Appalachian English is a common name for the Southern Midland dialect of American English. This dialect is spoken in Southern West Virginia, Southeastern Ohio, Eastern Kentucky, the Upper Potomac and Shenandoah Valleys of Virginia, East Tennessee, and Western North Carolina as well as northeastern Alabama. It is a dialect distinct from Southern American English, and it has more in common with the Northern Midland dialect of Pennsylvania and Northern West Virginia than the non-rhotic Southern dialect. While most of this area lies within Appalachia as defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission, Appalachian English is not the dialect of the entire region the Commission defines as Appalachia.

The dialect is rhotic and characterized by distinct phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. It is mostly oral but can also be found in writing. Detractors of the dialect both within and outside of the speaking area cite laziness or indifference in learning standard forms as the reasons for its existence. However, the areas where Appalachian English is spoken were settled in the 18th century, and many of the characteristics of the dialect predate the standardization of American English and continue to be passed on orally.

English speakers who settled the area came mostly from West Anglia, the Scottish Lowlands, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland via Northern Ireland in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and their speech forms the basis of the dialect. Along with German immigrants, these groups populated an area which is still largely homogeneous culturally.

Some speakers claim that those who came to Appalachia from Scotland by way of Northern Ireland, the Scotch-Irish or Ulster Scots, had the greatest role in shaping modern Appalachian English, but there is no evidence of this aside from overly sympathetic and romanticized comparisons with modern English spoken by Protestants in Ulster. Such comparisons are often made by self-educated amateur local historians who self-identify as Irish or Scotch-Irish.

Speakers of Appalachian English have little or no trouble understanding standard English, but even native speakers of other dialects can find it somewhat unintelligible, and foreigners can have significant trouble understanding it. Standard forms are taught in schools to some extent, although elementary school teachers are usually only marginally more compliant with standard forms than the average adult.

Like many regional dialects it is used most often or most characteristically in discussing cuisine, in storytelling, or when discussing native industries (i.e., coal mining, forestry: logging). The characteristic syntax and morphology of Appalachian English gives way to more standard forms in schools, public speaking venues, and courts of law, but the phonology is likely to remain the same.

Phonology

Vowels are pronounced for a slightly longer period of time than those in standard forms of English, and diphthongs can clearly be heard to have two distinct vowels, creating the characteristic "drawl" of Appalachian English.

The vowel sound represented by the letter "i" is pronounced as rather than the standard [.

Wash is pronounced The standard American English pronunciation is ^*).

Creek is pronounced (cf. standard English [).

Hollow is pronounced (cf. standard English [).

Hills is pronounced (cf. standard English [).

Participles and gerunds such as "doing" and "mining" end in instead of [iŋ.

The pin/pen merger is complete in Appalachia, and a pen used for writing is called an "ink pen."

Word final "a" is frequently pronounced ^*, as in "Santa Claus."

Intervocalic "s" as in "greasy" is pronounced ^*.

People who live in the Appalachian dialect area pronounce the word "Appalachia" or ^*.

Grammar

Conjugation of the verb "to be:"

The conjugation of the verb "to be" is different from that of standard English in several ways, and there is sometimes more than one form of the verb "to be" acceptable in Appalachian English. The use of the word ain't is one of the most salient features of this dialect. Ain't originated as a contraction of "am not." Today, however, it is used as the negative form of the verb "to be" in the present tense (cf. Scottish Gaelic chan eil) and is used in lieu of a conjugated form of the verb "to have" plus "not" to express the present perfect tense. An example of the latter would be "He ain't done it" instead of "He hasn't done it."

Whereas standard English makes no distinction aside from context between the singular and plural forms of the second person past tense forms of the verb "to be," using "you were" for both, Appalachian English has "you was" and "y'all were," making for a more balanced paradigm with "was" used for the singular past tense in all cases, and "were" used for the plural.

"Is you?" is sometimes used instead of "Are you?"

Singular forms of the verb "to be" are often used with pronouns, as in "Them is the ones I want" and "Him and her is real good folks."

Pluralized concrete nouns used as abstract nouns call for a singular form of the verb, i.e. "Apples is good for you."

"Was" is often used in the third person plural, i.e. "They was there."

Other verb forms:

Sometimes the past participle of a strong verb such as "do" is used in place of the past tense. For example, "I done it already" instead of "I did it already" or in the case of the verb "see," "I seen" instead of "I saw."

"Went" is often used instead of "gone" as the past participle of the verb "to go." She had went to Ashland. Less frequently, "gone" is used as the simple past tense. I gone down to the meeting, but wasn't nobody there.

"Done" is used with the past tense (or a past participle commonly used as a past tense, such as "gone") to express action just completed, as in, "I done went/gone to the store".

Some English strong verbs are occasionally conjugated as weak verbs in Appalachian English, i.e. "knowed," and "seed." Most speakers of Appalachian English do not use these forms, however, as they indicate the lowest level of social prestige.

The construction "don't...no" is used with transitive verbs to indicate the negative, i.e. "He don't know no better." This is commonly referred to as the double negative, and is either negative or emphatically negative, never positive. "None" is often used in place of "any," as in "I don't have none."

Verb forms for the verb "to lay" are used instead of forms of the verb "to lie." For example, "Lay down and hush."

Often, got is used in place of have. "If Wal-Mart ain't got it, you don't need it."

Participles found in present tense progressive aspect verb forms often have a vowel prefix commonly written with an "a" followed by a hyphen, and this is pronounced as a schwa sound. An example is "I'm a-goin' now." Cf. the composite present of Scottish Gaelic, as in Tha mi a-smochach, or "I'm smoking."

"Might could" is sometimes used where a speaker of standard English would say, "could maybe."

"Shall" is only used in law.

The future perfect is all but nonexistent.

Pronouns and Demonstratives:

"Them" is sometimes used in place of "those" as a demonstrative in both nominative and oblique constructions. Examples are "Them are the pants I want" and "Give me some of them crackers."

Oblique forms of the personal pronouns are used as nominative when more than one is used (cf. French moi et toi). For example, "Me and him are real good buddies" is said instead of "He and I are really good friends."

Sample vocabulary

Poke: paper bag.

Plug: a quid of tobacco.

Blinds: window shades.

Skillet: a frying pan.

Pop: a flavored, carbonated beverage.

Soda: bicarbonate of soda.

Reckon: think, guess, suppose.

Polecat: a skunk.

Touched: (sometimes pronounced with a short "e" sound) crazy.

Plum or plumb: an intensifier for verbs.

Haint: ghost.

Hussy: (sometimes pronounced with a ^*) a mean or spiteful woman; a promiscuous woman.

Pokestock: a single shot shotgun.

Yonder: a directional adverb further away than "here" or "there," preceded by the preposition "over."

Sources

O'Grady, William, Dobrovolsky, Michael, and Aronoff, Mark. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Second Edition. New York: St. Martin's press, 1993.

D.A.R.E., The Dictionary of American Regional English

American English