RIVER CITY JOURNAL: OLD ROOSTERS AND BISCUITS: A JOURNEY TO HEAR THE SOUTH

If the 2000 census is correct, we should all be learning to speak Spanish.

Which comes as not-so-good news to me, a product of the Ercel Jones Institute of Spanish Conjugation -- which, I hasten to assure you, is perfectly legal, even in public schools.

Mrs. Jones was my high school English teacher, one of my favorite hometown's many devoted educators whom I still hold in high regard.

(See? I used "whom" correctly. I learned that from Mrs. Jones.)

She also taught Spanish I -- an introduction to the language of Spain, Mexico and most of South America -- and Spanish II, which was a bonus for anyone left standing after a year of Spanish I.

As a teacher of English, Mrs. Jones relied on the three pillars of a solid grounding in our native tongue: grammar, spelling and punctuation. When it came to Spanish, she simply substituted foreign words -- in this case from Spain.

Which is to say I can't speak a word of Spanish.

So when I got to college, I decided to take a stab at French.

Basically, French is Spanish spoken through clenched teeth, forcing most of the words to come out your nose.

English is not an easy language, which makes the prospects of having to learn Spanish even more daunting. Moreover, I shudder to think that millions of Americans will embark on an expedition to conversational Spanish when they haven't yet mastered a brisk walk through rudimentary English, not to mention all the variations of spoken English around this country.

Of all the versions of American English, I think the most expressive, and certainly the most pleasing to the ear, is the voice of the South, a compote of lush vowels sparingly spiced with consonants.

Last weekend, my wife and I had occasion to go to Oxford, Miss., where Southern English is in full bloom along with the magnolia and mimosa trees. For us, it was an opportunity to hear English words spoken at their best, where even words of only three letters may be rendered in four of five syllables.

Now, don't say we could have gone to Sikeston or Portageville to hear Southern being spoken. The difference between the language of the Deep South and the language of the Bootheel can be summed up in two words:

Y'all.

You'ns.

I think you get my point.

Oxford is a splendid place to visit. It is divided into three halves (this is about language, not math):

1. The old town around the square.

2. Ol' Miss.

3. The rest of the town.

The square, surrounded by magnificent homes from another era and church buildings that touch the godliness residing in each of us, is the stuff of Faulkner, whose nearby home, Rowan Oak, welcomes visitors with an air of Southern graciousness.

To say Rowan Oak has faded to just south of Shantytown would be accurate. But this is, after all, the South, where peeling paint and sagging porches are testaments to endurance and perseverance.

My wife and I both got our questions answered:

Q. Where are the rowan oak trees, for which William Faulkner named his home?

A. In England.

Q. Where can we go to see more Faulkner stuff?

A. The best collection of Faulkner stuff is in a Missouri town called Cape Girardeau.

Yes, we said, we've heard of it.

Wherever we went, my wife and I strained to hear Southerners exercising their freedom of speech. We wanted to bask in the soothing fountain of soft words spoken like lullabies for tired kittens. Surrounded by Southerners, we thought, it would be so easy. But the plain fact is that when dozens of Southerners in a restaurant are all talking at the same time, you might as well be in the Ozarks.

Finally, we managed to hear the Southern sounds we so eagerly sought.

It happened during a visit to a storefront antique mall. (Yes, even in the South, "antique" is a catchall word for "junk" and "things that used to clutter my basement.")

As soon as we entered the mall, we heard it: Grown men uttering throat-born sounds swaddled in cotton bolls and bathed in dollops of honey.

There they were, three men old enough to remember Roosevelt sitting around a table drinking coffee from thick green mugs and leisurely devouring homemade biscuits with browned tops from a basket draped with a red-checkered napkin.

To be honest, I don't know which I wanted more: to listen to them talk, or to grab a biscuit.

The three men were nattering in the golden sounds of Mississippi, toying with pronunciations that too many Southerners go to Northern colleges to learn to forget.

My wife and I both looked at a blue comforter hanging on a rack far too long, but it was a comfortable eavesdropping distance from the biscuit eaters.

At one point, someone asked for assistance, which left the proprietor's two friends to fend for themselves. A woman came along and inquired about some doodad in her hand.

"I'm so sorry," one of the duo said in a dozen syllables or so. "We're just a couple of old roosters drinkin' coffee and eatin' biscuits. The owner'll be back in a minute." Then he profusely apologized for any inconvenience the wait might cause, by which time the woman, possibly from Wisconsin and unaccustomed to the Southern sense of good manners and hospitality, was reduced to melting butter.

Ask another question, I silently urged. And another. Make them talk until I've had my fill of Southern.

Or biscuits, which, I was surprised to discover, were not shared. Hungry old roosters, it seems, can be uncharacteristically Gallic if push comes to shove.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.