Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Badfic fake Southern Idioms

Elisabeth wasn't sure if this should go here or not.

Perry is always protrayed as a Good Ole Boy from the South with those corny Southern expressions.

So here is a list of made-up 'Southern' expressions that would make any true Southerner cringe.

1. He's as relaxed as a opossum on codeine.

2. He's as pumped as a squirrel chewing caffeinated nuts.

3. He couldn't be happier if he were a puppy with two tails.

4. He jumped up like a piston on a spark plug.

5. He was as excited as a boy scout chugging his first swig of Jack Daniels.

6.He couldn't been happier if I gave him a 12 pack of cold ones and a John Deere.

Yep, I am from the deep south and I hate all of them, especially the one about the boy scout.

Southern expressions can only be developed over generations of use.

As someone who was born two blocks from the White House of the Confederacy I hate all of those as well. I also go nuts when someone says you all. It is y'all thank you very much. I now live in Maryland but I'm still a couple of blocks south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Bless your heart! Love it.

I am from middle MO, and as some of you can attest to, I do say y'all and Howdy.

Another example of a perfect Southern expression.

I have to agree, all of those quotes James posted are horrible. There are some Southern expressions and nuances that make the English major in me cringe, but for the most part, I don't see anything wrong with most Southern speech. Nor do I see anything wrong with "y'all" - it is a contraction with just as much validity as "can't" "won't" "isn't" and so on and so forth.

Southerners don't say "opossum." Southerners say "possum." The first "o" in the word is silent, like the "p" in swimming.

And that's a Southernism too.

I lived in South Carolina for several years and it was a deep bed of southern life. I think for my ear the southern language has softer sounds and although there are some horrible sounding phrases, when spoken by some it is beautiful to listen to.

My only beef is anything that involves "fixin' to."

JD

That's not southern, the is poor grammar and it is universal at least from the folks I have heard it from.

Oh, man, you've heard it from others? *runs and hides* Well it's hugely popular in the southern sticks where I grew up, and I just thank God I've yet to hear it in southern Texas or east Georgia LOL. It's just weird!

JD

Sorry to burst your bubble, JD, but...

I'm Texas born and raised (Houston, to be exact), and "fixin' to" is a phrase I heard regularly while growing up...

Sadly I heard it often when we lived outside of Atlanta.

I grew up north of the Mason-Dixon line, but moved down to North Carolina 16 years ago. I love Southernisms. James, that list reminded me of some of the more unhinged Dan Rather lines.

"Y'all" is an exceptionally useful word. Perfect for speaking to doctor's offices and store clerks. I picked that one up almost immediately.

These last two years, I've started working in a blue collar industry (I do accounting; the company makes concrete), and most of the people there are born & bred in NC, so I get to hear this sort of thing a lot.

I started saying "right quick" a few years back -- my husband laughs at me, but it's the same thing as saying "real quick." My latest acquisition is "might could" -- short for "that's something that I would be able to do and I'll probably do it, but I don't want to commit in case I change my mind."

And now, y'all, it's my bedtime, so I might could wrap this up right quick

Or maybe I'll add... I've found some "kinder and gentler" alternatives that I've switched to. My favorite is "fuss." Instead of telling my kids their Dad's gonna yell at them, I tell them he'll fuss at them. Then there's "stuff happens" or "dang." I also use "frell" but that's from Farscape

Lately I've heard people use "sweet!" -- is that a regional thing, or more widespread?

PJ

I do declare! That thar list was from my beloved and I had nuthin' to do wit it...

James

Yeah, yeah, we ain't buyin' it.

PJ

James you amost sounded like a southern belle. Night sugah!

This is a perfect example of why two grown people can't have a legitimate conversation with three little ones underfoot. James thought I had asked him to post it this way since I've been online so infrequently lately (school year--here I come!) but I had told him that I was planning on posting it myself someday when I got around to it.

This is what I had originally planned to post:

In the original series Perry White oftentimes uttered made-up Southern phrases that were intended to provide character but sometimes sounded a little off. When I write Perry, I try to make sure he turns a colorful phrase without rehashing the same old stuff.

