I can deal with people saying pronouncing "aunt" as "ant," really I can. I understand it's only a New Englandism, slightly transplanted to the west coast, anyway, and Brits say "ant" themselves. And I just grit my teeth but no longer hyperventilate when people say "pop" instead of "soda."

But for all of you non-New Englanders out there, honest and off the top of your head, do you know what a package store is?

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2000

Answers

I just got back from ten days in Connecticut and Massachusetts and "package store" now just seems quaint to me, now that I no longer see stores called that on a regular basis and now that I know the source of the phrase.

A coworker said "pop" today, which reminded me. I asked him if he knew what a package store is, and he guessed what everyone else in Denver guesses: a Mail Boxes Etc. or Pak Mail kind of shipping and mailing store?

New England, holding on to its Puritan roots longer than the rest of the country, is more ashamed of its drinking. You would buy your alcohol and carry it home in a brown paper package so no one would know. Hence package store, to the point that stores are actually named "Main Street Package Store" and not just called that. Which leads to what they're called, slang-wise, "going to the packy for a case."

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2000

That is so funny that you mentioned package stores, because I recently got my Visa bill and was confused to hell by a listing: $8.99 that I spent at some supposed package store. I thought, what the hell?! I had to go into my journal, look up the day the purchase took place, figure out the context (a family dinner) and only then did I remember that I'd bought a bottle of wine. Okay, so I bought cheap wine. But I was still baffled until I saw your post.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2000

Anyone know what a root cellar is? I didn't know until I was 26. (I live in Houston - we don't even have cellars.)

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2000

There's a fine distinction between basements and cellars, which a journaler--one of quite long standing whom I forget, Diary of a Sabbatical?--in Rhode Island describes. I forget what (Janet's?) distinction was. The way we used it, a cellar was a damp cool place for storage, of, say, roots or wine. Or, in the house I grew up in, the below-ground space was a cellar because my father built the house over a spring, and it's never been dry in my life. Other people in my town had finished basements, but in a town with such high water tables, that was rare.

Contrariwise, I would never call the below-ground floor of my current house a "cellar." It's a basement, which is finished. We are going to devote a corner of the original coal room in the basement to wine, and call that the wine cellar though.

In the Little House books, it's always a cellar, like when Alice and Almanzo Wilders fills the baskets with potatoes to sell. Or a storm cellar, where neighbors of the Ingalls hide during a cyclone (as LIW called it). I don't suppose people bothered to have finished basements when they lived in tar-papered shacks.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2000

I grew up in Ohio, but my mother is from Pennsylvania. So, here's a few teasers for you, odd words that clutter up my vocabulary:

• sputzie
  
• red up
  
• springelas
  
• kapers
  
• divan
  

My fiance is from Canada, and we constantly war over the pronunciation of words, such as "pasta," "roof," or "tomorrow." And he's got odd words he uses like "ski-doo" and "toque."

Wherever you go, the people there talk funny. =)

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2000

I'm in North Carolina, and I'm not sure why it is, but I've known for a long time what a package store is (by the way, they're ABC stores here, for Alcoholic Beverage Control). And most of us pronounce "aunt" as "ant."

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

Atara, I know that a caper is a tasty nasturtium seed, and that a divan is a couch-type thing, but kapers and the others have me stymied.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

Well, I did know what a package store is, but that may be because I lived in Massachusetts for 2 years a long time ago.

I grew up in central Illinois. To me a root cellar is not under a house, but built elsewhere with mounded dirt over it. It is used to store your potatoes, apples, and such for winter. You can even dig your own makeshift root cellar. It doesn't have to be big. Root cellars are also used to take refuge from tornados. A cellar can be under a house....it is danker and not as finished as a basement.

