How to Tawk Texan

Keep Tawkin’ like a Texan

Part 3 of How To Be Texan-Wherever You Are

You can keep on (or learn)  How To Be Texan Wherever You Are without really trying too hard.  Your Texas accent stays with you wherever you go.  Whenever I’m out of state (or even in state in some places) and am asked to say anything from a few words to a full blown presentation or speech, it is more than obvious where I’m from as soon as I open my mouth.

I have a standard two minute drill where I explain I am from the part of Texas known as Real Texas and that folks from Dallas or Houston don’t all sound like me.

My advice on being Texan Wherever You Are is to go and do likewise.

If ya got it, flaunt it.  Go with the flow.  Dance with the accent that brung you….

Being semi-educated I realize there is more than one dialect in Texas and mine happens to be the West Texas or as I like to call it, the Real Texas variety.  We sound extremely Texan out here, but since we all sound this way, we don’t realize it.  I readily admit I don’t know where the boundaries are.  When we come across an East Texan or even a big city Texan,  we think they sound…..funny.  But they don’t.  It’s just another Texas dialect that is unique in its own way.  Ask any foreigner from another state and they will readily say that any person from East Texas has a distinct Texas accent.

Same thing with city Texans, as long as they are native born.   We purists out here in Real Texas think they sound different, but they don’t.  They too can be spotted by foreigners as soon as they open their mouths.  It’s like Donald  Sutherland when he becomes a body snatcher and points out the humans and starts hissing and moaning…we are easily exposed as Texans.

Even my Saigon born, Arizona raised wife has picked up a Texas accent.  Now that is different lookin’ and soundin’…..in a very good way.  Here she is at the Armadillo races.  Not sure she likes this all that much.  Oh well, it’s my kind of Texas fun and she was a good sport about it.

Sprinkle your vocabulary with plenty of ‘ya’lls’ and ‘fixin’ to’s’ and you bet’s and you will have the foreigners either eating out of your hands or pukin’.

Either one is ok by us.

Speak your Texbonics with pride.

We sound just fine to us.

We aren’t ignert.  We are purty computer literate.

And not to brag, but we get along purty good here in the Lone Star State seein’s how we lead the nation in the production of nearly everthang. (Dang, couldn’t hep that braggin’ stuff.  Sometimes it just pops out.  Did I also mention we are real proud of our state?  Or is it just us Real Texans?)

Maybe it’s everbody else who needs to learn how to tawk like us.

That’s just somethin’ to consider.

And seein’s how you are here, let’s git started.

Yew can say Thank You to the person who recommended you take this course.  If you found it yourself, reach around and pat yourself on the back.

Why Texans Tawk Like They do

Linguistic experts will tell you we semi-English speaking folks mostly came from various parts of Europe, then came to the USA and later started our Westward trek.  Some of us out here further West came from the hills of Kentucky, some from Tennessee, some from the mountain regions of West Virginia, and others from the great Southern states.

We Texans are a conglomeration of all those accents and dialects.  It’s a wonder we can talk at all.  However, It’s a pretty good bet that most of our accent comes from Southern States and the folks who moved on over from the cotton growing areas.  There are historical reports of whole plantations moving to Texas along with their slaves, wives, children, old folks, and cousins.

So you can be perty (multiple spellings of the same word) dang sure that Texas is southern with a little different sound to it.  SouthernTex.  SouTex.  Nope, none of that sounds jus rite.

It’s not southern.  It’s not Western.

I just call it Texas Tawk.

Southerners speak with a more gentle drawl and it’s a little softer than the harder Texas twang that tends to be a bit nasally.  At least that is how one college speech perfessor explained I sounded like.  He used me as a ginnee pig in a class one day.

He explained that East Texans speak with more of a southern type drawl.

West Texans, he said, speak flatter, more direct, but twangy.   Sometimes we are accused of speaking nasally.

As he explained it, the southerners moved into Texas (including William Barrett Travis) and brought their gentle drawl of a language with them.  Then the language turned a little harder and a little shorter and flatter the farther West folks moved in Texas.

Their drawl came first to the Nacogdoches area and East Texas and moved slowly a little to the West.  The drawl turned into a twang and ended up in West Texas where it ‘became famous.’

So, please understand there are dialects in Texas that are more of a slower drawl….coming from East Texas; and a nasally flat  twang that is a little harder type sound that comes from West Texas.

I speak a little of both as do most of us Texans.  But I live in West Texas and that is the ‘dialect’ I mainly speak.

