“Tolo” - what is (apparently) commonly referred to in other parts of the country as a “Sadie Hawkins dance.”
“Pee-chee” - a term that my wife (and she’s no dummy) had never heard of until she moved from {undisclosed place #1} to {undisclosed place #2}.
Canadians being known for “,eh?” (similarly - or not - Argentines are known for saying “che!” at the end of sentences [or they used to be, at least. So much so that in Chile’s “national comic book,” Condorito, the regularly-featured Argentine character was/is named “Che Copete.”]
I’m sure there are other terms/sounds “out there” that people feel when they hear them they can confidently say to themselves, “I know where that person’s from!”
If you’re in the Midwestern U.S., and someone says the term “bubbler” for a water fountain, you can be pretty confident that they’re from eastern Wisconsin. (Though, the term is also apparently used in parts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.)
Dundee people have a very distinct pronounciation of any word that has a long ‘i’ - pie, five, aye, eye & drive are pronounced peh, fehve, eh, eh & drehve and so on. You probably can’t go 50 miles anywhere in the old world without encountering something like this, but by English speaking, even Scottish standards, the Dundee accent is something unusual.
Well, I’ll disclose that everyone in Seattle grew up with school folders with “So-70s-They-Scream-Disco” drawings of happy athletes on them. Pee-chee was the brand, but became the generic name for a folder.
ETA: Omigosh, you can still buy them!
We had friends who were at the 1960(?) World’s Fair in NYC. They asked a guard where they could find a bubbler. The man pointed “Past this building and around that corner and how are things in Milwaukee?”
“Pues” (“then”) as the Pamplona equivalent of the Canadian “eh”; often used by humorists from the neighboring areas to identify someone as being from Pamplona, although people who are from more than about 200km away may completely miss the characterization. Irl it may be met with “so then… we’re from Pamplona, then?” or similar.
It’s also where Ernesto Guevara got his nick.
One of the distinctions between Spanish dialects is the ending we use for diminutives. Officially, the general version is -ito; -ico is from Navarro-Aragonés (but can be found in multiple Latin American locations as well); -illo is from Andalusian (but not from Extremeño, which in other respects is very similar to Western Andalusian dialects). And if you’re from Costa Rica or from Navarre, you’re likely to pile 'em up: aquí cerquitica (real, real close by); chiquirriquitico (wee little child).
I was in LA and talking to some locals and said how I liked the ocean. Must be something about how I said the “o” as long o “OH shen”, because they said, “you’re from Wisconsin, right?”
If someone says “the 10”, they are from SoCal
If they say I-10, they are from anywhere else, but
if they say “the I-10” they’re from Phoenix metro. We are a weird hybrid.
It must be so - Goren used it as a clue in an episode of L&O:CI.
“Pues” was taught when I took Spanish in high school (many, many years ago, now). My dad (from Chile) always scoffed. But he was very jingoistic about Chile (South America, 2nd). For example, when I told him that we’d learned “alpinismo” as a word for “skiing” in Spanish, his response was something along the lines of: “‘Alpinismo’? Hogwash! In Chile we say ‘andinismo’!” (he was/is a VERY proud Chileno [although he later became a naturalized citizen of the U.S.])
Didn’t know about that one. People do pick up my Midlantic origin when I pronounce the word ‘on’ like ‘awn’. OTOH up here in the Boston region they don’t seem to be able to differentiate the words ‘dawn’ and ‘don’.
Yinzers tend to use the word “leave” and “let” interchangeably in ways that they aren’t used elsewhere in the country.
Yinzers also often leave out the words “to be” in a sentence, as in “my clothes need washed”, instead of “my clothes need to be washed.” The Yinzer accent also sometimes inserts an R sound where there isn’t one, so “washed” can sound like “warshed”.
I grew up in West Virginia, but I was close enough to Pittsburgh that I have a lot of the yinzer-isms in my speech.
Buggy for grocery cart is a southern thing. It’s not specific to western PA.
Bumbershoot isn’t a common word these days, but it’s not specific to PA. There’s a yearly Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, for example.
Jumbo Balogna used to be a local brand name. I don’t think it exists any more, but that’s where the name comes from.
To add to your list:
Hoagie is mostly a Pennsylvania word for submarine sandwich. It’s not a Pittsburgh-ism but it is mostly PA specific. I believe it started in Philadelphia.
In Shpoygin, Scansin, we have:
“stop and go lights” instead of stoplights
“En so?” as a regular interjection in conversation.
“C’mere once” instead of “Come over here”
“Ainna” instead of “isn’t it” or even “ain’t it”.
“Start wit me last” meaning you’re telling the waitress to take everyone else’s orders first.
"schmeltin’ means going fishing for smelt. And bite they tiny heads off.
“doze” for “those”.
