I’m “fixin’” to get me somethin to eat, so… y’all don’t “run off”!
Q;)
If you’re from the South and you want to criticize someone, it is incumbent upon you (especially if you’re Baptist) to preface what you are about to say with one of the following:
-
You know, I just love her/him to death, but…
-
God love her/him, but…
That way, you haven’t offended the “Big Guy” (I guess…:rolleyes:)
And, of course, the aforementioned, “Bless his/her heart…”
Don’t seem like a German boy oughta know all that stuff, does it?
Q
Central PA: “Redd up the room” for “Clean up the room”.
I did not grow up particularly near Pittsburgh (about 2 1/2 hours drive away in Ohio), but man, those Pittsburghisms popped up in my and my neighbors’ speech all the time. At home, we would “redd” the table after dinner before some “nibb-nose” showed up and ate all our “chip-chop ham.”
At school, a classmate showed up and told us another teacher was ready for us to come over to watch the movie. Except he said, “She’s ready for yinz.” My teacher invited the boy to rephrase that, so he responded, "She’s ready for yinz guys.
Many years later, I learned this phrase could be made possessive when a waitress informed us she would be “right back with yinz guyses’ meals.” Meals in this case rhymed with mills.
BTW, I also hate “itch” instead of “scratch.”
In the Pacific NW, people begin a sentence with the word “anymore,” as in “Anymore, I …” when I would use the word “Nowadays, I …”. No matter how many times I hear it, it sounds odd.
When I hear someone say “right quick”, I have to stop myself from doing something really bad. Luckily, I hardly ever hear it, not living in the South.
Chicago/Midwest: Washroom = bathroom. In other places, nobody know what you mean when you ask where the washroom is.
When I moved from Ohio to NYC, it took forever to learn to say “soda” rather than “pop.” And to learn the difference between “merry,” “marry” and “Mary.”
25 years later, in 1995, I moved back to Ohio, and had to unlearn everything. And one day I used the phrase “I don’t give a rat’s ass” and got some very strange looks. Since then, it’s become commonplace everywhere.
Please?
That’s what people in the Cincinnati area say when they didn’t catch what you said. Short for “please repeat that” or something. Bugs the crap outta me.
“Keep the house picked up” always bugs me too.
That was Sarah, who was originally from PA, but lived in California, and was a skateboarder. Hella was surfer/skateboarder slang before it ever went mainstream.
Not you’ns, yinz. It’s, as has been noted, a SW PA, largely Pittsburgh metro area, thing.
Sure, nebnoses are always butting into your business. A truly persistent nebnose turns into a nebshit.
Redd off. Never heard that one. Redd up, sure. In fact, our last mayor of Pittsburgh’s citywide “let’s make our town look better” initiative, still in effect as a memorial to him, is called “Redd Up Pittsburgh.” But I’ve never heard it with an “off.”
I went to college in SW Missouri, but the student body came from all over the place. The Oklahoman and Texan girls in my dorm got everyone out of the habit of referring to our pre-menstrual moodiness as PMS. Instead, we were FTS, or “fixin’ to start.” Our Minnesota/North Dakota friends hipped us to the power of the bubbler, as well as the beautiful phrase come with, as in “We’re going to get lunch, want to come with?” or “Is it just you two? I thought Melissa was going to come with.” And courtesy the Utahns, I’ve been saying “oh my heck!” for 20 years. Washroom in place of bathroom was prevalent on campus too – with the Canadians, though, not the midwesterners.
It’s the addition of the little purple confused face at the end that made it so funny to me. It’s the perfect illustration of the emotion I felt reading that.
I haven’t noticed that. I’ll have to pay more attention. Before I moved to Seattle I didn’t know what a “sunbreak” was. I also learned the phrase “the mountain is out” which I heard myself say the other day. Actually, not the other day, more like two months ago.
They also call turn signals “directionals,” if I recall correctly.
A South Carolinan friend of mine has me saying, “having his picture made” and “making a party for him,” just because I like the way those phrases sound.
One other thing about gumband: the final ‘d’ is not pronounced. So it’s more like “gum-ban”. (I live in Cleveland and work with a few Pittsburghers, who do their best to conceal themselves except during football season.)
Actually, it was Cynthia - who I thought was from Pennsylvania, but after looking it up it appears she was from California.
Anybody else know somebody who only says “Do What?”
Also, I’ve heard that measuring distances almost exclusively in hours and minutes is a largely Texas/Oklahoma phenomenon. Am I full of shit?
Oh god. I do both of of those (although I tend to use the “Here in a little bit I’m gonna X” construction) and I didn’t even realize they were regionalisms until you just now said it.
Oh, you’d haaaaate me.
Never heard this one, although I think I have heard someone fully say out “fixin’ to start my period”. I guess I don’t associate with demure women?
That’s Canadian, too. We generally use it the way Americans use “restroom” (i.e. for a public bathroom or as a euphemism).
When my brother went to London and stayed in residence, on his first day he asked where the washroom was. After some confusion, he was shown to the laundry room.
… you shouldn’t take literally, ah reckon.
- As a little boy fresh off the plane from Germany in the early 60’s, as I turned to leave my aunt Opal once said, “Yew come on’ back now, Billy!”
Okay, so I turned around and went back. Stood there, and she finally raised up her right hand closed the fingers on it twice rapidly and said (in a fake German-American accent): “Ven I say dat, it meantz bei-bei”
Vell, denn zay dat…
…bidge!
- As folks “is a-leavin’” they’ll say… “Y’all just come owwn and go with us!”
Yeah, right. Like you really mean that. You’d shit if we were to put on our coats and head on out the door right behind yo’ ass and get in the back seat.
Quasi
I never realized that You bet meaning you’re welcome was a regional thing until I moved south.
One of my first bosses (a fellow Hoosier) used it while speaking on the phone with me one day and it dawned that I hadn’t heard the phrase used with that meaning since living in Indiana.
Where? Pennsylvania?
I’m from central PA and grew up with that idiom. Of course, one mustn’t forget the ‘R’ in the middle of the word 
(I learned better later in life but have a distinct recollection of raising my hand in first grade and telling Sister Reptile that she forgot the R when she wrote it on the board).