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“Cha’eatin’ for lunch?”
“Let’s sluff class and go get Fizz.”
“My funeral potatoes tipped over when I was going through the roundabout!”
“You’re gonna have to go acrosst a crick on your way up the mou’un.”
Communication is universal. There are over 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, and within those languages are regional accents. These unique dialects can be found in communities as small as Sanpete County.
According to a recent NS survey, family has the strongest influence on how students speak, followed by friends. Junior Darld Swapp, however, may have had a different source for his drawl.
“My mom thinks I’ve been watching too many Westerns when I was little,” Swapp said, “and that somehow my voice just adapted to it, like John Wayne and those old kind o’ Westerns.”
At NS, it’s common to hear words
spoken in the halls that are missing syllables, vowels, and consonants. Over 50% of students surveyed say mou’un instead of mountain, and about 34 percent say cran or crown instead of crayon.
“We don’t enunciate,” said NS En- glish teacher Kaylene Johnson,“but I think that might be an American thing, not just a Sanpete thing. We don’t enun- ciate, and we blend everything together.”
Along with pronunciation and enunciation, some words and phrases are unique to Utah, especially in rural towns. Sluffing, another word for skipping class, is a term only used by Utahns. Throughout the rest of the country, it’s called ditching or cutting class. One of the most common Utah phrases, “I’m going up north,” means that someone is taking a trip to Utah Valley.
“I do say all the time, ‘I’m going up north,’ so that’s like a colloquial thing,” Johnson said. “That means I’m probably going shopping, getting something to eat, hitting all of the spots I need to hit. Going up north means you have a lot to get done––we all know it isn’t just driving up that way.”
Speaking in a local dialect has its advantages. At NS, students can feel connected to their peers when they use certain phrases or pronounce words in a specific way.
“I think when students speak using the local dialect, they’re recognized as being a part of the community,” John- son said. “It’s almost like being part of a club. It’s fun to use the phrases and [students] kind of celebrate them.”
Although it’s fun to be recognized as a part of the community, local dialect––especially using bad grammar–– can make it difficult to get a professional job outside of a small Utah town.
“It’s difficult to be taken seriously in formal situations like school, and a career, outside of Sanpete or Utah if you use incorrect grammar,” Johnson said.
NS junior Kaceeus Hathaway, who has lived in Sanpete for five years, doesn’t mind that he’s picked up a slight Sanpete accent.
“I’m just fine with the way I talk,” Hathaway said. “As long as people can understand me then I think I should be fine.”
Almost 60 percent of students surveyed said that they had been made fun of for the way that they talk. But Swapp doesn’t take offense when people laugh at the way he talks, he enjoys it.
“Sometimes they’ll laugh about [my accent], and I’ll just laugh with ‘em,” Swapp said. “I don’t get hurt about it. Well, I love makin’ people laugh. Every time I talk it’s just everybody laughs, and I enjoy it. It’s fun, sometimes I can just be a goofball about it.”
Accents and subtle changes in words are just a small part of how peo- ple communicate with each other, but still add to the uniqueness of a culture.
“I feel like it’s kind of cool the way we express things universally,” Hathaway said. “When we ask questions or we express surprise, our body language and facial expressions, that’s universal and people understand that.”
