Maybe people from other areas do this, as well; but since I moved from northern Idaho (where everyone spoke :normal English" down to the southern state of Alabama, I have learned some new words in my vocabulary, and some interesting expressions. All over the United States, you can go into a grocery store and get a shopping cart to put your groceries in. Down here , they call them "buggies". No one here has ever even heard the word "pop" as it refers to a carbonated drink. They call it a soda, sodie, or sometimes, just a Coke, regardless of what flavor it is. In Idaho, we might "give someone a ride" to the store. Here, they say "I will carry you" to the store. No matter what you are about to do, you are "fixin' to " do whatever it is. If someone says "Well, Bless yo little heart" , it may mean that you have just said (or done) something that upset them very much. Then there is that business of how to address a person. "You'all = you. All you'all = everyone . Weird.... I still forget and ask at a convenience store , where the pop is at, and then remember when I get that blank stare, that they have absolutely NO clue what i am asking about. They always look so relieved when I say I mean soda. And iced tea. In Idaho, ice tea only comes one way---plain. If you want anything in it beside the usual slice of lemon, then you add the sugar or sweetener yourself. In the South they have Sweet Tea. If you don't want your tea full of sugar, then you have to ask for "unsweet tea" . I may never get all of the little idiosyncracies here figured out; but i do really like living in the South.
Here's an interesting site that deals with the regional usage of "pop" or "soda" to describe the carbonated beverage. In fact it allows you to participate in the survey.
Welcome to the south, Yvonne. I am a fairly well educated person, but that's only because reading, spelling and grammar have always been easy for me. When I was growing up in the south, my family and everyone else I knew spoke "Appalachian," with a Southern mountain dialect. LOL You all was just the tip of the iceberg! If my Grandma said, "Bless his heart," we knew the HE in question was in big trouble! I traveled a little bit, leaving my home for the big city, but I am happily back to my roots now.
When I was in the Army I spend some time in the South Carolina and found out that most things were either "over yonder" or "back yonder". Never did figure out how long was a yonder!
The English language has evolved through many changes from the "Olde English" of bygone days. It was in the days after the civil war when people in the southern states refined, revised, improved and finally perfected it. People in England (where it started) and the northern states of the U.S. have been very slow to learn and are still using much of the out of date versions of the language.
I lived in North Carolina for a couple of years, and "yonder" referred to a direction, usually indicated by a motion of the head, although sometimes someone would actually point. It was the equivalent to "over that way."
I find language interesting, as well. Back when I was growing up in Massachusetts, soda was called tonic. Very few still call it that, because even the people in the area usually call it soda, and recognize it as such. It took me quite a while to figure out what a buggy was, because we called them carriages, as in shopping carriages. Now I mostly call them carts, because that seems to be the locally accepted term, but occasionally I'll still call it a carriage, and it's always nice to hear my Mom use the word. Wicked was always pretty popular back home, and it usually means 'to the max', not evil. I even hear my nieces say that occasionally, which surprises me. I guess that one will never die.
I've found it interesting that even though I live in the South, I don't have an accent. I keep hearing about this mythical accent, and I guess if you go to Louisiana or Mississippi, you'll hear it, but not on the East Coast. It's the Northerners that have an accent. I mean, just look at people from Boston and New York. Then there's all those people from the dairy land (Minnesota and Wisconsin), they have a unique accent as well.
I grew up in Brooklyn New York until I was fourteen and spoke very rapidly and slightly nasal, then we moved to Burbank California. In New York we had to wear dress pants, shirts and ties. My first few days in my new school, everybody thought I was from a foreign country! All my school mates wore Levi's and t-shirts!
I grew up in Cleveland Ohio, I recently spent about 6 months in Atlanta, Ga, the whole time I was there I had to quess at what they were saying because I could not undersand them. The people I spent time with would say oh she is from the north that's why she doesn't understand us. In Maryland it is called soda in Ohio it is pop so that one I got already.
This is funny because I was born and raised in Ohio and my husband was born and raised in Arkansas. Sometimes there is a big language barrier especially on 'his' part. He swears that pillow is pronounced pallow - like pal and low as one word.