Speaking in Tongues
The other day, Mom and I were talking about language and how much it defines a place. Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Florida (which, despite its geography, let's agree, has never really been Southern), she settled in South Carolina, and in some ways, found herself in a place that might as well have been a foreign country. She told of a time when she informed a neighbor she'd lost something. "Well, what went with it?" the neighbor asked my puzzled mother, who wracked her brain to figure out whether her missing item had an accomplice. "It was only later that I realized that 'What went with it?' meant 'Where did it go?'" she said. Over the years, she's become more adept at deciphering the order of words and other peculiarities unique to language in the American South. In fact, just the other day I heard her pronounce "can't" as "cain't."
