Topical Guide 659
Mark Dorset
Small Town Life and Lore
Language: Dialect
Change, Evolution, Mutation
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 7:
Mr. Lodkochnikov looked the resort over for half an hour or so. He crossed the street. He walked up and back, from one edge of the resort property to the other, staying in the road, where no one could tell him he didn’t have every right to be, never setting foot on the property itself. Then he crossed the road and joined a cluster of his cronies who had assembled to hear what he would have to say.
For a while, he said nothing. They all stood around. Now and then someone would murmur something or other, and someone would agree, in a murmur, and someone would demur, in a murmur. Then Mr. Lodkochnikov cleared his throat and spat. His friends were silent. Now he would speak.
“It’s not a Bottomy thing,” he said.
“Nope,” said one of his cronies.
“Sure ain’t,” said another.
“Not a Bottomy thing.”
(“Bottomy” is the name for Babbington used by Babbingtonians whose families have lived in the town for several generations. They—and people who want to be mistaken for them—call themselves Bottomers or Bott’mers or Bottoms or Botts. Bottomy is an elided version of Bolotomy, a corruption of the Native American name for the place that the English later called Babbington.)
Bonackers is the name for a group of people from the East Hampton Town area of East Hampton, New York.
The name traditionally refers to the working class families who live in an area called Springs […]. Many of the original Bonac families in Springs were among the very early settlers of the town having come from England, possibly Kent or Dorchester, Dorset, in the 17th and 18th centuries. […]
The term Bonacker comes from Accabonac Harbor, which in turn derives its name from Montaukett/Algonquian languages term for “root place,” or “place of ground nuts” (in most interpretations referring to potatoes).
For some three hundred years, Bonackers made their living as baymen, fishermen, and farmers. Clams and clamming—both hardshell and softshell—were at the heart of Bonac culture and cuisine. Bonac specialties include clam pie, clam fritters, oysters, clam chowder (traditionally, never made with milk, but with tomatoes), bluefish, porgies, blowfish, eel, and blue crabs. […]
Now nearly lost forever, there was once a thriving local Bonac dialect, which held strong into the middle of the last century. Today, the Bonac accent is in the process of being lost to the New York City speech patterns of the western portion of Long Island. The Bonac accent is said to be akin to the spoken language of the working class settlers who came from England in the 17th century; and it is also, remarkably, said to be akin to accents of fishing cultures farther down the Atlantic coast, in the Carolinas, for instance, where similar groups of Englishmen settled around the same time. […] There are only a handful of Bonac speakers left. […]
In the 20th and now 21st century, nearly all Bonackers were forced out of their traditional livelihoods and found work in support industries for wealthy vacationers and weekenders on the East End of Long Island. The Bonacker culture has been assaulted by rocketing housing prices on the South Fork—now known worldwide as part of the resort area called, by non-locals, “the Hamptons” […].
See also:
Language TG 11; Dialect, Slang, Idiolect, Shibboleths, Jargon TG 137; Slang, Insults, Terms of Abuse TG 140; Slang TG 169; Languages: Learning and Translating TG 393; Idiolect, Private Meanings and References, Code Words TG 373; Idioms: Tug the (One’s) Forelock TG 459; Technical TG 652, Academic, Gibberish TG 492; Language in Translation: Russian to English TG 495; Idioms: English: “It’s Greek to me.” TG 595; Transformations Attendant to the Assimilation of Non-English “Loan Words” in American English, e.g., From Bologna to Baloney TG 624
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