Tiki Central / California Events / Tiki Oasis 2013 - HulaBilly - Official thread
Post #684759 by Cammo on Fri, Jul 5, 2013 4:02 PM
|
C
Cammo
Posted
posted
on
Fri, Jul 5, 2013 4:02 PM
This may shred a lot of preconceived notions of what hillbillies are all about, but... The Ozark dialect is a direct descendant of, and probably more closely related to Shakespearian English than our present day usage of American English. Early settlers from the British Isles brought their language, slang, music, fashions, and food styles with them. As England progressed "beyond" Elizabethan culture, these styles survived intact in the Ozarks. So - Shakespeare's England and language survives in phrases like "vittles","set a spell","y'hear" and in the wild, fast played mandolin that's at the heart of great bluegrass music and the jam sessions that go on for hours. And of course in young romance; Romeo's Juliet was only 13 years old. Here's an article written in 1964 all about it: Mitch Jayne, one of the Dillards (well, their bass playing friend) taught in one-room schoolhouses in Dent County and documented the use of Elizabethan English by his students. When Jayne asked a student to stay after school for some chore, the boy replied, “No, Mr. Jayne, I’d best haste home. Mother don’t sanction us being dilatory.”
He wrote a great book about his experiences, here it is: ...and here's the thing that's gonna really blow yar brains. If all this is true, and it certainly does seem quite astonishingly reasonable, what this all means is that the Ozark Hillbilly dialect is ... *AN ISLANDER DIALECT. * Because it comes directly, and is one of the few survivals of, the early British Isles. |
