Understanding Utahspeak

When you move to Utah make sure you know how to speak the lingo.

Years ago I heard that some linguists can listen to a person talk and determine where they're from, within 50 miles. That would be especially true of Utah, where such linguistic divisions are geographic. My dad was raised in the central part of the state, where a short "a" sound was substitued for a long "o", giving him pronunciations like "shart" for short or "harse" for horse.

Dad was sometimes teased for this. He worked with a lot of out-of-state people, mostly from New York. He asked me once, "How do you pronounce the word s-h-o-r-t-s? I said, "Shorts," with the long "o". He said, "See? They've been kidding me! I told those guys in New Yark I was pronouncing it right! Sharts! Just like you said, sharts!" Apparently Dad couldn't hear how he sounded.

Despite being raised just 7 miles from Dad, my mom didn't talk that way. She was precise with her speech, making sure she pronounced her words correctly; that came from her own mother, and I'm glad, because she impressed it on me. Otherwise I'd sound like a Utah hick like Dad.

When people move to Utah they've got to be startled by some of the expressions Utahns use without thinking. My favorites are "Oh my heck!" and "ignernt." I tell people who ask that "oh my heck!" comes from an early Mormon belief, "Swear not by holy places." So to early Mormon settlers the term "Oh, my heavens!" which is polite to the rest of the English-speaking world, would be blasphemy, akin to taking the Lord's name in vain. "Oh my heck," or even "oh my hell," are OK because hell obviously isn't a holy place. "Ignernt" is a corruption of the word ignorant, but "ignernt" means rude, as in "That clerk in the grocery store was so ignernt to me!" I've tried to explain it to the folks who use that term that it isn't a word. One guy I worked with said, "I thought there were two words, 'ignorant', and 'ignernt'." Nope, sorry, just one word, and the one you're using doesn't exist.

Still, it means that if I'm in a crowd in say, Hong Kong or New York City, and I hear someone say, "Oh, my heck! That woman bumped me and didn't even say 'excuse me'! How ignernt is that?" I know I'm hearing someone from close to home.