronounce them. Their way of speaking makes us always say that we talk better English than the English themselves.’ I had, indeed, often heard the Americans laughed at for saying so; but now the matter was explained. My carpenter repeated with great accuracy various instances of provincialisms and vulgarisms which he and all of them had noticed more or less, in all the English emigrants who had come amongst them. Seeing none of any other class, they naturally supposed that all English people pronounced the language in the same manner, and so prided themselves upon the superiority of American English. For notwithstanding the disagreeable nasal tone and drawling whine in which most of them speak, and notwithstanding a few national phrases and the peculiar use and pronunciation of certain words, it must be admitted that the American people, in general, speak English without provincial dialect or vulgarisms. Whence, in fact, could they acquire such, since all the emigrants they see came from different parts of England, and the provincialisms of the one neutralize those of the other.”
Professor Whitney, in his “Language and the Study of Language,” expresses in academic terms much the same idea.[17]
Lapses in pronunciation have never been punishable with death on the Wabash, as at the fords of the Jordan, where the shibboleth test of the Gileadites cost the Ephraimites forty and two thousand. The native Indianian is not sensitive about his speech and refuses to be humble before critics from the far East who say “idea-r” and “Philadelphia-r.” James Whitcomb Riley has made the interesting and just observation that the average countryman knows in reality a wider range of diction than he permits himself to use, and that his abridgments and variations are attributable to a fear lest he may offend his neighbors by using the best language at his command.[18] This is wholly true, and it is responsible in a measure for contributions to the common speech of local idioms and phrases. In rural Indiana and generally in the Southwest the phrase “’s th’ fellah says” is often used by a rustic to indicate his own appreciation of the fact that he has employed an unusual expression. Or it may be an actual quotation, as, for example, “Come over fer a visit, an’ we’ll treat you ’n a hostile manner, ’s Uncle Amos use t’ say.” This substitution of hostile for hospitable once enjoyed wide currency in Indiana and Illinois. Sulgrove confirms Riley’s impression:—
“Correct pronunciation was positively regarded by the Southern immigration as a mark of aristocracy or, as they called it, ‘quality.’ The ‘ing’ in ‘evening,’ or ‘morning’ or any other words, was softened into ‘in,’ the full sound being held finical and ‘stuck up.’ So it was no unusual thing to hear such a comical string of emasculated ‘nasals’ as the question of a prominent Indiana lawyer of the Kentucky persuasion, ‘Where were you a-standin’ at the time of your perceivin’ of the hearin’ of the firin’ of the pistol?’... To ‘set’ was the right way to sit; an Indian did not scalp, he ‘skelped’: a child did not long for a thing, he ‘honed’ for it,—slang retains this Hoosier archaism; a woman was not dull, she was ‘daunsy’; commonly a gun was ‘shot’ instead of fired in all moods and tenses.”[19]
While the French settlements in Indiana made no appreciable impression on the common speech, yet it has been assumed by some observers that the inclination at the South to throw the accent of words forward, as in gentlemen, settlement, was fairly attributable to the influence of the French Catholics in Louisiana and of the Huguenots who were scattered through the Southeastern colonies, though this would seem a trifle finespun; but the idiosyncrasy noted exists at the South, no matter what its real origin may have been, and it has been communicated in some measure through Southern influences to the middle Western people. However, Southern Indianians sometimes say Tennes-sy, accenting the first syllable and slurring the last, illustrating again the danger of accepting any theories or fixing any rules for general guidance in such matters. Dr. Eggleston remembers only one French word that survived from old French times in the Wabash country,—“cordelle, to tow a boat by a rope carried along the shore.” The most striking influence in the Indiana dialect is that of the Scotch-Irish, who have left marked peculiarities of speech behind them wherever they have gone. Notwithstanding the fact that both the English Quakers and the Germans contributed largely to the settlement of Pennsylvania and of the Southeastern colonies, the idiosyncrasies of speech most perceptible in the regions deriving their population from those sources are plainly Scotch-Irish; as, for example, the linguistic deficiency which makes strenth and lenth of strength and length, or bunnle of bundle, and the use of nor for than, after a comparative adjective. The use of into for in and whenever for as soon as are other Scotch-Irish peculiarities. These, however, are heard only in diminishing degree in Indiana, and many of the younger generations of Hoosiers have never known them. The confusion of shall and will and of like and as is traceable to North-Irish influences, and is not peculiar to the spoken language at the South and West, but is observed frequently in the newspapers, and is found even in books.
