I started a thread a little while ago about the Minnesotan version of the children’s game “Duck, Duck, Goose!” (Or, as they call it “Duck, Duck, Gray Duck!”) It turns out there was already a thread on this subject. But I was interested in the discussion that was brought up about various regional diffenrences in words and games, so I’m starting a thread to discuss this topic.
How about it? Do you have any stories about the words specific to your region, or to somewhere you’ve visited? How about childhood games? Any interesting variations you’ve noticed? Any and all regionalisms are welcome.
[ul]
[li]Minnesotan: ‘huh’, ‘Ja’, ‘so…then’[/li]
[li]Canadian ‘eh’[/li]
[li]Seattlite ‘yeah’ (cooler than Minnestan Ja)[/li]
[li]Cockney: ‘innit?’ and its sort of opposite ‘izzit?’[/li]
[li]‘Ennit?’ (from movie ‘Smoke Signals’, I assume it is rez slang)[/li]
[li]Valley Girl ‘like’[/li]
[li]‘see’. I’m not sure where it’s from. As in “There’s this guy, see? and he’s going to the store, see? etc.”[/li]
[li]‘deal’ as in “that deal there.” (pointing to something)[/li]
[li]‘buddy’ simmilar to above, as in “Check out that buddy there.” (pointing to, say, a sandwich.)[/li]
[li]and so on…[/li][/ul]
New York state has a great linguistic divide: people in the east say soda, people in the west say pop. I have read online discussions which attempted to define down to the mile where the soda/pop border passes through the middle of the state.
here’s one that I think is an idiom of the Canadian prairies: a “mickey” meaning a 12 oz. bottle of liquor. When I was in Ontario and used the phrase I got a blank look; same when I was in the U.S., where I was told that I was talking about a “fifth.”
As well, the traditional pronounciation of “whore” on the prairies was bi-syllabic: “hoo-er”. Other words that were stretched into two syllables are “milk” (“mil-ulk”) and “film” (“fil-um”).
Y’all is not a singular you. Y’all is a plural you. All y’all is a superplural you. Example:
Host: “What do you do?”
Guest: “My wife and I both are teachers.”
Host: “Oh, y’all are?”
Guest: “Yes, in fact, both our families have been teachers for generations.”
Host: “My, I’m just so impressed with all y’all.”
One interesting phenomenon is that some things that rhyme up North don’t rhyme down here, and vice versa. For example, in Minnesota, we went to a steak-house that had a placard on the table hawking their “Awesome Blossom”. It was a while before it dawned on me that up there, those two words rhymed!
Libertarian, thank you so much for clearing up the y’all/all y’all distinction. I am from TN originally, and it drives me nuts when Yankees think that we use y’all to refer to one person. I have seen a few Southerners do that, but very few. Most of us use the plural y’all, superplural all y’all that you referred to. Your explanation was priceless.
One of my favorite regionalisms, aside from fixin’ to mentioned above, is from Indiana. They say of an evening to refer to an ongoing event, as in “I usually go to bed around 11 of an evening.” In my experience, this phrase is very symptomatic of Hoosierism; I have never heard a non-Hoosier use it. I have impressed more than one of them by guessing their home based on that phrase alone.
And do we want to get into regional barbeque? In Tennessee, it is smoked meat drizzled with thin, spicy sauce when it is eaten. I don’t know where all they bake it in a sweet, tomato-y sauce, but that crap can’t compare to Tennessee barbeque.
You can tell what part of WI someone is from by the uselesss syllable(s) they add to the end of their statements.
Examples:
Northern “That’s your car, eh?”
North Central “That’s your car, no?”
East Central “That’s your car, huh?”
Milwaukee area “That’s your car, ain’a?”
Iowa/Dodge counties “That’s your car, ya?”
Admittedly, there’s some crossover, but generally it’s true. Ain’a?
There’s a certain accent that comes with growing up in the Tidewater area of Virginia; that is Hampton, Norfolk, Newport News, et al.
It’s kind of a cross between a southern accent, and the pronunciation of certain words that people most often associate with Canadians.
I grew up saying “y’all” instead of the plural “you” and “far” instead of “fire”; as well as the even MORE Southern “rat cheer”(right here).
But, in addition, we Tidewater natives may also say “boot” when we mean “boat”, or “ootdoors” instead of “outdoors”.
A study on linguistics around Leeds, England examined just one word as an example and how its use varied around the city.
The word was Ginnyspinner(uses a j sound for the g) , also called Daddy-long-legs but the proper name for it is the Cranefly.
There was a map showing which word was most commonly used in which region and the conclusion it drew was that the more affluent districts used one and the poorer districts used the other.I can’t remember which way round it was.
That book was written in the 50’s and if you did the same study again you would find everyone uses Daddy-Long-legs.
I’m not sure what it proves but it shows how quickly even a fairly uncommon word can be changed in usage over a short period of time.
GrizzRich
Those words for boat, outdoors sound either very Scottish or North-East England.Is there a lot of ancestry from those areas?
You might be surprised to know that the accent in those areas were themselves heavily influenced by Viking settlers to such an extent that it was just about possible for someone to communicate with an Icelander right up until WWII when mass media tended to homogenise the UK speech patterns more and more.
The Icelanders speak in a very old Nordic dialect having been pretty isolated for so long.
Growing up in Maine, I always referred to anything that was in the basement as being “down cellar.” It was quite jolting the first time I saw the phrase in print, (in a Steven King novel) as the gramatically odd nature of that phrase had never occurred to me.
Then there is the famously taciturn nature of Maine natives. (We are not a verbose people.) For instance, if someone were to lose his way while out for a stroll, and took an extra 20 minutes to get home, you might say that he “got turned 'round.” If he got quite lost, and came home 2 or 3 hours late, you might say that he “got turned 'round some.” If, however, he got extremely lost and didn’t return for 2 days, then you’d say that he “got some turned 'round.”
casdave, I am going to assume you are talking specifically about the Orkney or Shetland Islands, where until about a century or two ago the native language (Norn) was a Norse dialect. I would need to see a cite to accept this as true for any other part of Scotland, or for northern England.
One of my pet peeves is when people criticize regionalisms as being incorrect English. I love regionalisms!
As Little Nemo mentioned, Western New York differs greatly from the eastern part of the state. As a Buffalo native living in New York City, it stops many people in their tracks when I say “pop.”
Another Buffalo-ism that sometimes appears in my speech is “reach me” As in, if I am too short to reach something on a high shelf, I might call over to a taller person and say “Could you come here and reach me that box?” or from the other end of a long table “Hey, could you reach me another chicken wing?” This might be generational as well, because I think I picked this up from older relatives. I didn’t even know this was an unusual thing to say until I moved.
Of course, the first two times I visited the in-laws in Oklahoma, I did the smile and nod routine for the duration, because I couldn’t understand what was being said. I got better, though.
Bring (instead of take) someone/something somewhere, as in: Would you bring me to work.
Stand ON line. Correctly it should be ‘Stand IN line’ unless, of course there is a line painted on the floor/ground and you are required to stand on it.
Both of these seem to be more prevalent in the East than in the West.
My father’s family hails from north eastern Pennsylvania. While I don’t speak like they do on a regular basis, after spending a few weeks there on vacation, I do find myself picking up some of the stranger patters of speech.
me (to my cousin):Are we all gonna go out tonight?
my cousin: After I ret up the kitchen, yuns can come over and pick me up. Oh, and theres an envelp on the table, could you mail it for me?
“Ret up” and “yuns” being the two things I have NEVER heard anywhere but from that branch of my family.
I have impressed more than one of them by guessing their home based on that phrase alone.