This reminds me...... when I was growing up my mom always called the door to the house that went to the basement the "great entrance". I always wondered what was "great" about it....it was an ordinary door that led from the sidewalk on to the landing of the basement (cellar?) steps. It dawned on me while reading a novel in my twenties. The author referred to the grade level door to a house....oh, no...Mom was saying "grade entrance"! I later found out my oldest sister thought the same thing and discovered the truth the same way I did.... I don't know all of Atara's mystery words but in central Illinois of the forties "red up" meant "to tidy up...to clean up", divan was a couch (not in my family though), and kapers were escapades.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

Redd Up means to get ready. I don't recognize the other PA slang.

I did a piece in my journal a while back on Rhode Island slang. There's a good chance that I am going to be moving to the OTHER coast soon and damn I'm going to miss hearing people talk about bubblers and frappes and packies (I thought "package store" was universal).

Hey, for all you Seattle folks, they don't call soda "pop" out there, do they? Because that's just wrong.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

David, re: seattle, I spent a summer as a counselor at a camp, and all of the kids said "pop." and yes, it was just wrong and sad.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

I'm Canadian, from Toronto - and I have to say, I find the word 'soda' so quaint. In the past, I'd only ever heard it in old movies - never in real life. And actually - here in Seattle, they *do* use pop! I've only heard one person say soda, and I was just so .... tickled! Since, like I said, I've only heard that in "It's A Wonderful Life"!!! I know that my friends and co-workers are always giggling about how I pronounce "process" because I say... PROcess (like pro's and con's). Another one is "against". I actually pronounce the 'i' in the middle there instead of saying agenst and also the emphasis is in a different place. Oh and I say "root" when I say "route" as apposed to "raote" like they do here in Seattle. There's almost a southern twang to the accent here; it's very slight but it's there. *Not* what I expected.

The best though was coming here and asking if they had "homo milk" at the store. *BOY* did that get a reaction.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

Ooooo, Jennifer, wait 'till we tell them our milk comes in bags...

Anyway, round here in the country, they say "wah" at the end of a sentence, as in, "How's it goin', wah?" So much for that -Canadians say eh- assumption.

There's also a local mercantile (general) store around here that everyone calls the hardware store. Funny, most people buy gas, milk and chips, not hardware.

I call pop pop and potato chips are just chips, silly. A case of beer is a two four, and fried potatoes and cabbage is called bubble & squeak. Toronto is really pronounced "Tarrana".

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

My absolute, all-time favorite Texas expression: "fixin' to." As in, "Are you fixin' to go to the store?" And, "I'm fixin' to beat your butt, child."

Yeah, I was born in Texas but I live in Boston now. And I have finally trained myself to pronounce coupon "coo-pon" instead of "kew- pon."

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

When I first moved to Boston, all the references to "package stores" confused me, too -- and even after living here for almost nine years, I I still haven't met anyone who knows why liquor stores are called package stores.

When I moved to Vermont from Wisconsin, people giggled whenever I referred to a water fountain as a bubbler...

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

My ex-partner's parents were from Newfoundland and introduced me to "after" as a verb tense ... as in, "I'm after going to the store" (I'm about to go to the store). They seemed to use it most often to mean that something that happened in the past, was about to happen (as in, "He was after going out the door before she said she was sorry.").

In Nova Scotia, where I live, a package store (not an expression used here) would be "the LC," short for Liquor Commission.

Some Canadians say "eh" at the end of sentences - I'm one of them - but it's not used with anything like the frequency the stereotype suggests, and it has a specific (but flexible) use: to signal that you expect agreement ("Those Liberals, eh. What a bunch of buggers."), or to turn a statement into a question ("You read this, eh?" instead of, "Did you read this?"). There's probably other uses.

I learned to pronounce "buoy" as "boy," not "boo-ee". I'm convinced the other pronunciation is from landlubbers reading it in books. Can anybody confirm if this is a dialect thing?

We call people who aren't from here "come-from-aways."

We still call people from Ontario "Upper Canadians" even though their province hasn't been Upper Canada since Confederation, especially when we're annoyed with them, but we don't call people from Quebec "Lower Canadians". I bet the opposite would be true if the federal seat of government was in Montreal.

