Say What?
Appa - LAY - chia or Appa - LAHH - chia. Depends on where you grew up. A simple answer to a more detailed explanation. Some will consider the way you pronouce it as an insight to your character or your attitude or your political proclivities. Best I can figure it has only to do with how words were pronounced when your learned to speak. Words like 'fixin', y'all, and xxx are merely way we Texans communicate. Has nothing to do with anything else.
A good discussion of the Appalachian Mountain range is available on the Wikipedia website at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_Mountains. I will not attempt to recreate this history. I could never do so.
There are, of course, many other sites that offer useful information on this mountain range. You can find them by using any search engine you choose.
What's important is that the range has an important place in the history of this country. Although the range is considered by many to be a minor range of mountains in the scope of global compasrisons, it has a major claim to the development of and growth of this wonderful land we live in and hopefully can preserve for our younger generations.
When I was a younger man I was familiar, in name only, with the Alleghany, Smoky, Adirondack, Catskills, xxx mountains. Then I knew them to be mountains of importance. I travelled through these mountain from time to time in Pennsylvania and New Youk and the Carolinas with family and friends. then I thought of them as ranges. I didn't realize they were only a minor segment of the entire range known as the Appalachian Mountians.
Now I understqnd them to be one of the largest ranges, although not in the major class of elevations, in the world. Covering more than 1,500 miles in length and xxx square miles of surface, the range ranks in the top ten in the world. It is fitting that this mass of geographic history is a part of the largest country of influence in the history of the world. A country I am infinitely proud of and one I will defend until I am as worn and old as the Appalachians themselves.