On the Southern Literary Trail discussion

You'll laugh, but when I saw your topic heading, I thought it was going to be about "Gs" as in "gangsters."

I suppose I watched too many episodes of "Gs to Gents" in the last decade.

It's been a while since I studied linguistics, but it is more appropriate to say that Coastal Southern has remnants of the high-brow English accent, while Highland Southern takes on aspects of the Scots-Irish speech patterns (as the article says, a very simplistic view of things). Then, once migration west began (on rivers, old Indian trails, what have you), things started mashing up, changing, and melding as other immigrant and native groups were encountered.

I do genealogy in the Southeast, and many of the families that I've traced here in Alabama have European roots in the South (Viriginia, Maryland, the Carolinas) well before 1717.

I'm from Kentucky - my family on my mother's side was in the colonies from the ealy 1700s. One branch received land in Butler County, as a result, somehow, from the Revolutionary War. The log cabin that's been there since then has actually been built around to that parts of it are intact, inside a larger home that stands on that branch of the family's farm. And this side of the family all drop their g's in speech.

Even though I grew up in Louisville rather than in the rural area in western Kentucky where my mother came from, I drop my g's as well, because my father's family, urban Irish who immigrated to the US in the 1840's, have ALSO always dropped their g's. SO I had a double does of g-dropping - stemming from various parts of the British Isles.

A few other notes:

It's funny- when someone doesn't drop their g's - there's a little bit of me which thinks of them as "hoity-toits". I suppose this is a a holdover of the family on both sides not appreciating the "airs" of said "hoity-toits" as I was growing up. I graduated from university with honors in psychology (a while back) and did grad work in clinical psych, so I find this kind of youthful-holdover belief wryly funny in myself.

2. My husband is Welsh, and though he doesn't drop his g's, from years of living on the east coast in the States and now in London, all of his family, including his children, who live in Wales still, all drop their g's. There's a saying in Wales, that the Welsh are simply the Irish who couldn't swim - that I'm guessing tells the tale of the dropped-g commonality!

A book agent (from Michigan) explained to me that she'd never heard an upper class Virginian drop his/her g's in speech. She even went on to assure me that this was true across the South. I begged to differ with her--especially when alcohol is present. I'd appreciate some of your thoughts about g-dropping as markers of class distinctions in the South.

J. wrote: "A book agent (from Michigan) explained to me that she'd never heard an upper class Virginian drop his/her g's in speech. She even went on to assure me that this was true across the South. I begge..."

I think it's more a product of exposure than class. My diction is much less Southern after 20 years of working across the US and Canada than that of my mother who had the same college education but lived her entire life in south Alabama.

Betty, I failed to mention that my book is based on a well-to-do Southern family in 1925. Not to disregard education as a factor in g-dropping, I believe that factors such as wealth and family ("who are your people") were very important considerations to this discussion of language usage. Again, your thoughts were and are appreciated. Best Wishes, J.

If the southern dropped "g" only occurs in participle endings ("ing") or similar-looking words, it is hardly a dropped "g", since the "ng" sound (so written in English) is just another form of "n" (the velar nasal "ŋ" instead of the alveolar nasal "n", I believe, but now I'm wading out of my depth!). In other words, there isn't a "g" to be dropped - although it may look like it.

In Britain, it varies from dialect to dialect and is generally not very noticeable. Do people here say "Good mornin" or "Good morning" to me? I've no idea. Some of each probably. It is also not a class indicator, since the upper classes have long been famous for their love of huntin, shootin, and fishin (but these have to be said briskly, not drawled).

Oddly, the Manchester accent does have a "g" at the end of a participle (in other words "ŋg") - particularly noticeable in "singing" which has two hard "g"s. It means that in Manchester "singer" rhymes with "finger".

Peter,
Thanks for your contribution to the discussion that in Britain what sounds like a dropped "g" is just a matter of forms and is not a class indicator. This may be true in Britain. In the U.S. the issue is debatable. Class distinction in Britain can be heard in the choice of words for the same thing e.g. serviette v. napkin. It's also heard in the pronunciation and intonation of speech, which is also true in the U.S.
Thank you,
J.