Lesson Five
Category
9 (continued). Pronunciation. 9.c) There is one
important pronunciation of a place name that we Southerners must be vigilant about
protecting. That word is Appalachian. Before you read further, pronounce it
out loud as a test of your Southerness, or else of how nonSouthernness may have affected
you. If you pronounced the third syllable as lay, you are in serious trouble.
The homogenising culture-killers on the national TV networks have made headway in
the cultural genocide they seek. And beware what other of their malign influences
may have crept upon you. But if you pronounced the third syllable as latch, the
Southern sunbeams after an early Easter morning shower should light your face with
radiance, and a golden nimbus should play about your angelic head, for it is surely
Appa-latch-chan in our South—Appa-latch-chan, Appa-latch-chan, Appa-latch-chan,
Appa-latch-chan. Only in a distant land north of the Kentucky River
do they use the lay pronunciation.
This
past April, I was privileged to hear Fred Chappell, an Appa-latch-chan
poet
and novelist read his moving ‘A Prayer for the Mountains,’ a poem that
among other things, prays for the gentle treatment of quiet, natural
places -- mainly by leaving them alone, untouched, maybe even unseen. In
the series of questions and answers that followed, one non-native told Mr Chappell
she was planning to visit the mountains and
asked where his favourite, most beautiful spots were for her to seek out
and tour.
Had she heard the poem he’d just read? More to the point,
had she understood it? Our gentle-natured author did not let on, but
the thing that caused him to flinch most visibly was her pronunciation Appa-lay-chan. He
kindly, but firmly and quickly, corrected her pronunciation, saying accurately
that the lay word
should be reserved for an area north of the Kentucky. I silently
noted that this is the kind of instinctive response that reveals a proper
and healthy
valuing of place, one
might go so far as to say, the sacredness of a place.
In
his novel Remembering, Wendell Berry’s main character (from Port William) is introduced at
an academic conference as being from Fort William. He stands and corrects
the introducer, because
where he is from, is important to him. Place does matter. The
other academics feel he is being petty and ill-mannered to correct the
speaker, because why should this
matter after all? These university educators go where the job is. Place
is little better than real estate, a convenient site to make money. Port
William, Fort William, Appa-latch-chan, Appa-lay-chan, why should one care? Why
should it matter? Isn’t it all the same? That is, isn’t
place essentially irrelevant, and no matter how you name or
pronounce it?
Well,
we Southerners know different. Home is not simply where the job is. Place is not real
estate. And
how we pronounce the place matters just as essentially too.
We
locals, we natives of Place, wherever our native heaths and hearths happen
to be, need
to be closely aware of how all local names are pronounced by the native
elders of
our place. We
should guard these native pronunciations closer than gold because
these pronunciations are bonded
to the place itself and are integral therewith.
In
my own South Carolina, I must frequently suffer the horrible garbling
of the street name Huger in nearby Columbia. It is correctly pronounced You-jee.
Reporters (from Anywhere, U.S.A.) just cant learn to be native and get it right
before they move (in a year or so)
to the next place where they will go on to garble the place names
there. Or take
Moultrie, either the South Carolina town or lake of that name. It
is Mool-tree, in Carolina, where Gen. William Moultrie lived and
died. Reporters just cant ever get
that right either. In Georgia, it is properly pronounced Molt-tree,
even though named after the General, whose name is Mool-tree. But
that’s OK. When
in Georgia, do as the Georgians. Georgians have a right to their
version, but natives of
Atlanta should not impose it on Carolina.
And
the pettiest peeve of them all for this author is to hear reporters
and new ‘Charlestonians’ pronounce the Cooper River with the first syllable
sounding like a military coup or James Fenimore Cooper, rather than
with the correct pronunciation of the first syllable rhyming
with look or book.
Each
one of our place-based Leaguers will likely have particular examples
of his or her
own that will parallel mine. Maybe this fifth essay in our Verbal
Independence Series will stand to make us more keenly aware of the proper
local pronunciations
of our place names -- again tied closely
to a valuing of place, and a register of how well that place
is known, understood, and loved.
An
excellent model for the scholarly recording of place names and their
pronunciation
is a fine and unostentatious volume published in 1983 by Claude and Irene
Neuffer, entitled Correct Mispronunciations
of Some South Carolina Place Names (University of South Carolina
Press). It contains guides to 400 pronunciations. Other Southern states might benefit from similar
volumes. Dr and Mrs Neuffer, who began the first place name journal in America in their
native South Carolina, diligently collected and recorded more than 25,000 legends,
origins, and pronunciations of place names in the state of their birth over a period of
three decades. It is a vastly useful and enjoyable book. It could have been
ponderous and pedantic but instead has the wit, grace and down-to-earthness that always
accompanied the lives of this wonderfully Southern
couple.
Claude
died in 1984; but what a great legacy he has left the place that he loved. It is worth mentioning that
he was a great traditionalist in other ways as well. His annual Robert E. Lee
birthday party was not to be missed. The bowls on his board overflowed with cheer
and the rooms rang with the sounds of his and Irene’s hospitality. As Claude
and Irene wrote of us Southerners, ‘the impulse to preserve a tradition is almost as
instinctive as breathing.’ I was fortunate enough to have had Dr Neuffer as a teacher
in the 1960’s. His lessons caught, or maybe
I should say, his example caught -- the best and most effective
way
of teaching, after all.
And
on the connected subjects of place, tradition, and hospitality, I must
return again to Fred Chappell. One of the questions at this same session that produced his lesson on the proper
pronunciation of Appa-latch-chan, was whether or not he liked being a Southern writer.
He replied in his usual droll way that he didn’t have anything to compare it
to, not ever having been a nonSouthern writer, but then answered with the unforgettable,
profound statement that he was ‘privileged’ to be a Southern writer because
‘here in the South, we have a kind of generosity and hospitality of the spirit’
that has nurtured his creativity. Such a brilliant and distinguished literary
achievement as Mr Chappell’s, is no doubt at least partly the result of such an
attitude -- stemming from the proper valuing of his native Appalachian place, reflected in
his caring about every detail -- down to the very last syllable of how it is pronounced.
Food for thought.
GO
TO LESSON SIX...
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