Sprecken Sie Pennsylvaniaish?
Written by Cindy O. Herman
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I can't hear it. My husband laughs at my coal cracker accent, but for the life of me, I just can't hear it. Say "curtain." Now, if you heard me say it, you'd laugh. Unless you were a fellow coal region native, and then you'd say, "What's wrong with it? I can't hear it." Kitten. Mountain. Milton. It's something to do with all those en words. |
"Martin," he insists, and I just can't hear the difference. "We're saying it the same way," I cry, but he laughs. And he's not the only one. Few people find their speech patterns laughed at as much as those of us who grew up in the coal regions. My sister knew a man from Shamokin who was so anxious to get rid of his accent that he took speech classes. Some time after the classes, he was in North Carolina paying for something in a store, and the clerk asked him if he was from Shamokin. True story. She said she could tell by the way he spoke. I would have to say, judging by my Shamokin classmates' last names, that our speech is influenced by the Slavic countries - Poland, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia - and by Italy. Or, in Shamokin talk, It-ly.
Thus, you have speech patterns that sound almost Mafia-ish: Dees guys. Dem t'ings. My brudder, Ant'ony. But the coal regions lack the rapid-fire gangster sound of the Bronx. You've got to drop your jaw when you hit certain vowels, and draw them out: My brudder got hit in da mout. And it's funny with speech and accents, unless someone points it out to you, you'd swear you were speaking the King's English. So, this kitten/button/Milton thing ... what am I saying wrong?
At last, my sister-in-law helped me. As near as I can figure it, it's not the en part; it's the t. Now, most people don't go around enunciating the t's in a word: Mar-tin, ki-tten, Ni-ttany. We sort of soften it, blend it in with the word. But in the coal regions, when we get to the t it's like a bug flies in and hits the back of our throat. We barely say it. It almost sounds more like a cough: Mar-in, ki-en, Ni-anny. Thus, in those Northeastern Pennsylvania coal towns it is perfectly acceptable to read to your children the story of "da t'ree li'le ki'ens that lost their mi'ens." And of course, to advise your children that those kittens ought to immediately say a prayer to Saint Ant'ony, who, as all good Cat'lics know, is the pa'ron saint of lost t'ings.
And I can tell you for a fact that praying to Saint Anthony will help because, when I was little, I prayed to him and won just about every time my brothers and sisters and I played "find the but'on." Cindy O. Herman lives in Snyder County. E-mail comments to her at Cindyherman1@yahoo.com.
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