According to my northern friends, my recent acquisition of residency of the great state of Oklahoma has led to a drastic turn in events as to the way I talk. I, of course, beg to differ. “Drastic” all depends on who you talk to. If you talk to my good friend Lyndsay, she’ll crack up and tell you I have a full-blown southern accent. But if you talk to my good friend Crystal, she will, in her thoughtful and diplomatically precise way, say “Mmm…you don’t have an accent, but…you have a way and a rhythm of talking now that sounds like them.” These conversations were unparalleled in the way they amused me for quite some time until a couple of days ago I met my husband’s old college baseball coach. “Whoa!” he said. “Where exactly are you from? Because you’ve got a twang that tells me you’re definitely not from here…” Not the first realization I’ve had that I’m the one with an accent down here, but definitely the first time said accent has been referred to as a “twang.” I could hear Crystal and Lyndsay both in my mind, hopelessly reduced to giggles, and it took all I had in my to say “look who’s talking…”
While the subject of my actual accent is apparently still up for debate, the words I now use are definitely different. They say funny things down here (I’m still new enough that I can refer to my own family as “they” and my own home as “down here”. Don’t rush me). Cutting ends of words off, having compound words switch the order in which they are…compounded, and adding in letters every now and then are only the beginning. The real fun begins when they use words you thought you knew…and now they not only mean something completely different, the word functions as a completely different part of speech. I know you’re dying for a few examples.
- The title of this post is a good one. “Everhow” comes in more useful than its actually existing cousin, “however.” I haven’t pinned down the exact rules for when one uses each word (both are used), but “everhow” they are used seem to be fairly efficient.
- “Fixin’ to” is a good example…I’ve had discussions ever since I was young about the difference between “fixin’ to” and “figurin’ to”. I guess that must be a Texas thing, because here they say “fig’rin’ on”. Completely different.
- One of the first things Patrick ever said to me was to ask me if I was “slummin’”. Slumming, I think, is the word, and it means to come down a social class or two, to hang with the low-life. He asked me that about my moving to the back row in our graduate class…not, of course, to sit by him. The view was just…better.
- “Kindly” is one of the most useful words I’ve heard. If you are not quite sure about the details of the story you are telling, a little unconfident in your skills as a story-teller, just want to give the impression that things weren’t as clear as they seemed, or are just a downright indecisive person, this word will work wonders for you. It will allow you to say things like “I don’t kindly like that”, is, being translated: “I’m too polite to say that may have been the worst thing I have ever tasted/heard/seen – but I have to say something or I may taste/hear/see it again and I may die.” Or “She kindly said to me”, which means: “She may or may not have said this (or anything remotely similar) but it fits and I want to ascribe the best possible situation to her.” “I don’t kindly know” is a common one, and means: “I haven’t the foggiest idea and particles of a memory are floating around here somewhere, but I don’t want my complete forgetfulness to make you feel desperate or that I don’t care about what you’re asking.” Pretty handy, as you can kindly see.
- “I reckon” and “plumb strange” are just hilarious. I’ve officially used them both multiple times, in what I believe to be are accurate ways. Although “I reckon” is very efficient, given it eliminates a whole word in the equivalent phrase “I guess so”, “plumb strange/off/broke/” is perhaps my favorite. It’s just so funny. Nothing really surprises these people; they are some of the most even-keel individuals I have ever had the pleasure of being around. But when something unexpected does happen, the use of the word “plumb” somehow means they really are shocked. And every time someone says “Heck fire! That roof blew plumb off!”, it reduces me to giggles almost immediately.
This recent discovery of a change in my dialect (which can be downright disturbing, if you think about it too long) has come hand-in-glove with discussions my husband and I have been having about words and what they mean. Which, of course, came itself hand-in-glove with a discussion of Christianity and the church, because…well…that’s what we’re always talking about. It’s one of the things I love about our marriage. Patrick is in the middle of a series at church on Sunday evenings on Comparative Religion. He’s going through first the essentials of the Christian faith – what defines it, then going to look at major cults of Christianity and then World Religions. As he is wont to do, he has been very thorough on covering the essentials of Christianity, because most of the cults and religions that we are going to examine use the exact same words and phrases to describe their faith. Things like Jesus, God, the, the Son of God, Heaven, Hell, Sin, Sin Nature, Scripture as God’s Word, etc. can all be found almost across the board in other cults and religions. The question then becomes not one of finding the right words, but of being sure of the meanings of these words. When I say Jesus and a Jehovah’s Witness says Jesus, we are talking about two very different people.
I almost can’t explain to you how important this is. We, the church, need to know what these things mean. Maybe first of all I should ask if we know the major tenants of our faith? I mean, what makes Christianity Christian and capable of solving man’s major problem and providing him with his major, essential needs? How do we know we’ve got it right, especially when all these other groups and beliefs are saying the same thing – and using the same words? It’s kind of scary when you think about it.
Really scary, actually. We read and hear about these people and groups that embrace a false religion based on, at very best, shoddy facts and thickly iced personal opinion. We read about them and read critiques of them and think, How could anyone actually believe this. I just finished reading The Heresy of Orthodoxy, by Kruger and Kostenberger. It’s a refreshing critique of (most recently) Bart Ehrman’s philosophy of the unreliability of the orthodox claims of Christianity, most specifically the reliability of Scripture. Ehrman bases his arguments on a lack of scribal faithfulness in copying the original autographs (which he claims is due to simple copying errors as well as theologically-driven changes) and also a lack of a cohesive orthodox substance to Christianity until much later after the earthly life of Jesus. After reading (and being very unimpressed by) Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus, seeing the well-researched and respectful critique of The Heresy of Orthodoxy was encouraging. And also a little unsettling. Because of Ehrman’s easy-going style and rhetoric (as well as false dichotomies and faulty logic), his views are very compelling to the New York Times Bestseller List reader. A closer look and maybe a trip to the library for a couple hour’s research would easily dismantle most of Ehrman’s arguments and illumine most of his shady facts. But no one does that research. We just take it as we find it, and allow those words to shape our thinking. How powerful are our words, and how weak is our thinking to simply accept clear contradictions and flimsy arguments. (More on this in another post. It’s getting bigger in my head than I can expound on here.)
Our words are very powerful. They are almost the only tools we have for communicating. I was an English major in college, and so spent the better part of $80,000 learning the importance of words. They have been developed, threatened, changed, morphed and solidified, and they are so part of our daily personhood that we hardly take notice of the tools we have.
Let us be precise, people of God! Let us not take a stand for a faith that is on principle only. Let us understand what the faith says, and let that understanding strengthen our personal faith and promote our courage and boldness to learn more and thus be even more committed. Just as I am learning to fit in in this culture and language and dialect, using the right words at the right times and learning what words are especially funny or meaningful, we should be serious students of our own faith. There is no excuse for not knowing the essentials of the hope of the world.
