“I ustacould, but I cayn’t no mo.”

“Me and Mama, we was there yesterday.”

“I ain’t never said such a thang.”

Kinga had her first encounter with southern accent, virtually unintelligible southern accents over the Fourth of July weekend. Visiting my family in South Carolina, poor Kinga probably said “Excuse me?” more times in those few days than she’s said in the last few years combined.

It’s not just the accent that’s difficult. There are so many quirks of a southern, South Carolinian accent that cause problems.

• Present perfect usually is created with a form of “have” plus the past particle (i.e., “done”). Southern present perfect is created with “done” plus either the past simple form (“ate”) or the past participle — usually the former. So instead of “I’ve already eaten,” be get “I done ate.”
• “Be” in the past simple is always “was.” “Were” is virtually non-existent. “We was gonna try, but…”

Now she has an idea how difficult the local dialect in Poland was for me.