It’s the West Texas version of Texas Tawk that is famous.  I call this part of Texas….Real Texas. I write a lot about this area in this blog

We’re still purty country out here. There are only 1,804 kind souls in my entire county.  We are what you would call native Texas Tawk speakers. It’s our primary dialect.  Real Texas is the last bastion of Texas and this area is the heartland.

It’s where Texas Tawk became famous.

Jet Rink made it famous.

Slim Pickens made if famous.

Ben Johnson made it famous.

Woodrow Call of Lonesome Dove made it famous.  And so did Tommy Lee Jones who played Woodrow Call.  Tommy Lee Jones may have gone to college at Harvard with Al Gore, but he still sounds like he came from San Saba, Texas.  That’s a compliment in my opinion.

Can you hear Ernest Tubb singing in any voice except a West Texas voice.  Does Jimmy Dean say “Big Bayad John” when he’s singin’ that famous song.

Some folks in western movies may have had to practice their voice inflections, but I bet a buffalo nickel Tommy Lee Jones didn’t have to practice anything.  He’s from here and he is easily understandable to most of us out here in Real Texas.

As the southern settlers moved in here, they mixed in with other immigrants who were from Mexico, Germany, Sweden, and a whole lot of Czechs.  Mix all that up and slow it down a little and you’ve got a full fledged Texas slow drawl-twang going.  I went to college with some Czech girls and their grandmothers spoke with a very distinct Czech accent.  My friends from New Braunfels had old folks who still spoke German at home.

Linguists have a more technical explanation for it all, but that basically is the history of how it all happened.

It’s just like learning any other language….you have to learn the vocabulary.

Rules of speech in Texas:

Don’t come to Texas without this handy guide on How To Tawk Texan.  If you have some unfortunate relatives who live somewhere other than the Great State, send ‘em this guide.

Five Rules to Remember.

1. Lose the syllables.  You don’t need that many to Tawk Texan.  Cut those bigger sounding three syllable words down to size.

Examples: There is a road/street/area in Austin called Manchaca.  It is pronounced manshack;  Here are some more……Election=’lection;  Positive=postive;  Aggravated=agger-vated.

2. Lose the G’s. There’s no need to pernounce  the “g” in words endin’ in “ing”. Tawkin’ like thayut,,,,using the g’s and all is a good way to reveal you ain’t from the Great State.

Examples: Ridin’, Ropin’, Drivin’, Goin’, Writin’, Fishin’, Cookin’, Readin’ and such.  Yew jus don’t need many G’s at the end of words in Texas.

3. Lose most ‘L’s”.  We don’t need most of ‘em.

Examples: “It’s gittin’ code outside.”  “Turn the light bub on”   “I’ll be sure and caw you in the mornin’.”

4. Use Texanisms is everday speech.

 

Examples: “Heck, it’s hotter’n a hog on a hot plate.” Why not? Sounds Texan to me. You can also compare anything to a 3$ bill (weirder’n a $3 bill), add “fire” to any exclamation (“Crap fire boy, what’s the matter with you?”), or make up inoffensive curse words (dad gum it, gosh dang it, dag nab it, dad blazes, bull titties, etc.).

5. Don’t say ‘darn’.  If you are not a cusser, pick something else to say.

But don’t say darn.  A Real Texan wouldn’t do that.

That’s not a Texas word at all.  It’s a little too wimpy to say ‘darn’.

A lot more of us are livin’ in what I would call a city these days.  You’re just as likely to hear a ya’ll or fixin’ to in Austin as you would in Amarillo.  And that is even after all the foreigners have moved to Austin.  It’s as if they revel in being Texan.  Amen, brothers and sisters.

In my heart of hearts, I believe the foreigners tawk a little Texan because we all do.  They just want to fit in.  They saw and heard us havin’ so much fun just bein’ Texan…they wanted to feel good too.

So the fact is, Tawkin’ Texan is spreading more and more, even with ‘urban sprawl’ and the California invasion of our cities.

He’s not in The White House anymore so we can’t really blame Dubya for anything other than tryin’ to be a little too Texan.  His brother Jeb doesn’t Tawk like him, but Dubya’s Texas connection seems to run a little deeper than others in his family.  I always loved it when he said ‘Amer-cuh’, or ‘nucular proliferation’.

Kinda made me feel a connection there.  He did a good job of bein’ Texan, but he couldn’t hold a candle to LBJ.  The north eastern elite cudn’t stand him.