The anonymous writer of “Pioneer Annals” (1875), a rare pamphlet that contains much invaluable matter relating to the occupation of the White Water Valley, speaks of the prevalence of Carolina Quakers among the first settlers of that region, and remarks that when newcomers were asked where they came from, the answer would be “Guilford County, near Clemmens’s Store”; or “Beard’s Hatter-shop”; “Dobson’s Cross Roads”; or “Deep-River Settlement of Friends.” The same writer gives a dialect note which illustrates the ephemeral character of idiom. Sleys (slays) was a term applied by the Carolinians to the reeds used by them in their home-made looms. A Carolina emigrant bound for Indiana stopped at Cincinnati and offered to sell a supply of these. It was in August, and the storekeeper knew but one word having the same sound, sleighs, which were not used in Cincinnati in midsummer. His ironical comment almost led to a personal encounter before the Carolinian could explain. John V. Hadley states in his “Seven Months a Prisoner” that “Guilford County” and “Jamestown” (North Carolina) were household words in many families of Hendricks County (Indiana), where he lived. At Jamestown, on his way to Libby Prison, he was accosted by a citizen who asked whether a former neighbor who had moved to Indiana, but still owned property in North Carolina, had not enlisted in the Union army, the purpose of the inquiry being to obtain testimony on which to confiscate his estate.
The circulation of newly coined words has been so rapid in late years, owing to the increase of communication between different parts of the country, and to dissemination by the newspapers, that few useful words originating obscurely are likely to remain local. Lowell amused himself by tracing to unassailable English sources terms that were assumed to be essentially American; and if Chaucer and the Elizabethans may be invoked against our rural communities, the word-hunter’s sport has grown much simpler when he may cite a usage in one State to disestablish the priority claimed for it in another. There is risk in all efforts to connect novel words with particular communities, no matter how carefully it may be done, and it is becoming more and more difficult to separate real dialect from slang. Lists of unusual words that have been reported to the American Dialect Society afford interesting instances of the danger of accepting terms as local which are really in general use. The word rambunctious, reported from New York State as expressing impudence and forwardness, cannot be peculiar to that region,[20] for it is used in Indiana in identically the same sense. Other words, collected through the same agency and common in Indiana, are: scads, reported from Missouri, signifying a great quantity; and sight, meaning a large amount, noted in New England and New York. Great hand for, meaning a penchant, traced from Maine to Ohio, may be followed also into Indiana, but this, like druthers, for a preference or choice, belongs to the towns rather than to the country. Go like, in the sense of imitation, as “go like a rooster,” is reported from both Maine and Indiana; and foot-loose, meaning free and untrammelled, observed in Georgia, is used in the towns, at least, of Indiana. The natural disposition of Americans to exaggerate led to the creation by the Southeastern element in Indiana population of bodaciously,[21] a corruption of audaciously; and to the employment of powerful, indiscriminately with big or little, as a particularly emphatic superlative. Curiously enough powerful, which is usually identified with the earlier generations of the Southwest, is reported also from Eastern Massachusetts.[22] Sarcumstansis for circumstances, b’ar for bear, and thar for there reached Indiana through Kentucky, and are now rarely heard. Dr. Eggleston employs the broad a in “The Graysons,” where one character says bar while another pronounces the word correctly, explaining that words are not always pronounced the same in a dialect—an observation that has also been made by Mr. Riley.
Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher, whose unamiable novel, “From Dawn to Daylight,” is a dreary picture of Indiana life, gives a few interesting usages; as a right smart chance of money, heap of plunder, sight stronger, proper hard, showing that her acquaintance was principally with the Southern element, which she had known at Lawrenceburg and Indianapolis. Plunder, as a synonym for baggage, seems to be largely Southern and Western, and was probably derived from the Pennsylvania Germans. The insolent intrusiveness of dialect is illustrated by the appearance of the word in its colloquial sense in the first chapter of General Wallace’s “Prince of India.” Dr. Eggleston in “The Graysons” gives weth for with, air for are, thes for just, sher’f for sheriff, and yer’s for here is. Indianians usually pronounce the name of their State correctly, though the final vowel sometimes becomes y. Benjamin S. Parker remembers that in the early days pioneers sometimes said Injuns, Injiana, and immejut; but these usages are obsolete in the State.[23] Mr. Riley frequently uses miled (mile), and yet the word is somewhat similarly spoken on Nantucket, maild. Ornery, a vulgar form of ordinary, seems to be generally used, and has been observed in the Middle States as well as in Indiana and Kentucky. The injunction mind out, which is used in Kentucky in such admonitions as “mind out what you are doing,” becomes watch out in Indiana. Wrench for rinse, used in the States contiguous to the Ohio, is rense in New England. Critter for horse is still heard in parts of rural Indiana, which derived population through Kentucky, where the same usage is noted. Fruit, as applied to stewed apples (apple sauce) only, is a curious limitation of the noun, heard among old-fashioned people of Southern origin in Indiana. Some place for somewhere is not chargeable to Indiana alone, but this and the phrases want on and want off seem to be used chiefly in the West Central States, and they belong to the borderland between slang and dialect. It would seem a far cry from the Hoosier speech to the classic Greek, and yet Dr. H. W. Taylor has pursued this line of philological inquiry with astonishing results, tracing an analogy of sound and sense most ingeniously between Greek terms and words found in the American dialects.[24]