The Paris of Appalachia is the barest Appalachia, the fairest Appalachia, which is to say the whitest, the lightest, like when someone asks you a question and you can’t bear to speak the answer to the question so you stop breathing and you go all light and dizzy all over, all your vision goes bright and blank, all over the answer and the question. And in between these names, the letters “f” and “t” make a switch again and again, from “of” to -est. Tif is fit, and Taf is fat. That’s the small-town tittle-tattle where words get pierced and threaded by all sorts of threats and treats, entreaties and treatments. And where did the “h” go but to the end:
Pittsburg h. Breathe out.
Whenever and however the sobriquet arrived, “Paris of Appalachia” has never been said just one way. There’s Paris of Appalachia, then Paris of Appalachia. And then there’s Parisii, Apalachee, and the “okay” hand double-dipping in a pocket square, names here but displaced.
The P76 bus will take you to city center from the suburb of North Versailles, and it will take you there by way of local language. The computerized voice that announces upcoming stops used to pronounce “North Versailles” like “North for Sales.” It’s on sale. We’ve set sail; a king’s gone missing. Don’t sigh. On this bus, too, the final -s of “Paris” hisses out. Even when discussing the capital of France, the -s hooks on in American English. Robert Withington writes that although Americans are more likely than their British counterparts to attempt an “accurate” pronunciation of French place names, “it would seem affectation to refer to [the French capital] as ‘paree.’” “Paris” comes to us by way of “Parisii,” the name of a Gaulish tribe whose capital occupied the same site. In Gallo-Latin and Late Latin, the -s was audible about town: Lutetia Parisorum and Parisii. As the French language changed over time, the final -s went ilent. Paris as said in Pittsburgh became an exonym—a name used for a place, but only by people outside of that place.
Of course, if the P76 can take you to city center, it could also go the other way. In France, Paris rhymes with the French noun un parie, a bet, connected to the verb parier, to place a bet, which sounds like Paris et ?—Paris and? There’s a call, an expectation to work here in the fine pull of the rhyme. Paris et…? and Paris de…? Paris of…? Paris de… rhyming with je parie deux… I bet two, a pair, je parie une paire et… ? In this case, I bet a pair of words, Paris and Appalachia, on something called “of.” More on this, once language changes.
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