"carry/carried"----I think this one got me first as unusual to a yankee when I first went to college at Berea. I think it's most popular in the Carolinas and southern Virginia, but it's a popular usage other places as well. The other one is "fixin' to" .... far more popular in the South but has some rural usage everywhere. I had used it for years but found it relatively unknown in the cities, but very used in the South. To use both in a sentence......

I was just fixin' to ask my Daddy if he could carry me on down to the Piggly Wiggly."......Meaning "I am going to ask my Dad if he could drive me to the grocery store."

Seriously, the first time I heard "carry" the mental image of someone riding piggyback came immediately to mind!

Sometimes it's just the pronounciation.....as in the two different ways to say "queer." Now if someone is homosexual, he's queer (kweer). No problem. But if someone is acting oddly, he's actin' kinda' queer, but now it's pronounced "kwa-oir." Thats as close as I can get it phonetically. Almost, but not quite, two syllables and the "oir" is as it is in "choir." Thing is, you have to flow the "a" into the "oir" so they become one distinctive sound. Hard to explain, you have to hear it.

More mountain than southern is "holt." The real word is hold, but the usage is, "That stuff is okay I guess, but it ain't nothin' I holt with." Meaning you disagree and are trying to be polite about it. The finest secretary I ever had used it a lot and although most of her accent was pretty well "cityfied" her usage of holt still stuck, as did her ability to turn "hello" into a 5 syllable word. I always loved that sound when she answered the phone!

More later.....

Spaw