Yankee Girl Survives First Year at Southern University
 

My daughter comes home from her first year of college this weekend. These are the lessons she's learned after one year south of the Mason-Dixon line. Tongue-in-cheek, but all true:

1. All elders should be addressed as Ma'am and Sir. This is good, and she wishes everyone did this at home.
2. How to swing dance, thanks to a nice Lambda Chi Alpha who gave lessons to all the girls on her hall who had not *gasp* had this training in "cotillion."
3. What cotillion is.
4. What being a debutante involves. This is also good, and not to be scoffed at by ignorant northerners (thanks to her debutante roommate).
5. Sweet tea is good, and should be readily available in northern restaurants. Arnie Palmers are also good.
6. Joining a sorority really is one of the best things you can do in life.
7. You can never have too many sundresses.
8. Robert E. Lee had many admirable qualities, and so did/does his horse, Traveller.
9. Country music can become an acquired taste.
10. Warm weather trumps snow any day.
11. Northern girls really shouldn't wear cowboy boots. Some things just can't be pulled off.
12. "Y'all" will just sound awkward if you don't have the drawl.

LOVE THIS! So funny. I especially appreciate the "y'all" reference - which is why I stick you "you guys". Happy that she had a wonderful year. Thanks for the grins.

Love it. She is getting a great "education!"

13. "Y'all" is ALWAYS plural.
If you are speaking to a single person and ask if "ya'll" (you ALL) are coming over tonight, it means that you want to know if "you and your family/roommate/additional people (who may or may not be present)" are coming over tonight.
If you are speaking to a single person and ask if "ya'll" are coming over tonight, but you only meant to refer to that one person, well, you sound stupid.

Y'all is always plural. Always.

Yes, I understand this. My Maryland sorority sisters were really irritated when I used the term "you guys." They would say, "we are NOT guys!" So I tried saying y'all for plural situations. You know, it just didn't sound right coming out of my mouth. That's the point my daughter and I have discussed. If you're not southern, and you don't have a southern drawl, it just doesn't sound right.

Cannot love this enough.

This Midwestern/Southwestern girl learned many of the same things.

We teach these things to the new members between fraternity history and big lil reveal...;)

This is fantastic! I now own about 20 sundresses after my first year at Clemson, because they are appropriate for anything from school days to game days, and the weather is almost always right for them. Sweet tea is also truly the best tea.

The apostrophe always goes between the "y" and the "all". There are no missing letters in "all".

It's not always plural. "All y'all" is also commonly heard/used.

Thank you! It's a major pet peeve of mine.

http://cdn.indulgy.com/73/CC/HB/2294...1114ypu0Vc.jpg
:D

I'm so embarrassed and can't believe I did that! I know better. Yes, it's definitely spelled "y'all." Mea culpa!

While we’re on the subject (sort of)….what’s the deal with “and them”? My significant other is Southern, and I am not. Sometimes he’ll say something like “John and them are coming over later.” Horrible grammar aside, this makes me think he means John plus at least 2 other people, when most of the time he’s actually talking about John plus one person. Is this a Southern thing?

It is if you're using it correctly. Southerners are familiar with the pronoun "you."

Typically, I think of "and them" as a family type unit. i.e., "How's your mama and them?" when asking after someone's family.

So glad your daughter enjoyed her first year south of the Mason-Dixon line, Sciencewoman!

Generally speaking, it was understood that if you ordered “tea” at a Southern restaurant, it meant you wanted your “tea” sweeten and iced. If you preferred your tea unsweetened, you had better make sure to order “unsweetened tea”. Same if you wanted it “hot tea”.

Now a days, in many of the South’s larger cities (you know, those towns with 5,000 or more ;)), it isn’t unusual for a restaurant to include both “sweetened” and “unsweetened” tea on the menu.

Slightly off topic...

We do have sweet tea here in Maryland but when I order it, it always cames without a lemon. Is this a normal sweet tea thing or is Maryland just doing it wrong?

In Tennessee it's typically served with lemon.

In Alabama, they will typically ask you if you want a lemon. I believe it depends on the cost and availability of lemons.

Loved your post, Sciencewoman. Your daughter caught on quickly with her lessons in Southern etiquette!

Such a cute post Sciencewoman! And nowadays, I have to request lemon with my tea-whether I am in Tallahassee, Birmingham or Naples.

Southern girl survives 4 years in New Jersey
 

RE: Tea

SG - "May I please have iced tea?"
NJ Wait staff - "We don't have iced tea."
SG - "Do you have ice? Do you have tea? You can have iced tea!" :D

Well, that is a sure way to get spit in your iced tea ;)

HILARIOUS, Science Woman!

Love it! I leave to pick Hypo up tomorrow. I cannot believe their freshman year is over already!

It's a linguistic shift and it's not just happening in the South. We are starting to use "they" and "them" as a gender neutral singular pronoun when we don't know the gender of a person or when we don't want to specify gender.

We've had shifts in pronouns like this before -- we no longer use "thee" and "thou" and "thine," just "you" and "yours."

Yeehaw! I might be a Yank, but I do indeed like the way Southerners do things. :) I do, however, have one complaint:

13. Snow trumps rain any day.

"and them" tends to be more Louisiana-ish - particularly New Orleans where "your mama 'n 'nem" is common.

And to support the previous poster - there is y'all and all y'all....and they mean two different things....bless your heart!

And neither y'all nor all y'all is singular.

*feeling warm fuzzies for ScienceWoman's daughter!"

I Skyped Generallygreek tonight and she and her roommate got a big kick out of the list. I also learned one more thing:

Debutantes have their debut announced in the newspaper. Generallygreek's roommate's announcement was in the paper today. She's your ADPi sister, honeychile...Happy Founders' Day to you both!

What a cool thing to learn on Founders Day! Thank you so very much for letting us know! Please give her my best!

I have discovered that if you order iced tea in a restaurant in the North and make no mention of sweetness, it'll come unsweetened, but if you ask for it with no reference to flavor in the South it comes sweetened. My Northern friends think the South is crazy for their obsession with sweet tea, and my Southern friends don't understand why I get so excited every time I go to the Dunkin' Donuts near campus. They also don't believe me when I tell them there's practically one on every street corner, either.

Clemsongirl, my sister is from Connecticut, and she told me there are Dunkin' Donuts on every corner, and I didn't believe her either :P Guess it must be true!

This post makes me wish I had gone to school in the south like my grandma told me too. lol

We say these things in Mississippi too, but only if we like you ;)

There are Dunkin Donuts everywhere in the northeast! We have them here in Michigan but
I couldn't believe how many we saw in Rhode Island when we were visiting Brown.

Try being in the opposite shoes, explaining y'all, all y'all, and an' 'em to a rapt crowd of kids from the Northeast.

They called me "y'all" as a nick name for a semester.

Krisy Kreme > Dunkin Donuts

Shipley trumps them both.

<3<3<3:D

Nope. The late, great, and demised, Tastee Donuts of New Orleans. The name still exists but something has changed in the quality.

I just looked it up to confirm-in my 15 mile drive of doing errands the other day I passed 9 Dunkin Donuts. And that's not including all the other local coffee shops on the drive too. In high school EVERYONE came in with iced coffee and a bagel every morning from a place down the street, and then they'd all go out during lunch again because their caffeine fix had worn off.

We once had a Krispy Kreme, but it went out of business because it wasn't Dunkin. Same for Bess Eaton and then Tim Hortons. New England is not kind to non-Dunkin coffee places.

sorry, but NOTHING beats LeCave's or El Rio Bakery in Tucson. NOTHING.