Anyone out there good with Appalachian dialect?

Recently stumbled over this reality TV show about heroin dealers.... Um, no, crack houses... No, that's not it...

Moonshiners. That's it. I knew it was show about someone making and selling an illegal product. That is, people being filmed making and selling an illegal product. And while it's not as illegal as the other things I mentioned some of those geniuses don't look like they know the difference between wood alcohol and sipping whiskey. No quality control, using unfiltered water, and hoping that their stills don't blow up. Watching these people being filmed breaking the law got me thinking about the setting.

And how the show doesn't have subtitles so much as translations from "backwoods talk" to "city talk". Which got me thinking about a story idea... The story is about three quarters done but has lines like:
"Don't know no Misty. Ifing I did she'll wouldn't've been here."
"What's happen o'er there?"
"Y'all see snakes in these here hills." Henry explained. "Snakes, squirrel, coons. Some y'all need ta shoot and some y'all can eat. Ain't no one feel safe without a gun here. Why? Y'all don't have one? Ray, lend them y'all's gun."

Which is my best attempt at the dialect. And dropping the 'g' from the end of words. Like shootin' and huntin' and switchin'.

It's a classic fish out of water story, five city girls going to Misty Holler to see some standing stones there and one of them having kith and kin living on that mountain. Some switchings get handed out by some night riders (brave enough to pull girls from their tents for a switching, but only when they're armed and drastically outnumber the girls). When some rifle toting kin folk show up the night riders start remembering that they should somewhere else, More switching happens, etc.

But as I look at the story I realise that I'm going crazy trying to be consistent with my y'alls and iffings (or is that iffin' without a g?). I'd love it if someone who can read that dialect could look it over.

Goodgulf

Well, I'm from the South but not Appalachia, so I wouldn't catch everything. However, I do have a couple of comments for you. Dropping the ending "g" and "y'all" looks good.

If you google Appalachian English, there is a pretty good wiki on it.


I would say: If'n I did she wouldn't of been here. ("If'n is short for "if or when.")

When I'm trying to narrate a story from another part of the world I use a facility called The International Dialects of English Archive. It contains samples of speech from English speakers all over the world, so one is able to hear - if one has a good ear - the difference between the speech of Yorkshire and Lancashire, from Southern India and Sri Lanka for example

OK, it's spoken, not written down, but if if you can actually hear it spoken then it makes your job easier.

=http://www.dialectsarchive.com/

That's helpful - I wrote a story based on the far north of Scotland and I was conscious that the dialect there might be very different from that in Edinburgh or Glasgow. I Googled and found a dictionary of highland words, so then the challenge was to make the dialogue distinctive yet intelligible on paper.

I get most of my Appalachian language from watching "Justified" on FX. In addition to the dropping of some consonants from the ends of words, and combining two or more words to make one word (e.g. y'all), they also speak something I jokingly (and hopefully not offensively) call Hillbilly formal. For instance, instead of saying "Hey, I need to talk to you" they often say, "Might I have a word?" Or instead of setting up a meeting (e.g. between a meth dealer and his henchmen, and the US Marshall) they will ask to have a "parlay." Its kind of funny: the dichotomy between the slang - which reinforces the "good ole boy, maybe not the brightest bulb" stereotype, with the intelligent, almost formal requests to "have a word." There are other examples, but I can't think of them right now - if you try watching the show, listen to the Boyd Crowder character, who may be the best example of what I'm talking about. And the Raylan Gibbons character too.

One thing I'd caution is don't try and overdo it. You don't need to get every single speech alteration in dialect to convey the concept, but do be consistent. I think that watching movies with those types of characters is an excellent suggestion. Depending on time period, of course. I'd recommend, in addition to "Justified," finding the A and E network (I think it was) story of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, the one produced by Kevin Costner. Another is the story of Loretta Lynn, "The Coal Miner's Daughter."

"Justified" is based on books and short stories by Elmore Leonard that feature the Raylan Givins character, and nobody writes better dialog than Elmore Leonard.

Good try, Goodgulf. Having been born 'n raised in the southern Appalachians, may I offer several comments? First, most Appalachian settlers came from the north & northeast, not the south. So the dialect is not closely related to 'Deep South.'

For example, in the county where I grew up, we said "You'uns" more than "Y'all", the latter being Deep South. Also, "nobody" rather than "no one"; "shore" rather than "sure;" "knowed" in place of "knew"; "them" in place of "those." Sentences like "Do you not have a gun?" would be rendered as "Hain't ye got no gun?" A man is a "feller", and a woman of course is a "gal." But don't try to write all the words as they are pronounced (e.g., fire is pronounced "far") Most "folks" would have trouble reading it!!

My father and his side were from deep Appalachia, so that makes them hillbillies. From what I read, you have a long way to go- not to be discouraging. I don't know where you're from, but there are enough problems with the proposed plot line that I probably would find the story a little annoying. Appalachians were mostly descended from Scots-Irish (protestants from Ireland). As Cal33 says, they are not like people in the deep south in accent or culture. Kentucky was a border state during the Civil War and West Virginia succeeded from Virginia because they were not Confederate sympathizers. Appalachian English is a very old form of English because of the isolation of the mountain "hollars" -hence a little of that formality. They come from a story-telling and singing tradition, so everyone in my family loved words, was very aware of how they constructed a sentence or joke and in general, spoke very well. Just making mountain folk sound stupid doesn't make them sound Appalachian. Night Riders (KKK) were meant to terrorize black people, and since there were almost no black people in Appalachia, there was also not much of a KKK presence. And standing stones?!! (My father did get switched so you can keep that).

This suggestion does not have to do with language but to make the story more realistic they would be carrying shotguns rather than rifles. Rifles are long range weapons and southerners sometimes make fun of city slicker hunters who show up with over powered rifles for hunting in close quarters.

Actually I would say that the late George V. Higgins (who I think that Leonard has acknowledged as an inspiration) wrote dialog better than anyone, including Leonard, and even including Mark Twain. But Leonard is very good.

I also agree that "Hillbilly" and "Southern" are quite different dialects, although they intersect in the "Southern Hillbilly" as spoken in the "hollars" of, say the Carolinas. You could do worse than read Sharon McCrumb's "Ballad" series for pointers on both.