Billboard words

I was getting my hair cut.  The stylist in the neighboring chair was carrying on a conversation with her customer.   I wasn't paying attention too closely, but I did overhear her say, "He's my kind of people."  I hadn't heard that in a while.

I used to hear, "He's good people," a lot.  I didn't hear that expression until I was in my 30s.  I grew up in a different part of the country than where I lived for 30 years of my adult life.  At first, it didn't make good sense to me.  I had heard, "He's my kind of person," and "He's from good stock,"  but never the two expressions so common to the region I lived in for 30 years.

I finally understood the expression, "He's good people."  I don't live in that region of the country any longer and haven't heard the expression since leaving - until today.  It turns out the stylist was from the region I had lived in so long.

Dialect features mark us all in in our view of life.  It doesn't matter if expressions of a dialect fit the grammar of the mainstream language or not.  The features are said, often, over several generations, and mark the people from the area.  I have my own set of dialect features.  They mark who I am.  I could work to remove them (and I have removed some of them because they don't exude the image I want to have), but in some way, I want them to show.  They're a type of billboard saying, "This is me."