We say "aunt" like it rhymes with "font", and both "pop" and "soda" are used here. "Pop" might be more common. We say "schedule" like "skedge-oo-al", not "shed-oole". We say "route" as though it rhymes with "root".

We feel "nippish" or "peckish" if we're a little (but not a lot) hungry.

Joanne

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

I'm a native of Southern California, but I knew what a package store is from trips to the mysterious East. My grandparents are from Ohio and used to say "redd up the living room." I don't have any problem with "soda" or "pop." A friend claims people she works with refer to all soft drinks as "Coke" or "white Coke" but I've never heard this.

I know "coo-pon" is correct but it just sounds wrong to me. It's "kew- pon."

My friend from New York teases me about having the Southern California accent in which "food" is pronounced "fewd" and "dude" is "dewd" and so on. My own spouse teases me about that, and he's from Northern California. He also gets on me for referring to highways with an article, ie, "take the 280 till you get to the 85 then go north.."

What I don't understand about asking for "homo milk" is why you'd need to. I don't think I've ever seen milk being sold that wasn't homogenized.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

I use to think "fixinto" was English! It wasn't until I went to Iowa and my cousin couldn't understand me that I learned...

Along the same lines of "divan" and my grandmother (in Iowa) uses that and "davenport".

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

When I lived in Louisiana, I once referred to the "Interstate" as the "freeway." My companion in the car had a field day with that one... but I still think it is because they call everything an "Interstate" instead of Highway, etc...

Is "freeway" regional, or just what we in the big city use?

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

Re: Upper and Lower Canada:

Ontario was Upper Canada because it was further up the St Lawrence River than Lower Canada (Quebec). I always thought that was weird, because to me, Upper Canada was lower on the map (further south) than Lower Canada. Anyway, it had nothing to do with where the capital City was, because for a time, it was in Montreal (or is my history just a little skewed?)

You want regionalisms? I've lived out in the praries for two years now, and a corner store is still a dipanneur.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

We use "homo milk" here to indicate it's 3.whatever %, as opposed to 2% or skim or whatever.

I've never heard of the capital of Canada being anywhere other than Ottawa. The whole "Upper Canadian" being used as an insult thing is, I think, a result of Ontario having so much control over the rest of the country... apparently, Atlantic Canadians are the only ones who use the phrase. We don't feel the same sort of resentment towards Quebecois. The first provincial governments in both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (two Atlantic Canadian provinces) were separatist, and although it's not a meaningful movement here anywhere, we still retain a lot of the language.

I say "kew-pon" too, for coupon. I don't think "coo-pon" is more correct - it's just different accents. Like "ant" vs "aunt", one isn't wrong.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

Minnesota is notorious for odd lingo. Take for example that duck- duck-goose game, here they play duck-duck-grey duck. I've been trying to set the locals straight for years on that one, 'grey duck' just ain't right.

Also, Minnesotans refer to objects as HER and SHE. I've heard parents chant "Put HER in!" referring to a basketball team trying to score. I've also heard "Yup, SHE's a nice one", referring to the weather. But the one that really drives me bananas is that they don't say "loan", they say "borrowed" all the time. She BORROWED me her silver necklace, or I "borrowed" him some money. Even the educated folks talk like that here.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

All the Canucks on this thread are really making me happy! And Jennifer, your post about Homo Milk nearly did me in - I hadn't realized that was a Canadian thing, until I got down here and couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about every time I asked for it.

Anyone from Upper Canada knows what the May 2-4 weekend is, and where you spend it (Cottage Country). I tried to explain what Cottage Country was to my Yankee husband, and he just kept saying, "If you go to Lake Joseph, why not just say Lake Joseph" so then I had to explain that you don't say Lake Joseph either, you say "Muskoka".

