It just dawned on me: it must be a government agency, right? Short for “National” something-or-other?
Several years back, my wife was babysitting a toddler daughter of a friend from Hawaii. Toddler was in a highchair, happily eating a bowl of cereal–and then she pushed the bowl away and said “pau”. Which baffled my wife, so she refilled the bowl; toddler said “pau” again, so wife started checking for any other deficiencies that needed correcting, and much hilarity ensued.
Bingo - it’s a national agency. Which one exactly I’m not sure, because they never say, but most likely it’s the DSS (Department of Social Security), which issues unemployment and child support funds.
Thank you for answering my “bray” question, by the way! It had been lightly bugging me for a while.
Cheers,
R-n-R
Gad, I love this thread. Fascinatin’ stuff! I love regionalisms; they give flavor to language.
Some reactions and a few new offerings:
hazel-rah: I grew up in Southern Ohio and heard “put up” constantly, i.e. “putting up vegetables” (i.e. canning), “time to put 'em up”, meaning put away the books/toys, etc.
urban1: (and Jomo Mojo) The “warsh” for “wash” thing is used constantly here in Northern Illinois. Sounds jarringly wrong to me but that’s the way the word’s pronounced. Also: “root” is pronounced “rut”, even in local commercials for ag supplies, e.g. “fights rutworm”.
sjc, etc.: Around here heat vents are sometimes called “grates”, but usually that refers to floor vents.
Brynda: The Hoosier “of an evening” thing extends to Southern Ohio as well but it’s pretty localized. What a trip; haven’t heard that one in years!
A few others, which may or may not be specific to Cincinnati (my home town):
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Using “please?” to request clarification, repeating, etc. Given the heavy German history of the place (“Where The Rhine Meets The Old South”) it’s rumored to come from “bitte?” I’ve never heard it used that way anywhere else, and confused people mightly until I broke the habit.
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“Barefoot”, referring to coffee–we’re talking the standard cuppa joe here, not the latte stuff. If you drink coffe black–no cream, no sugar, straight-as-it-pours–you drink it “barefoot”. This caused some genial confusion, when someone would ask how I take my coffee and I’d absently reply, “Just barefoot”.
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Calling small package beer stores “pony kegs”.
Veb
My father is from Hawaii and speaks pidgin sometimes. I picked up “da kine,” which I guess is equivalent to “whatchamacallit” or “thingy.” I once said this at work and got a really puzzled look - I guess they don’t hear that phrase much in Texas.
Registers, grates, vents, etc: My dad (from Nazareth, PA) calls the floor heating/air conditioning ducts in our house grates. My mom (from a town on the NY/Canadian border) calls them registers. I (from the Albany area) call them vents.
racinchikki, what do you call the type of car that isn’t automatic transmission?
I’m from DC by way of San Francisco and in both places we called it a “stick shift”. My ex-boyfriend from the Albany area always called it a “manual” and thought that “stick” sounded absolutely ridiculous.
He also used to get on my case for pronouncing the “l” in “almond”.
Sadly, the only one I can think of from my native land is the name of the town. Amherst is pronouced “Am-ERST,” not “AM-hurst.” Never bothered me, but it drove some of the other locals nuts. (When UMASS is in session, the population of Amherst more than doubles, and that’s not even mentioning the other five colleges. So there’s a bit of a gulf between Locals and the Students.)
What about the southwestern “Anymore” in place of now. “I feel much better anymore.” I thought that was a specifically New Mexico/Arazona thing, but I’ve heard it online from people from Utah and southern California . . .
And while I go to the bathroom, (or restroom, I want to be polite) my friends from north-central New York go to the “loo.” Though if Ed McBain is to be belived, in the city, criminals (and only criminals) go to the “terlet.”
Where does using “borrow” instead of “lend” come from? New Jersy? I’ve heard this a lot around here, but mostly from non-natives. “Can you borrow me five bucks?”
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“Maybe they’re from N’wyork!”
“Or Mas-at-chu-son!”
Standard or manual seem to be what everybody else calls it around here. My dad refers to piloting that sort of car as “driving stick”, though, so that phrase isn’t new to me or anything, either.
Where is the line drawn on the pronunciation of “aunt”? (awnt or ant)? I’m a native Californian, and always heard “ant”, but I’ve heard “awnt” (which always strikes me as hi-falutin’) from my wife & her Connecticut relatives, and a co-worker from Alabama.
I crack up when my nieces, who also picked up a Boston accent from their father, refer to my wife Patricia as something that sounds like “Awnt Peeyaaaty”.
Gosh, I’m just thrilled all to pieces that my humble thread has generated so many replies! I could go on reading about all these different words and people’s experiences forever. Seems like there are as many regionalisms as there are people. Most of the replies could be spun off into their own threads.
