This is probably the wrong approach, but I can tell you what I have been doing without having thought it out first. I'm doing a lot of old negro spirituals in church now each week. I have to make up songsheets for the people, to use, too.

I do not go and consciously white-up or standardize the dialect when the version I have wanted to learn was in dialect. I have, tho, let the melody sink in and let it draw me into wanting to sing the piece, and then once it comes out of my mouth, that's my version, and I may add or change or re-order some verses, too, as I make up the songsheet the day we will introduce the piece in church.

And since you have asked, and I am thinking about what I have actually been doing, I see that what I am doing, regardless of the degree of dialect present when I first encouter the song, is putting the lyric into vernacular-- but MINE.

So I might, for instance, come across something I want to learn, that's full of "gwine"s. But I don't talk that way-- or think that way-- and neither do I say "Go-innnggG." When I talk, I usually say "Go-in'" or "Gonna." So when the song becomes mine, it acquires that tone. And it reflects every piece that I have ever heard or sung, cuz they are all in there somewhere.

I probably sing differently now than I did a year ago, for example, just because I spent a fair amount of the year hearing the pure form and then singing my form of southern gospel. This year's learning-project is the spirituals, and I am sure that by this time next year, they will have colored my expression further.

What I do NOT do is worry about it-- I just sing what I can sing freely and personally, and then I sing it freely and personally.

~Susan