In Vancouver, we had something called "Hi Stores". These are family owned convenience stores with huge banks of flowers and veggies outside on carts...called Hi Stores because they are generally operated by immigrants, and usually there are a few older members of the family who aren't comfortable in English working out front, taking care of the flowers, and although they won't say much in English, they always give you a half wave, smile, and say Hi. Sometimes, several times. Hi Hi Hi! It is very friendly :)

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

A sputzie is a house sparrow. To redd up means to quickly pick up a place (get rid of the clutter) to get it ready for something. Springelas are an anise-flavored cookie, with printed designs stamped on it using a wooden roller or press (OK, so that one wasn't really fair.) Kapers are chores. And a divan is a kind of couch, as opposed to a sofa.

I say "freeway" instead of interstate, since a freeway is the opposite of a turnpike (a toll road). Freeways are free! =) I say "kew-pon", drink pop, my house is under a "ruff," and spaghetti is a kind of "pahst-ah." (My fiance teases me about those last two.)

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2000

hope an aussie can put a word in here. having a number of friends in the usa and canada, i've built up quite a vocabulary to deal with the differences in our languages .... but i learned so much from this thread!! i loved it. package stores ... springelas ... homo milk ... red up ... mind if i use them here? i love words!! an aussie saying to finish with: "may your chooks turn into emus and kick your dunny down"

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Wait .. isn't a chook a chicken? And isn't a dunny a toilet? I am totally confused.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

What about herring chokers and bluenosers?

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

I grew up by the water (gulf coast) and we call buoys 'boo ees'

The american heritage talking dictionary has 'booee' as the first pronunciation and 'boi' as the second. I'm willing to bet it is regiional.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

The proper terminology for what you're calling "soda" or "pop" is Coke or Co-Cola. Here in Georgia it's quite acceptable to call any fizzy soft drink, regardless of color or brand, a Coke.

Folks here in middle Georgia have taken the "fixing to" used in Texas to new heights of correctness. The "ing" has been dropped, so now the standard pronunciation is "fih to." "Fih to" (or really, "fih ta") is used constantly in place of "going to," particularly by African Americans but by lots of whites also. Examples: What are you fih ta have for supper? How old is she fih ta be on her birthday? I'm fih ta go shopping later.

Someone mentioned the Canadian pronunciation of "tomorrow." Is that the "to-MORE-oh" that I'm hearing more of from newscasters? This new pronunciation seems to be catching on here in the U.S., and I hate it! Also, I'm hearing T.V. people talk about "five dough-lar bills." Is it the Canadian influence that's causing this disturbing pronunciation change?

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

How else would you pronounce pasta than "pahst-ah"?

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Jane, that's fascinating about "fih" in georgia. Because Jamaican patois uses almost the same construction. I'm not sure exactly what the translation of it is, I think it means will or can. People have said that it is an african language construction (from i forget where), and I wonder in georgia as well.

"'ow you fi seh dat?" = how do you/can you say that?

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Lizzie - you can pronounce "pasta" with the first "a" pronounced as in ant. It's wrong, wrong, wrong.

Unless I missed it while scrolling through the thread, no one's mentioned my favorite New England-ism: calling soda "tonic." That takes some getting used to. Also, "jeans" are often called "dungarees."

When I lived near Boston, I used to sometimes hear people say things like, "Oh, so didn't I!" (when they were agreeing with you). I heard it from enough different people that it wasn't just someone's poor grammar.


-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Trouble, the Jamaican patois may be different from what I'm hearing in Georgia. Here, the "fih" is definitely short for "fixing" -- I'm pretty sure it is not any kind of an African construction. White people here are more likely to say "fixing to," while black people are more likely to say "fih to," but the usage is exactly the same and there's a lot of overlap.

Of course, it may be that once "fih" becomes divorced from "fixing" it may eventually be used here just as a substitute for "will" or "can," as you say. I'm certainly not an expert on African languages, so I don't know if the Jamaican usage is different from what I'm hearing here in Georgia, but my first inclination is to doubt that it's actually an African construction!

