What Are They Trying to Say?

I was passing Walmart's Vision Center when I stopped short and
looked again at their sign. And stood there laughing.

Fastened to the top of the sign at the entrance was a smaller,
computer-generated sign that read in large black letters "Outside
Perscriptions Accepted".

A woman at a desk just inside the alcove looked up and said anxiously,
"May I help you?"

"Yes," I called, for I was some distance from her, "you can learn to spell."

She looked taken aback. "Why, what's spelled wrong?"

I should have thought of a snappy reply such as: "Come over here and
give yourself a vision test," but I didn't.

"Prescriptions," I said, still talking loudly so she could hear me,
"Oh, how I wish I had my camera."

By then another woman and a man had come from the back to see what
was going on. I walked away to get the milk for which I'd come, still
laughing. I was imagining a chart for testing vision that read: "How
Minnie Dawgs Can You See," for I knew the issue was not just spelling
but a matter of pronunciation.

For example, the so-called joke that surfaces every Christmas about the
man from the North traveling through a small Southern town. He stops at
a Nativity Scene, complete with mother and child, Joseph, donkeys,
sheep, and, standing off to one side, three men dressed in fire fighters'
uniforms, one holding a fire hose.

"Wait a minute," he says to himself, Mary and Joseph and three firemen?"

Unable to contain his curiosity, he goes into a diner and orders a cup of
coffee so he can query the waitress.

She fixes him with a disapproving gaze. "You Yankees don't never read the
Bible," she snaps.

"Yes," the Northern man says, "Yes, I've read the Bible, but I've never
read anything in it about firemen."

"Well read it again," she says, "The Bible plainly states that those three
men came from afar."

And so it was with the Vision Center personnel. The employee who made
the sign spelled prescription the way she had heard it pronounced, and the
way she undoubtedly pronounced it herself.

It isn't just words, but whole phrases that remind me that southern speech
is a different language, just as the American language is different from
that of the English. In writing, the southerner has to continually translate
in order to communicate.

A woman commenting on an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article wrote: "If
they would of looked after her.."

She has always heard "would've" as "would of", and to take care of someone
is to "look after" the person. Shopping carts are called "buggies", the clerks
behind the cash register will call out to a customer, "I'll gitchee over here!"
Which makes me think of witches and Halloween, but at least they are
cheerful. I still remember the surly, unwilling clerks in New York when I was
there one winter, but in all charity I remind myself that attempting to survive in
that city on the minimum wage would put anyone in a bad temper.

I frequently had to interpret for Gil after we moved to North Georgia. Once
I went with him to get the lawn mower repaired.

"How long did you leave it set up?" the repairman asked him.

Gil just stood there.

"He means," I said, "How long has it been since you used the machine?"

I'm reminded of a German friend who tried to explain to us the difference
between High German, the official language of the country, and Low
German. He tried to get Gil and I to move to Germany.

"But what would I do there," I asked.

"You could teach English," he said, and yes, he was serious.

But the other friends around us weren't. They were laughing.

"I can just see it," one said, "scores of Germans speaking English with a
Southern accent."