A university is a collection of several colleges and schools. So, if you went to a college that was literally that – just one college – it would be incorrect to say you “went to university” at that college.
Remembered one more, courtesy of a friend from Texas I knew years ago: (pronounced) “Yoostacould”. As in, “I don’t know how to play darts any more, but I yoostacould.” Meaning, “used to” – quite an efficient rationing of syllables, really.
I suppose used’a’could might be a closer rendering (?).
This is really more an IMHO thing.
Actually, I pronounce libel differently from liable. Very subtle “a” sound in liable.
Couch, sometimes a chesterfield.
Pop.
Lunch.
Bunnyhug! This is a real word! It is a sweatshirt with a hood, drawstrings, and one pocket across the belly.
Rumor has it there are English-speaking places where “put it up” doesn’t mean “put it away” like it does here in Texas.
Everybody knows “y’all” but you have to hang out for a while before you are blessed with hearing the second person plural posessive “y’all’s” pronounced /yall ziz/.
I wonder what the usage map for tacking “all” on to question words is. (Who all is going, What all do we need to do, Where all do you want me to put this stuff) I’m pretty sure most Americans do it, but I’m not sure about Britons and Canadians.
-fh
I am a Midwesterner transplanted to SC and this one really stuck out to me at first. “Would you cut the TV on?” Cut seems to apply to “off” and “on” alike. And there is lots of “fixin’ to” and “What kind of coke do you want?” Etc. You really need a whole new vocabulary down here. 
The most noticeable oddness to the Southern California dialect is our unwavering use of the definite pronoun when refering to highways and freeways. A person from SoCal would give directions like “Take the 405 north to the 101 east …” Blew my mind when I found out not everyone talks that way. 
Another thing, which amuses me endlessly and yet I use all the time, is the metonomy (right? use of a part to refer to the whole?) of a person’s ass. As in:
“I couldn’t’ve done that, my ass was right here the whole time!” (=“I was right here”)
“Go get your ass a drink.” (=“get yourself a drink”)
I like the interchangeability of “I’m all,” “I’m like,” and “I’m all like,” for the simple phrase “I said”.
Growing up in Peterborough, Ontario, we always said ‘chesterfield’. ‘Couch’ has taken over, I suspect because of the insidious influence of the expression ‘couch potato’. I vaguely remember ‘davenport’ as a piece of furniture, but this was muddied for me, because our neighbours were named Davenport.
Did anyone else grow up with ‘aft’ as a short form of ‘afternoon’? It was usually found in sentences like “I’ll be going to Tim’s this aft.”
This is not true in Ontario province at least. In Ontario, “universities” grant degrees after programs that last a minimum of four years. “Colleges” are “community colleges of applied arts and technology”. Unlike universities, they only have two- and three-year programs that do not lead to degrees.
There are also private schools, but I believe the same distinction holds for them.
I went to Waterloo University and later Sheridan College. I can say, “When I was at university” or “When I was at college,” but if I want to bundle these two together, I have to say something like “when I was in school…”
The situation has become somewhat blurred lately because some universities now offer courses at the campuses of some colleges: for instance, Trent University of Peterborough now offers courses on the campus of Durham College in Oshawa.
We also said ‘residence’ instead of ‘dormitory’. After all, we did more than sleep there…
We in Ontario tend to use ‘the’ in this context, but only when referring to freeways! “Take the 400 and then go east on the 407” but “Take Highway 48 south after you get off the 407”. I guess non-freeways aren’t important enough to merit a ‘the’. Exception: Highway 115 merited a ‘the’ long before it was turned into a freeway… but then it was planned as a direct intercity arterial road (with freeway potential) from the beginning. It did not arise from the numbering of previously-unrelated roads.
Hazel-rah, I catch myself using that one all the time.
And I have a related question for other southern Dopers.
I’ve lived in Texas all my life and I’ve only ever used and heard “y’all” used in the second person plural. Which is the correct usage, AFAIK, since it is a contraction of “you all.”
But often in movies and on television I’ve heard southern characters say “y’all” in the second person singular. For instance, one character might say to another, “Y’all better stay here till the storm passes over.” And it is said to one person and isn’t implying anyone beyond the single person it is spoken to. Again, I’ve never heard anyone use “y’all” this way in real life. How about any of you?
I’m from north central PA and I say this all the time. One of my friends from the Elmira area of NY laughed her butt off at me a few weeks ago for saying “My car needs washed.” and proceeded to tell me that my car does NOT need washed, it either needs washing or needs to be washed. But I’ve been saying my car needs washed, my hair needs washing, the garbage needs taken out, the cat needs fed, and my homework needs done all my life, and I’m not about to change it now.
Hey, at least I didn’t say my car needs warshed, maybe with some soap and wuhter.
now you’ll excuse me, my homework needs done.
A women addressed me (and me alone) using “y’all” when I was in New Orleans once.
Some explanations for it appearing on TV shows:
-It was scripted by a Californian who’s never visited the South and is making uneducated guesses about how Southerners talk.
