Moderator Note
Knock off the hijack about disabilities. If you want to discuss that, open a thread in Great Debates. This thread is about “hollers” and associated terms.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
More than one poster in this thread is stereotyping in the worst way. They live in hollers, so they are probably on disability or retirement? What evidence do you have?
Moderator Instruction
Drop the hijack, or you will be subject to a warning for ignoring moderator instructions.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
PS. This instruction applies to everyone.
Sorry, didn’t Dope on the weekend. Band-aided linky.
What I find weird is how close that is to we hillbillies in another state and a completely different set of mountains. I’ve watched videos of people from Appalachia, and they sound like the old folk here in the Ozarks. They all resembled the accents at the old family reunion. The softened accent in that last video actually sounds like my grandparents.
Same people and same process. The Ozarks were populated by Scotch-Irish from the Southern Appalachians beginning in the early 19th century. The early settlers brought their Appalachian accents with some additions later. Basically what you have going on is that due to isolation, the speech patterns in the Appalachians and the Ozarks evolved much, much more slowly than in more urban areas. So both Ozark and Appalachian English are much less far removed from 17th and 18th century standard Scotch-Irish dialects. Since they are both very close to this 17th century proto-dialect, they are both very close to each other.
After posting saw the moderator’s instructions, so deleted to comply.
Thank you.
The holler where I grew up was relatively close to more heavily populated areas, so our situation was a bit different. Our county had a population of well over 100K, and there was a small city of around 40K 10 minutes away. In some ways it wasn’t that different from what my friends in the subdivisions experienced. There was one difference, though. My friends in more populated areas played together after school, and got that all-important out of school socialization. That’s something I missed out on. Sure, I would have a friend over once in a while. It didn’t happen that often, though, and I missed out on being in a real neighborhood. By the time I was driving, I was already behind in my social development. Since I’m naturally introverted, it was a tough hill to climb. I don’t think anybody looked down on me because of where I lived, but it was weird not living within a mile or so of anyone in my class. Trying to explain to a first grade classmate where I lived was impossible. Funny that now I can go on Google Earth and show my students who live almost 400 miles away what the farm where I grew up looks like now.
n/m.
I thought this thread would be about field hollers.
So can I take it a holler is different from the kind of hollow that Stars Hollow is? Would that be more likely to be a copse, in New England?
In parts of New England we have similar landforms, but only rarely call them “hollows” and never “hollers.” Stars Hollow is a fictional town in Connecticut and from what I’ve seen of the show, it wasn’t set in a hollow. I’d guess the creators wanted a folksy sounding name and didn’t care much about geographic accuracy. According to the USGS Geographic Names Information System, there are about eight “populated places” (which includes formerly populated places) in Connecticut called ____ Hollow. Most of them seem to be little more than dots on a map. As far as I know, all of them are so called for being in a small valley of the same name. The former settlement of Cotton Hollow, for example, is indeed located in a small narrow valley that once housed a cotton mill.
Then there is Sleepy Hollow. 
Wikipediahad an alternative meaning of “low wooded area, such as a copse”, which was the reason for my question. It’s not a usage I know, so was wondering if it was NE dialect.
I never read “copse” to have any suggestion of being a “low” stand of trees. I also never heard it used like that, chiefly because I never heard anyone ever actually say it. Even me, surprisingly. 
It’s inherent in the meaning of the word - a copse, originally, was a stand of *coppiced*trees, which wouldn’t have time to attain their full height. So “low”.
Oh, no, not the trees themselves, but the geography of the land in/on which they’re growing. Never knew about “coppiced,” though, so thanks.
Or that “stool” means “ground level.”
It doesn’t. “known as a stool” refers to the stump after cutback, not the level it’s cut to.