Like the time on his ranch when he was ridin’ out in the pasture in his Lincoln and stopped to take a leak.  He unzipped and as he said it, ‘pulled out his rattlesnake’ in front of the press corps and visiting dignitaries, including some easterners, and let loose ‘like a cow on a flat rock’.  After he finished he let out a big sigh of relief and said, “Damn that felt good.”

That’s a quote from someone who was allegedly there.  ONLY a president from Texas could do something spectacular like thayut.  And the time he showed everbody his gall bladder operation scar while he was in the hospital.

I hooted when I heard that one.  I’m real sure that made a good Texas impression on everbody.  Maybe it was what he said that made such an impression.  Naw, probly not.

President Bush walked like a Texan, talked like a Texan, and acted a little too Texan for the rest of the world sometimes.  Actually, he can’t act too Texan for most of us out here in Real Texas.  But we’re talking language here.  He could walk the walk and he could tawk the tawk.   Even if he was actually born somewhere else, he grew up in Midland.  He always came back to Texas.   Texas Tawk is just something that stays with you.  It sticks.

George W. Bush accepted the Republican nomination for president in September 2004 in New York City, stating: “Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called ‘walking.’” Texans have long been known to have a certain swagger, but this line has remained memorable.

Linguists have done extensive studies on Texas accents, and just so you know, the differences in accents are profound in some areas based on what generation the speaker is from and the area they grew up in.  However, a lot of what they know as far as vocabulary or the actual meaning of the words is very similar.

And….as I said earlier, they say there is a difference between an East Texas twang  which is a little more southern and a West Texas drawl which is a harder sound.

And Real Texas folks use familiar phrases:  Most Texas don’t take out the garbage, they take out the trash.

A breakfast dish made with a flour tortilla in most of Texas is a burrito.  In Austin it’s a breakfast taco.  Don’t know why they can’t get that straight.

A pancake is a pancake in most of Texas.  However, a lot of Texans know what a griddle cake is.  They do not know what a flitter is, but they have heard the term “Flat as a flitter” all their lives.

A young girl got out of my driver education car in Odessa many years ago and announced she was going to put a wrench on her hair.

I looked puzzled.  She said, “You know, a wrench, where you change yore hayer color.”

I said OK.  She meant a rinse.  I don’t know where she was from originally.  An Odessa trailer park I guess.

Most Texans drop their G’s and round their O’s.

As in:  Fixin’ to, goin’ to.

Night is naht.

You is yew.

A soda is a Coke, no matter what brand.  Please don’t ask for a soda in Texas. I was in the Army with a feller from Massachusetts.  He wanted to walk to the PX and get a soda.  I had to ask what a soda was.  I thought it was something you put in mixed drinks.  There I was 20 years old and didn’t know what a soda was.  I sure as hell knew what a beer was and that is what I got.  Not a soda.

Texas is surely a linguistic paradise.

When my son was little he said he needed a pehn.  That’s the way his school teacher mother had phonetically taught him to talk.  I said “What?”

He replied, A  pehn, “I need a pehn.”  I finally asked him what a pehn was.  He explained in kid language that it was a writing instrument that used ink to write the letters…an ink pehn.

“Oh”, I said, “You mean a pin (pronounced pee-yun)”

He said Yes, he needed a pin…pen….pehn…..peeyun.  I finally got it when we settled in on peeyun.

In Texas a pin is a pen is a pin.  It all sounds the same to us.

“I need an ink peeyun.”

“I’m gonna peeyun those dogs up.”

“Git me a peeyun so I can dig that splinter out.”

Way’ell, I just know other people think we tawk funny and I guess we do.  But we don’t know it.  We all sound purty good out here in West Texas, but those city folks in Dallas, and Houston, now they rilly tawk funny.  They have an accent.

We don’t think we have accents.  But we do.  It’s like that cab driver Abdul we rode with one time in New York City. He knew where we were from rite off the bat.  Other folks immediately know too.

Now you know linguistically, where we came from.

It’s easy to Tawk Texan.  Just talk with a little southern/ drawl, or West Texas twang, stop your nose up some so it has a nasally twang, slow your speech down a lot. Tell a story with your explanations of something, and drop off those unnecessary ending g’s.

Keep tawkin’ the talk and walkin’ the walk and you will know How To Be Texan Wherever You Are.

It’s a lot of fun being Texan Wherever You Are….To learn more about Texas according to David Werst and Real Texas Blog, go ahead and click here to sign up for Real Texas Tidbits.  Nothing to buy here, just good entertainment and Texas History notes.

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