I don’t usually give much thought to whether my children have a Southern accent or use mountain-terminology. I guess they sound pretty much like me and all my people so it’s just normal. But you know that I’m fascinated with the Appalachian vernacular, we’ve talked about there here before.

A blog I enjoy reading (The Blind Pig) regularly shares Southern-English terms. I’m often shocked to read words or phrases there that I thought were just regular English.

So when my daughter recently began adding “right quick” to both requests and observations I kind of did a double-take. The first time it was something like, “Get me some juice right quick.” Well you can imagine that brought on more talk – we don’t tell Mama to hop to things, we don’t even order Mama to get the juice.

However, it isn’t just the demands of a little diva. While watching an old Western where the good guy was tied up she said, “He’s gonna’ get loose right quick.”

Where did this come from? I didn’t realize that I used the phrase, although I suppose I do ask the children to ‘come here right quick’ or ‘pick that up right quick’. I asked some family around me if they routinely say this and no one admits to it.

It’s always amazing to me the things little children pick up on – and I’m sure glad we are not a family that’s ever accepted ugly language in our home because you can bet they’d pick up on that too! So I guess listening to them will be a bit of a mirror on our dialect.

So what do you think? Is right quick widely used or is this a mountain-ism?