Anyway, thanks for coming up with other names for what some people call the register. Now that I’ve read them I realize that I had heard all of them before, I just forgot about them because there aren’t very many where I live. The Olympic Peninsula of Washington just doesn’t get very cold.
Thanks for the proper pronunciation of Saskatchewan as well. (By the way, is the -wun part of your phonetic transcription pronounced like the word one? That is how I would read it but I want to be sure.)
TVeblen: Interesting–the part of Indiana where I heard “of an evening” most often was Richmond, which is just north of Cincinnati.
Rock-n-Rolga: I never heard “coke” for a soft drink in NC, either (Chapel Hill and Greenville). However, it is widely used in middle TN and Georgia.
I thought of another Tennesseeism: “Whereabouts” for “where.” I live in Detroit now, and when I meet another Southerner, I always say something like, “Oh, you are from the South? Whereabouts?” just for old time’s sake.
In TN, we also say “in” for “en” so “pen” is “pin” and “Jennie” is pronounced like “Ginny”. I was so used to that pronunciation that when I moved to NC and people asked me if my name was pronounced “Brinda” or the more standard “Brenda,” I could not hear the difference. I had grown up with “Brinda,” but not because of the Brynda spelling, but because of the middle TN accent. After living there a year or so, it suddenly hit me one day and I could hear the difference.
[sub]and in case you are interested, it is pronounced Brenda. Too much “in” gives me the heebie jeebies. [/sub]
Cool! Two new terms for crane fly!
We always called them “mosquito hawks” or even “mosquito sharks” when I was growing up, complete with tales about how they ate mosquitoes. Some folks call them “Eww! Kill it kill it!” but I’m not sure what region that is associated with.
I think ‘y’all’ and “all y’all” are wonderful constructions - they fill a hole in English grammar. Not being a Southerner though, I just can’t say 'em without feeling pretentious. Maybe if I practice “y’all, y’all, y’all…”. Start working them into conversation…
OK y’all, here are a few more Aus ones:
Daks are pants (clothing with leg holes, not excited breathing). Worn on the nether regions next to the skin - underdaks. Made of warm material in a casual style -trakkydaks.
Sluggos are the type of stretchy skintight minimalist men’s swimming garment that allows any casual observer to ascertain whether the wearer dresses to the left or right, and whether they are intact or snipped. Also (but less colourfully) known as Speedos after the original manufacturer.
Ta - thank you (pronounced ‘tah’)
Ta-ta - good-bye (pronounced ‘tat ah’).
The wind’s getting up - time to go.
I like being able to stick “all” almost anywhere in a sentence… “what all are you doing? who all is coming? all y’all can shut up! he’s all like ‘whatever!’ and i’m all ‘riiiiiight!’ you’ve got your books and all…”
So versatile! But I’m not sure how widespread it is.
There’s another fun one I hear sometimes here in Texas (it’s a bit rare, though), and that’s the, well, hyperpossessive form of y’all, “y’alls’s” I guess you would spell it. It sounds like “yall-ziz.”
-fh
When I was growing up in Winnipeg there was a plural second-person pronoun (similar to “y’all”): yas /j@z/. Whatch’yas doing?
The proper name for that insect is Skeeter-eater. 
I heard this on on the radio in an interview between the DJ and a band. The Band guy said he could tell Coloradoans becuase we always say “RIGHT on” as opposed to “right ON”. I have never heard that before, but I do always accent the first word.
I’m from the south (NC) and live in SoCal. My boyfriend (also from NC) and I recently went to a Cajun restaurant nearby, thinking we might be able to get a particular southern staple there (the place being “New Orleans Cafe” and all).
The waitress came for our drink orders and Joe asked for “Sweet Tea”. She actually thought he was speaking a different language.
I reckon Sweet Tea is as rare outside the South as UNSWEETENED tea is IN the South.
We prefer to drink Sweet Tea with our Eastern NC Hickory-Smoked, Pulled-Pork BBQ (with spicy vinegar sauce, not that sweet, sticky stuff). But unfortunately, proper BBQ is just as tough to come by out this way as Sweet Tea.
Another thing I’ve noticed living out here is the way Californians refer to Interstates & Freeways. Everything is “The 405” or “The 5” or “The 40”, whereas in the East, it’s “I-40” or “I-95”.
“Y’uns” is also found in remoter Appalachian and Ozark communities, used as other Southerners use “y’all”. When we moved from the eastern Arkansas delta region to the hills of Newton County, it took me a while to figure out what the heck they were saying. It’s pronounced farther forward than you’d think from the spelling – almost like a German umlauted u.
In Dublin, the second-person plural is “yiz”.