So during class I was having a hard time coming up with examples of how my family and I talk (sometimes), which is probably due to the fact that most people rarely pay attention to how they talk. After I class I called my mammaw and pappaw to talk to them to try to "code switch." I also googled the dialect and found some sites with some great examples and some rather complex linguistic jargon.
I found several examples of things that I say quite a lot:
isn't gets pronounced like idn't
"Is you?"
"They was there"
words like wash pick up an "R" after the "a"
feel becomes fill
running becomes a-runnin'
words like yonder, plumb, dang
dropping the "-ly" off the end of some adverbs
and of course "ain't"
From what I know of my family's genealogy and the history of the region, it was no surprise to find out that most characteristics of this dialect are from old Victorian English and Gaelic. The isolation of the Appalachians preserved bits and pieces of these old dialects and languages.
Here are some pretty cool links:
[url]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_English[/url]
http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/dictionary/index.html
http://www.ferrum.edu/applit/studyg/dialect/features.htm