in 49 of the 50 states, the 9/11 attacks are known as the 9/11 attacks on new york and washington, but in pennsylvania, where i live, it’s known as the 9/11 attacks on new york, washington and pennsylvania, because one of the planes crashed here…also, to people in the other 49 states, the abbreviation tmi means too much information, but here in pa. it means and always will stand for three mile island
does this phenomenon exist in other states, that is, do you have expressions or terms that mean one thing in your state and something everywhere else, or are expressed differently or understood to be one thing in your state but something else in the other states? i am not referring to local slang, such as in massachusetts they call a soda a tonic, i’m talking about concepts like 9/11 that are thought of differently from one place to another:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
When I was going to grade school in California and we learned about the gold rush, they taught us that “panning out” was a very bad thing, because it meant you had panned all the gold out of your claim and you had to go find another one now, which was hazardous (mountain lions, other prospectors, starvation). Elsewhere in the country, “panning out” means a good thing, as in, “this came out the way I expected.”
This is not true. The rest of the country is aware that a plane went down in Pennsylvania and does not restrict the terrorist event of 9/11 to just NYC and DC.
In Nebraska, news reports of the State Legislature call it “the Unicameral”, because Nebraska is the only state in the union that has a unicameral state legislature (only one assembly, not a House and a Senate).
No. In everywhere, the 9/11 attacks are known as “the 9/11 attacks”. Or “the events of 9/11”. Or “September the 11th”. I have never heard anybody anywhere tack on a list of any length of geographic locations.
You overestimate the knowledge people have on the West Coast about the East Coast-- especially New England.
People out here who have never been to the east coast have a hard time understanding that there is a place in the US where the accent changes about every 200 miles as you drive down I- 95. That just doesn’t happen out here. “Down East” probably doesn’t mean anything to most folks in CA.
…And the TMI/Three Mile Island thing as well. Granted, I’m not a native, but I did live in Pennsylvania for a number of years and I never heard anyone use the acronym to mean anything other than “too much information.”
