How To Talk Like a South Dakotian By Alice Laird Rapport

The next time you head across the crick to yer old stompin' grounds, lookin' for a hot dish and some pop fer supper, stop spittin' seeds, go to the biffy, warsh yer hands, say yer grace, fill yer white plate with white bread (slathered with salad dressing, never mayo), white potatoes, white cauliflower, and a white chicken breast — and don't call it dinner if yer at the neighbors who live kitty corner cuz they're feathers are pertnear ruffled already. 

If you go hog wild and bust up the place, leave a hunnert on the couch on yer way back to yer neck o' the woods. Ya sher, you betcha, that's the god's honest truth.

By Alice Laird Rapport

Not long after I started working in Washington, D.C., I announced to my coworkers that I was going to the snack bar for a "pop." 

Well, that got me several questioning looks. So, that was the start of my learning to speak in East coast terms, albeit begrudgingly. I found that sometimes it's the words themselves and sometimes it's the pronunciation. And, sometimes it's a phrase or expression.

Carole Tonigan and I have been having fun compiling the following examples of some of the very local-Aberdeen words and expressions that we all grew up saying.

Please add to our list in the comments section and please keep talking the South Dakota way, wherever you may be.

Our Words

Pop, not soda

Filling station, not gas station

Hot dish, not casserole

Kitty corner, not catty corner

Supper, not dinner? When is supper, anyway?

You betcha, just because we say it — and sometimes after, Yah, shur.
Okey-dokey, not just okay

Drouth, not drought

Pertnear, not pretty near

Couch, not sofa

Biffy (where did this come from?), rather than restroom

Yeah and/or ya--another just because we say it

Our Pronunciations

Creek, pronounced "crick"

Roof and root, we say them with a "short u," not a "long u"

For, sounds like fer, as in, We bought that bike fer about a hunnert bucks.
Hundred, pronounced hunnert

Wash, usually has an "r", as in warsh

Coyote, any USD person knows the e on the end is silent

Our Expressions
My old stomping grounds

Our neck of the woods

In a jiffy

If I had my druthers

Slow as molasses in January

Knee high to a grasshopper

Ruffle your feathers

Come with

Hog wild

Spittin' seeds, as in sunflower seeds

Possible Items for Museum Display

 
by Alice Laird    Email Post


I love all of Carole's ideas. Here are a few additional items I've thought of: school books, newspapers with big stories featured (Beatles arrival in USA, Kennedy assassination, etc.), typewriter, transistor radio, television, popular clothes/shoes. I don't know how available these items might be, but even pictures of some of them would be fun. 

Thanks, all! Alice L

We'd Recognize Her Anywhere: Alice Laird Rapport

Like we said many times before, some people never change. Alice Laird (now Rapport) still looks elegant as ever these many years later. Some of us have had the pleasure of knowing her from the neighborhood on S. Jackson Street (her father ran the bowling alley downtown and her mother welcomed everybody into their home) up to and including her current life in Washington, DC.

Want to add some stories about Alice, comment on the blog or on our Facebook page.