I've been working on a southern cuisine blog post, but I just can't seem to escape our speech. Our speech is just so colorful & expressive. We can't just say:
"It's hot." No, we have to say: "It's hotter than the hinges on the gates a Hell." Yes I am aware I put an "a" where an "of" should have gone. But if I put it that way, it wouldn't have been southern speech. Also, you will find, that our speech is dramatic. Take the aphorism mentioned above, how dramatic is that? We have to say it's hot and then some. We have to take it to the dramatic extreme. We paint as vivid a picture as possible to make sure we're understood. We're a very visual people. Just imagine, the description of Hell in the Bible. Okay, do you have a visual? Now metal surely gets hot, so picture the hinges on the gates glowing red like metal does when it's heated up. Let's take it up another notch to when the metal is passed red and it moves on to white. The hinges on the gates are white hot. Tell me that aphorism isn't dramatic and to the extreme. I would describe my wedding day that way. The breeze that was blowin' felt like a blow dryer. "It was hotter than the hinges on the gates of Hell, Lord ha' mercy." Lord have mercy, is like a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence for southerners. I digress, lets find our way back to aphorisms. "She wouldn't give a crippled crab a crutch, she was so selfish." "He's as crooked as a barrel of snakes." One could use that in reference to a politician. That's also pretty dog on crooked. "I was busier than a one armed hanger, Lord ha' mercy." That would describe me nearly everyday. That few aphorisms are dramatic & to the extreme. Those 2 words can describe the average southerners personality too. Y'all, I'm trying to get out of the language maze I'm in, but its just too irresistible. Just bare w/ me.
