When I was growing up in the Panther Valley, I wasn’t aware that I didn’t speak like a lot of other people who didn’t grow up there. Oh, sure, I spoke English, but apparently I used these peculiar word patterns and pronunciations that were part and parcel of my hometown area.

The first time I was aware of it - and criticized for it - was when I was a contestant in a regional declamation contest as a 17-year-old senior at Summit Hill High School in 1957.

As the boys’ orator representing my high school, I entered one of the declamation classifications, and a judge from outside the state gave me a pathetically low score because of the way I pronounced certain words. He was most critical of my “this,” “that,” “these” and “those,” which he claimed I pronounced as “dis,” “dat,” “dese” and “dose.” Regrettably, he was right, and I was completely unaware of it until he pointed it out in his critique.

After this humiliation, I started doing some soul-searching and researching. Despite the fact that my friends, family members and many community members spoke the same way, I knew that once I left the area, I would be telegraphing that I was not pronouncing some words and phrases correctly.

I also learned that the Northeastern Pennsylvania dialect is a fascinating blend of influences that sets it apart from other regional speech patterns. Just as when I was growing up in Summit Hill, we would snicker at a “New Yorker’s” or “New Englander’s” peculiarisms if they happened to wander into town; little did we realize that others were doing the same with us.

Rooted in the region’s immigrant history and preserved in a gritty, down-to-earth realism, the coal region dialect features remnants of Italian, Polish, German and Irish languages.

The distinct pronunciation of words such as “water” as “wudder” and “Nathan” as “Natin” are hallmarks of the dialect. The frequent use of “youse” for the plural of “you” is another feature that still persists until this very day. As my immigrant mother used to say in exasperation when I mentioned it to her, “How will people know I’m talking about more than one person?”

There is a fascinating video called “Heynabonics,” produced in association with Misericordia College in Dallas, Luzerne County, which provides a good-natured ribbing about some of the region’s localisms and dialect.

Here are some of the examples the video features:

• Verbal economy: “Did you eat? No, did you?” becomes “dyeat?” “No, dyou?” (Six words now become three.) Exception: Instead of saying “several,” you say “couple, two, tree.”

• Homonyms: The aforementioned “tree” (“three”) is a word that looks like another one and sounds like another one but has a completely different meaning.

• Geographical terms: You might be going to Nesquehoning in Carbon County, Swoyersville in Luzerne County and Throop in Lackawanna County - pronounced “nes-ka-hon-ee,” “soyers-ville” and “troop.”

• Unique pronunciation: “Myun” could be an Indian nation in Mexico (Mayan) or something that belongs to me. (Does that mean that something that belongs to you, then, is “yourin?” Hmm.) “The” is “da” and “to” is “ta,” so it’s not “I’m going to the store,” but “I’m goin’ ta da store.” In a restaurant, it’s not, “May I take your order”; you might hear, “Wadda yuz want?”

The video proclaims the cornerstone of Heynabonics is “heyna?,” which translated means “Isn’t that right?” (I had relatives in Bethlehem and several Pennsylvania Dutch friends who would use “say?” in the same context.) “Heyna” was more likely to be heard in the 1950s and 1960s but has mostly disappeared and is sometimes ridiculed by some present-day area residents.

What you used to take photos with was `”fillum”; what you sit on is your “doopa.” The letter “h” is often pronounced “haitch.”

It is very difficult to pin down a “one size fits all,” because speech patterns in parts of the Poconos which have been inhabited by former residents of New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia are vastly different from those who are native to Northeastern Pennsylvania.

With the influx of more residents from more metropolitan areas to the east because of the work-from-home era, it’s likely that these unique speech patterns will become even more homogenized over time.

By BRUCE FRASSINELLI| tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.