Yesterday I tried a new tactic. I figured I could write much worse than the original writers. So I spent five minutes spinning out the worst fake Southern idioms I could come up with. I wanted to challenge y'all to try your own hand at badfic. Surely somebody writes worse than I do (although I must confess that it takes real talent to intensionally write poorly).


Elisabeth
PS I thought the "o" was always silent in opossum. That's why it's "a opossum" and not "an opossum."

I've heard Jimmy Olsen say that, so it's probably not regional.


Elisabeth

Definitely not regional, I say it here. It's my good friend Nick's favourite catch phrase.

Picked up the habit from the raft guides when I used to tackle white-water in Canada.

And LOL. The bubble doesn't burst until people start saying it around me!

JD

Hey, CP33 - Atlanta, Georgia is part of the south. And “fixin’ to” is a very southern saying - I’ve heard it all my life. But I don’t recall ever hearing it when I lived up north in Columbus, Ohio or out west in the Rocky Mountains. Maybe it is bad grammar, but it’s no different than some of the other sayings from around the country. It couldn’t possibly be worse than “youse guys”.

Y’all might be interested to know that the southern dialect and more especially the Appalachian dialect is considered closer to the King’s (or Queen’s) English which, of course, is the home of English, than any other American dialect. For instance, how would some of you define row (I don’t mean to row a boat.)? Now come on... Do it without looking it up. How many of you know what it means? (Bet Elisabeth knows.)

~~~~~

And how about this... What’s the following mean?

“Elisabeth, will you go to the store for me?”

“I don’t care to do that, James.”

Come on now, tell me quick - your first impression.

~~~~~
And where in the world did you get those Southernisms, James? Surely those weren’t on LnC, were they? Oh, I see - Elisabeth made them up. But, yes, some of Perry’s Southern sayings weren’t quite right.

