Date:  Tue, 22 Nov 1994 09:45:12 -0500

From:  "Bethany Dumas, UTK" <DUMASB[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UTKVX.BITNET>

Subject: Arkansan/Arkansawyer



Several years ago Wm Safire wrote about Arkansans. I wrote Wm Safire,

pointing out that Vance Randolph in his 1953 book, Down in the Holler: A

Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech, preferred Arkansawyer. I sent a copy of my

letter to Fred Cassidy, who politely told me I was about thirty years out

of date. Sure enough, Arkansan seems to have replaced Arkansawyer.



But see Randolph (pp. 12, 224), who somewhere else (I don't have those notes

here) said that an Arkansan was somebody who didn't know who he was, while an

Arkansawyer was a native of Arkansas.



It is Randolph who documents the introduction of a House bill in the Arkansas

legislature to fix the pronunciation (it failed). Read all about this and

other little-known Ozark facts in my (soon-to-be-)forthcoming book

on Ozark Folk Speech.



Bethany Dumas = dumasb[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]utkvx.utk.edu



Ozark Quesstion of the week: If you go the store to buy "highland fish" or

"dryland fish," what do you come home with? (I don't have DARE here, so

don't look--that's cheating!)