Mountain talk

It was a few years ago when I pulled out a videotape Gary Carden had dropped by the office called “Mountain Talk: Language and Life in Southern Appalachia.” I thought it might be nice to hear some cast-iron mountaineers throwing out colorful colloquialisms, quaint witticisms, and the odd archaic phrase descended from long-forgotten British ancestors while I pounded away on the stair machine. 

I got a few good ones. Some of them I already knew “Plumb” is a generic intensifier. To “tote a poke” is to carry a sack. Some I didn’t know. “Si-goggle” means crooked or out of line. But Mountain Talk is more history than dictionary; it is more interested in the evolution of the Southern Appalachian dialect than in gassing us with a bunch of funny words from burly men in overalls.

Produced and directed by Neal Hutcheson, “Mountain Talk” is the product of hundreds of interviews conducted in 10 Western North Carolina counties. A couple dozen subjects make the final cut. The best named among them are Popcorn Sutton, Mercer Scroggs and Orville Hicks.

The star, however, is mountain language. Built from Scots-Irish stock, nurtured in isolation, alternately scorned and praised by the keepers of the cultural flame, the Appalachian dialect has hung tough for a couple hundred years. It’s still hanging tough but changing fast, re-shaped by the arrival of telephones, television, and good roads. As isolation fades, so does this unique tongue of speech; while many know what sody water is, not many people say it anymore.

There are no blinding revelations in “Mountain Talk,” but it is a solid piece of social history just the same. It is not incurably romantic. The subjects show humor, intelligence, insight, and pride; they also show defensiveness, self-congratulation, and more than a touch of suspicion. 

Those qualities are hardly unique to this region. The same could be said of tribesmen in Bali, farmers in France, or venture capitalists on Wall Street. If the way we talk unites us in some ways; it divides us in others. Use the wrong word in the wrong place and you’re branded an outsider and held in lower esteem. That sword cuts both ways, up and down the socioeconomic ladder, no matter what pocket of the world you’re in. 

It is in this larger sense — beyond the si-gogglin’, the Popcorn, the banjo tunes — that “Mountain Talk” makes its particular mark. In its study of Appalachian exceptionality, it affirms Appalachian commonality; our culture is like all cultures, in the sense that it grows, changes, and adapts to meet its particular circumstances. It is a living culture, complex and vital, far from a museum piece, far from a romantic ideal, in which language plays a key role.

And you can put that in your poke and tote it, my friends.

To get a copy of “Mountain Talk,” visit www.talkingnc.com.