-The usage of “y’all” is way more nuanced than even speakers who use it realize, and there are occasions when using it as second-person singular is allowed. This isn’t unusual… the use of definite and indefinite pronouns in English has many, many rules that native English speakers follow flawlessly but cannot even begin to articulate.
-fh
Growing up in New England, my older relatives also referred to breakfast, dinner and supper as the three main meals of the day.
You also went “downstreet” to do quick errands. You’d “put up” something when you were done with it (“put that up and come in for supper.”) We also ate “italians” back then, not “subs” or “hoagies” etc.
When I moved to Maryland in Jr. High School, I learned the phrase “went up” to mean failed or broken - as in, “our dryer went up yesterday and we’ve got to buy a new one.”
Now that I live in Oregon, things are too “spendy” to afford, and the western term “Rode hard and put away wet” seems to describe a lot of sorry looking and worn out things (or people…)
Oh yeah, and back in New England, it was also common when I was a kid to refer to any soda pop as “Coke” - as in “what kind of Coke do you want?” … “I’ll have root beer”, “I’ll have orange” and the like.
Walloon - Yes, I understand the distinction. What I’m saying is that people in the States, if they attended university, do not use the form “in university” or “at university.” Or so I was surprisingly told on this board, because I could have sworn I did talk that way before the Brits got to me. Doing my factchecking, it seems I was wrong. Nobody in the States says “My son’s at university in Harvard.” Apparently everyone says “My son’s at college in Harvard.” People do not ask “Where’d you go to university?” even if they know you attended “uni” (there’s an Aussie one for y’all.) It’s “Where’d you go to college?”
In Europe, the distinction is important, and I use it when speaking English since “college” here usually means a 2- or 3- year degree and universities usually grant 4- or 5- year degrees. That’s the simplest explanation, but it is slightly more involved.
I think it’s a Western PA thing, as I’ve heard it more often from Pittsburghians than those around the Reading end of the state where I grew up. There also seems to be a soda/pop divide down the middle of PA as well. And do you also say “yins”, as they do in Pittsburgh (equivalent to “y’all”)? I find that one bizarre – “Where’re yins going?”
As for British English, there are loads of odd idioms. I’ve now adopted the practice of saying “Cheers” instead of “Thanks”, and have to bite my tongue to stop myself saying it whenever I’m back in the States. Also, people don’t go “to the hospital”, they just go “to hospital” (or are “in hospital”).
And to further the uni/college debate, “college” also refers to what is essentially a (in American parlance) college-prep or upper secondary school (that’s “sixth-form”, or A-level study, for those of you who have heard of such things).
Plus, nobody’s mentioned settees in the couch/sofa/etc discussion. And then there’s the whole issue of “innit?”, and so on and so forth.
Y’know, this just confuses me even more.
I moved around enough as a kid (and knew enough people who also did), that I could never figure out the proper local term for soda pop. Hell, I’ve lived in Michigan for about twenty years now and people still make fun of me sometimes for using the “wrong” words. Luckily, I can get by just using brand name.
The first vivid memory I have of encountering the Great Soda Divide was at a basketball game in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I was about 11 and asked for a “Coke.” They gave me a Coke. I was pissed.
I don’t know when you were a kid, but I’ve lived in New England my entire life and have never heard anyone use coke as a generic term for soda. Older people might refer to soda as “tonic” but no one refers to soda as “coke” unless they mean something made by coca-cola; in fact I’ve heard this was either a southern or midwestern thing.
I recently badly confused a southerner, and I’m not sure if I used a term that I didn’t realise was a regionalism, or if she just never heard it before.
I was explaining a silly idea I had to her, and the conversation when a little like this:
Me: …but don’t worry, you don’t have to send the men with the net after me yet.
her: A net? You need to catch something?
Me: No, they’d use it to catch me. You catch crazy people with a net.
her: Oh, like fishing net? That’d be big enough.
Me: Actually, it’s like a giant butterfly net…I guess people don’t use this expression where you’re from, huh?
her: nope.
I once heard joke that a true southener can use “y’all” as the 2P singular and “all y’all” as the 2P plural. Is there any truth to that at all?
As for idiosyncracies in Hiberno-English, there’s far too many to list.
OT:
Wow, that really brought back memories! I spent a couple of weeks spent at Argonne Lab (outside Chicago) the summer after I graduated high school, at a DOE program. We played a lot of “Chicago style” softball. I’d never heard of it before, or since here in Delaware. Maybe I can get my hands on a ball and stir up some interest.
Back on topic:
Southern Delaware (and also the Eastern Shore of Maryland) share a lot of the idioms I’ve seen attributed to the Southern US, due to it’s isolated and rural nature. My father grew up on a farm in Southern DE and used supper and dinner to refer to two different meals. Another term I’ve not heard outside of that area is to refer to an enclosed porch as a “breezeway”
Another thing that just occured to me. I’ve always refered to the large piece of bedroom furniture with lots of drawers to hold clothes as a dresser or bureau, while a roommate of mine from New Hampshire would occasionally call them “draws”
-G: