I didn’t live in Houston long enough to complete a treatise on the subject, but if it’s true (and I’m not sayin’ it ain’t), there’s something wrong, as all the signs say “Frontage Road.”
Well, I’m not from Chicago, but any time I hear the word bears, I have to say “Dahh Bearsss…”, intoning George Wendt’s sing-song cadence from SNL.
I did it so much I was banned from doing it. And had to learn to play that out silently in my head… when my daughter was on a soccer team called The Bea… I mean, “Da Bears”.
ETA: I’m a lifelong Packers fan, but even I have to answer “Who could beat the best Packers team ever, led by Aaron Rodgers, Brett Favre and Bart Starr?” with “Ditka.”
A large fraction of the country does not have the freeway feeder street layout.
Milwaukee also has Honey Creek, pronounced “Honey Crick”, but the street that parallels it is “Honey Creek Parkway”. By the way, one always goes “down by” the crick.
Come to think of it, based on my mom from there, Milwaukeeans go “down by” almost anywhere. Many of her idioms are from German roots; there were sections of M’waukee (natives do NOT use the “L”) that didn’t speak English. All churches and shops in those 'hoods used German. Hmmm, explains “First English Church”.
And they add the possessive to stores: Aldi’s, Nordstrom’s. Mom defends it by pointing out, when she was a kid, the big stores DID have apostrophes: Kohl’s, Gimbel’s, Macy’s, Marshall Field’s.
But if a friend of hers is really sick… uh oh, they have to go to “Mayo’s”.
“Gaumy”, meaning awkward and clumsy.
“Dooryard” instead of driveway.
“Numb” used as a synonym for dumb.
“Cunning” used as a synonym for “cute.”
“Stove up” meaning smashed in, as in what happens to your car when you crash it.
“Down cellar” instead of “in the basement”
Those are some right off the top of my head that pretty much guarantee the person you’re speaking with comes from Maine.
Make that sw PA; you won’t hear anyone from Philly saying that.
I don’t know if these are still current since I haven’t lived there since 1962, but when I was growing up in Philly in the 40s and 50s, we said pavement for sidewalk (Stay on the pavement; don’t go into the street", my mother would say). We said square for block (“it is 4 squares south from here”). Hoagie was strictly local then, although the usage has spread. The first time we went to Atlantic City, my father warned they called hoagies subs there (“because they sink you”). Recent NY Times crossword clue: Hero in Philly. Think of Franklin, Betsy Ross, no, not 6 letters. Answer: hoagie. Sad and bad so not rhyme in Philly. Nor ran and man. The plural of house in Philly is regular, while it is irregular in most of the US. Housez, not houzez. I’m sure there are plenty more.
‘You ok?’ I bet you’re from the north of England if that is how you say hello. Most likely Liverpool/Manchester.
I remember reading a book by an old west ranch guy who kept describing people as old and stove up. I was not familiar with the term, but “stove” is the past-tense/auxiliary form of the verb “stave” as in to stave off. I presume, since a stave is a long slender stick, being stove up means every morning you wake up feeling like last night you were done to by a bunch of staves.
Very Fargo-ish!
We call them collector lanes.
Does anyone ever use “plaza plop”? Anyone here know what it means?
Heah in R-kansas we say fish: ‘Catfish’
We seem to have a lot of CDs (collector/distributors) where the entrance to the freeway is the same lane as the exit from the freeway and the entering traffic merges across the exiting traffic. One that I use frequently is an entrance that merges across an exit that feeds onto a different freeway, so there is traffic going onto the freeway you are exiting in combination with street traffic that is going onto the other freeway.
Couple of pidgin Hawaiian terms that mark you are from Hawaii:
Howzit (How are you? Hello.) - I subconsciously use this when I met anyone in Hawaii or in the mainland who looks local (no, I can’t describe what being local looks like, it’s just instinct). If they reply Howzit! back or Good., they’re from Hawaii.
Da kine (Whatchamacallit as well as a state of mind (mad, sad, scared, etc) or a thing. “I want one of those da kine.”
Shave ice or Ice shave - Snow cone with much more finely ground (actually shaved) ice crystals. If you say Ice shave, you’re from Hilo, Hawaii (Island).
Oh, you mean Water Ice (central PA), with *water *pronounced (as it always is there) wuhdder
I don’t remember them being signed when I was growing up and with so many folks having moved to Houston I wouldn’t be surprised if the dialect has shifted. However, I never heard the term frontage or access or service road regularly used until I moved to Fort Worth. I would not be surprised if state or federal regulations guide the signage and that frontage is the favored language.
As for the term feeder being almost exclusive to Houstonians, I offer this dialect map from the 2003 Harvard dialect survey for reference.
And if anyone is interested, here’s the full list of dialect maps from the survey.
^ That is some impressive info/charts; thanks for passing it on. Fascinating.
I guess I know where I’m going to be for the next couple weeks.
Or NJ. Also if they “wait on” people. Not in an eatery, but instead of “waiting for” them.
I’m waiting on the next person on line to come to the register.
And if they pronounce the name of Boston’s hockey team with one syllable, they are proper Bostonians. It’s “Broons.”
Don’t know how to spell it quite, but when I hear “abowut” for about - they’re Canadian, and to tell the difference between an Australian and and a New Zealander; the latter says “yis” for yes.
I’m born and raised in Houston, and I don’t remember signage for “frontage rd” when I was young either. I never realized that other parts of the country don’t call them feeder streets!
Using those dialect charts makes me forget how to talk! 