Some of the boys and girls (now men and women) that I’ve known here in Swain County for over 30 years are bilingual in the sense that they still speak the dialect language they learned as a child - but they can also switch over, if need be, to the language imposed on them in high school, college, and the modern-day work place. To a certain extent, the dialect language still spoken here is fading due to the onslaught of outsiders and the media, but it still survives in various coves and hollers, coffee and barber shops, or wherever you might, by chance, overhear someone local speaking naturally. These are used to express a wide range of emotions and insights that can be insightful, mournful, blasphemous or humorous. Whatever its sources, the language is rich in dialect words and expressions. On the other hand, Western Carolina University historian Tyler Blethen, who has studied the Scots-Irish movement from England to Ireland to North America and into the southern mountains, once advised me that the language dates more or less back to the Plantation of Ulster era-that is, from about 1620 to 1715 when Scots were settled in northern Ireland in great numbers.
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