I believe “sweet” is more widespread, Pam.

~~~~~

Hehehe... I know Elisabeth made this up (pretty cute). Here's what we'd really say:

He's drunker 'n a skunk. ('n is a very shortened version of than.)

I'm as corny as Kansas in August,
I'm as normal as blueberry pie.
I'm as trite and as gay as a daisy in May,
I'm as corny as Kansas in August,
High as a flag on the Fourth of July!
If you'll excuse an expression I use,
I'm in love, I'm in love,
I'm in love, I'm in love,
I'm in love with a wonderful guy!


From here . *is a dork*

Julie

row = fight

i think...

Yes, it does mean row. I know I've heard it sometime here.

Very good, Carol. I does mean fight. Hey, Smiley, I'm not sure what you meant... Did you mean that row means to row a boat? There is a another meaning. It's a noun rather than a vowel. As Carol says, it means fight or argument.

So no one else wanted to say what they thought the other meant, huh?

I meant that I've heard people around here refer to getting into a fight as getting into a row. A rabble rousing row, infact.

Yes, a rabble rousing row it is.

Sounds like "no" from here. But it's lots more polite than "do it your damn self"

PJ

Hey, Pam, I'm surprised you came up with that answer since you are from NC. It's a regional thing. In some regions of the US, this means, "No, do it your damn self!" In other regions of the US, this means, "Why, sure, James. I'd be delighted."

I found that out the hard way when I had a boss from Connecticut. She was totally bewildered when several of her employees told her, "I don't care to do that." They (and I) meant that they'd be glad to do it. She thought they were saying, "Nope, ain't gonna do it."

I'm in NC now but I was born & raised in PA. And I confess I'm having trouble figuring out how "I don't care to do that" means "yes, I'd be delighted" " I don't care if I do that" makes a bit more sense to me -- kind of like "don't mind if I do" which generally conveys much more enthusiasm than the bare words would suggest to me.

I guess maybe it's like "I could care less" which actually means I could *not* possibly care less than I do right now. Or "That ain't nothin'" which, again, means that it *is* nothing.

English is a funky language. Which is what makes writing in it so fun.

PJ

I've just caught up with this thread - very interesting.

I was caught by surprise with Nancy's bringing up row = fight as something unusual or surprising, because here in the UK it's commonplace to use it in that context. In fact, most people in the UK would say "I had a row with her" rather than "I had a fight with her", I think. Fight here mostly tends to denote something more physical than a verbal argument.

And, of course, it's pronounced differently in that context. Not row as in boat, but row (r-ow).

It had never occurred to me before that that wasn't universal.

Learn something new... (at least, you do on these boards )

LabRat

As to southernisms, how about...

God bless a milkcow

Good googaley-moogaley (say it just how it is spelled)

Grinnin' like a possum eatin' briars

Durnit (instead of dammit) *got quite a few spankings over this one, too close to the real thing* :rolleyes:

Pam, this line reminded me of one year when I was watching the American Presidental election returns. (Yeah, I know. I'm Canadian. But there isn't much that's more entertaining than an evening of watching election returns ). Anyway, I spent the whole evening and long into the night with a pad of paper and a pen, feverishly writing down Dan Rather lines for use in my fics .

As for y'all... I'm a Canadian and I use that expression occasionally. It works so much better than just saying 'you' when you want to be sure that everyone knows that they are included.

ML

And so it is in the region of the US I live in. But it’s not commonly used in other parts of the country. If I’d said that when I lived in Columbus, Ohio, they would have given me a dumb look. But this part of the country (Kentucky) has deep Scottish roots so that may explain it.


No, not really. It’s a friendly statement. Like: “I’d be glad to help you.” or “I don’t mind doing that.” It would be closer to how the following is used:
This is often used around ‘these here parts’ to say, “You’re welcome.” I guess it’s kind of like saying you’re welcome in Spanish - De Nada which means of nothing or it’s nothing. That’s kind of odd since there isn’t much in the way of Spanish roots here. But there is some French roots here. Perhaps since they are both Romance languages the French is similar, but I don’t know.


Well, gosh darnit (variant of durnit), my mama taught me this saying and I bet I’ve been known to say it in the past week or so.

Going off topic, just a tad, this reminded me of a Jonathan-ism that I read in a fanfic a long time back, which always amused me. Something about a mouse and catnip. A mouse selling catnip maybe? Anyone know the one? It's bugging me now and I have zero clue which story it would have been in either.

LabRat

All this talk of possums reminds me of a song I heard at a family gathering one year. My music of choice is rock, so I wasn't paying real close attention as the singer started out with the whole "children are hungry/don't have a job" sort of lyrics. But I just about fell off the picnic table bench laughing when I heard the chorus:

There's five pounds of possum in my headlights tonight.
If I can just run him over, every thing will be all right.
We'll have some possum gravy, oh what a beautiful sight;
There's five pounds of possum in my headlights tonight.

'Toc

OK,
I know I'm late to the party,
but have just come back to the boards after a 3 month break due to RL driving me up the wall...

anyway
did anyone else notice that he should be
as relaxed as AN Opossum...

and
grinnin' like AN Opossum eating...


oh,
and the tain't nothing phrase reminds me of the Aussie (but perhaps universal) no problem in that they share the same meaning...

