We invite folks from the outer precincts and other foreign parts to lend an ear to what four centuries of southern talk have wrought, Roy Wilder Jr. writes in "You All Spoken Here." This delightful book preserves and explains the South's linguistic heritage with some three thousand specimens of the region's most picturesque, metaphorical, and gloriously inventive speech.

Wondering how to make points with your mother? "Don't talk back. Keep the woodbox filled. And don't stake the cow where she can get to wild onions." A sophisticated man "has been places and et in ho-tels." A dependable...