In the US South, no one says Opossum. The O is dropped. We say Possum

Just caught up to this thread... funny.

I'm a 5th generation native Texan, so I have a few opinions on how to talk Texan, which is not necessarily the same as southern.

I'm gonna hav'ta disagree with the opinion most of y'all seem to have about the phrase "fixin to." That is commonly used here and is quite proper for a Texan to say.

In fact, I'm fixin to go to lunch.



This is a little EXAGGERATED but close to home...
http://www.rice.edu/armadillo/Texas/talk.html


*****
Never ask a man if he's from Texas. If he is, he'll tell you on his own. If he ain't, no need to embarrass him.

They say Texas is like a whole other country... and The Republic of Texas WAS a sovereign nation before joining the United States.

I've been mostly off the boards for the last couple of months, getting ready for school to begin. I haven't read a little bitty bit of this thread since the last time I posted.

As for the Southernism, I was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin--not exactly Southern. I feel that if I, a Northerner, could notice how poorly they wrote the Southern stuff it must be pretty noticeable.

There was a definitive drawl where I went to college and phrases like "y'all" (I still use that one a lot) and "fixin' to" were commonplace, despite the Northerly latitude (or is that longitude?). Anywho, I was told that the accent wasn't a Southern drawl but a "river drawl." I "axed" about it, but nobody could tell me why river towns would have a different set of accents and sayings. That'll learn me to axe a stupid question.


Elisabeth

"I like to have fell off'n my chair readin' this here thread."

To some, that sounds like it's lifted from an old Beverly Hillbillies script, but it's the type of thing that a Southerner - especially one from the Southeast - might say. And my favorite Texasism is probably "He's all hat and no cattle."

First Yankee who can translate that one wins a no-prize!

Terry, I just heard that this weekend on "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys." She was addressing a rodeo cowboy, and she was talking about his inability to make a commitment. I thought it meant he was a fraud (a pretend man, so to speak, who couldn't come through with the goods when it really mattered).

Back to Elisabeth's first list of madeup Southernisms: I think Imay have heard the positive version of that one: He's happier 'n a puppy with two tails. That kind of sounds like Jeff Foxworthy.

I always find this kind of discussion amusing because my perspective is that of a real Southerner, i.e., someone (originally) from the Southern Hemisphere, even if I live in the other half of the world (you know, where they have the seasons backwards) these days.

When I was a kid, I used to find things like the anthropomorphic drawings of the winds that were found in comics to be very weird: the South wind was usually a "Southern" belle, drawl and fake dialect and all, which was just plain odd to someone who's felt the winter wind "straight off the Antarctic"; and the North wind was worse, all ice and snow gear, when I was used to "hot Northerlys" that could make summer days almost unbearable (not to mention the occasional dust storms they brought -- ever seen a dark red cloud blot out huge swathes of the sky over a city?).

Mind you, the Poms are worse, what with their obsession with naming parts of England -- they even put it on road signs: "The North", "The South", "The South-West" and so on (we shall pass over the Scots who, of course, are further north than all the English ). And they use it as a reason to squabble; I've squelched more than one pointless argument by interjecting (after thickening my natural accent), "Well, from where I sit, you're all bloody Northeners anyway!" By the time they recover from the blasphemy, they've generally forgotten what they were arguing about in the first place. :rolleyes:

Oh, and "opossums" are so named to distinguish them from Australasian possums. It may also be a sign of the (in-?)famous courtly "Southern" manners that they are Opossums rather than what their southern cousins are generally referred to as, namely "Bloodypossums!"

Phil

lol
this is of course due to the fact that they are different species...
with OPOSSUMS being rodents, and POSSUMS being marsupials...


and your comments on the NORTH winds reminds me of another curiosity that I found when reading....
before I knew better I always wondered about birds flying SOUTH for the winter.... why on earth would they want to go south to the Antarctic in the winter... and then to bloody Queensland for the Summer?

Opossums are also marsupials and pretty neat, even if they are ugly. They are resistant to rabies. Their babies emerge from the womb at 13 days gestation and then crawl into the pouch where they connect to really long nipples for the next 70 and 125 days. And of course, there's the "playing dead". I worked with Dr. William Krause for a while and he studies opossums, so I had to learn to look at them as something other than roadkill. http://web.missouri.edu/~krausew/Histology/Home.html . Boy, are we way off-topic!

I thought so as well!

I live in an urban setting in central Canada and I use y'all everyonce in a while. i don't really here that here in the city.

As for 'row' (r-ow) only my grandparents use it who are from England. I use it from time to time and pple know what I mean here.

My mum-in-law spent some time with some pple from the States (I don't what area). She kept saying they said "you all" and I said no it's "y'all". I can't recall what area, if any, says it "you ll". (Maybe she said Chicago, which I do realize isn't part of the south.) We kept asking her to repeat the phrase because she was says it was really...in an amusing fashon and slow and thinking she had it bang on. It was far from it. I guess you had to be there.

I've always wanted to explore the southern USA.