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

How else would anyone say "Tomorrow"? I suppose you could say "Tamorra", but it doesn't make sense. To-morrow, To-morrow, I love ya, to-morrow...

My boyfriend's brother recently married a woman from england who has three daughters. Here's some of the stuff they've come up with:

Red Sauce = Ketchup

Dungarees = Overalls

Jumper = Sweater or sweatshirt

Trainers = Running shoes

Thingamabob = TV Remote Control

There are many more that they use on a daily basis, but I can't think of any right now.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

i originated in england, surely the home of regional language .. we never called ketchup red sauce, only tomato sauce. then again, there's a not so subtle difference between ketchup and tomato sauce, only i forget what it is. i DO know that we don't LIKE ketchup, but we drown almost everything in tomato sauce. in australia, the colloquial (rhyming slang) term for tomato sauce is dead 'orse. i think rhyming slang is particular to the uk and australia, do americans use it? such as: dog's eye = meat pie; frog & toad = road; rubbedy dub = pub; trouble & strife = wife; billy lids = kids. how do you pronounce "yoghurt"? my mother clings to the british way, where the "o" is said as in pot, i prefer the aussie way, where the "o" is said as in slow.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

I vividly remember my first day of school in England. A girl came up to me and asked me "do you have your trainers for P.E.?" I, of course, replied "my what?" To which she explained "your trainers...you know, your plimsoles!" Luckily, someone had told me what plimsoles were.

I told her that in America, we called them sneakers, and she thought that was hysterically funny. "You mean for sneaking around?" For weeks afterwards kids kept coming up to me and pointing at their feet and saying "hey, what's this?" I would answer them, and then they would giggle and make fun of my accent: "snee-kurrs, snee-kurrs!"

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

This thread is awesome! Or, as my fellow Bostonians & Dennis Leary would say, "wicked pissah!"

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

I'm living in Toronto, but my (more or less) home town is St Catharines, Ontario. Even in such a short distance apart (100 km / 60 miles by road) there are some distinct regionalisms.

One of the first times my now-wife then-girlfriend visited Toronto, we went to a bar and she asked for a T&V. The bartender stared at her blankly until she explained that it's a vodka and ice tea. He'd never heard of it before, even though it was one of the more popular drinks in the Niagara Region.

Some other regionalisms I can think of off the top of my head:

For a combined bachelor party / bridal shower to raise cash for the happy couple: in St. Catharines it's called a Stag 'n Doe. In Brantford (about 70 km W) it's a Buck 'N Doe.

Another Brantfordism: cop-a-boo. Means to have a look at.

Related to the Cottage Country entry above: to Southern Ontarians, traveling to cottage country is referred to as going Up North, even though the area is south of 80% of the rest of Canada.

In Nova Scotia, there is a university called Dalhousie. In St Catharines, there is an area of town called Port Dalhousie. Nova Scotia is pronounced Dal-house-ee. Back home, it's pronounced Da-lou-zee.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

The mention of "trainers/phlimsoles" reminded me of a story from junior high. (Grade 8 or so, about 13 or 14 years of age.)

A girl who had just moved here to Ohio from Ireland (and who would go on to become our valedictorian, by the way) had lost her eraser while we were taking a test in algebra class. She raises her hand, and asks in a rather loud voice:

(you know what's coming...)

"Excuse me, but do you have a rubber I could borrow?"

Kids can be so cruel...

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

This reminds me of an introductory linguistics course I took in college. My all-time favorite word I learned in that class (although I can't remember where it originates): kidcheater. As in a spatula or scraper. Think about it -- it is the utensil that cheats the kids out of licking the bowl!

I'm also reminded of some strange pronunciations that we discussed in class. My relatives in Iowa call a picture a "pitcher" and a washcloth a "warshcloth." And my mother pronounces words that are spelled with "wh" with a slight whistling sound. So "whistle" and "when" get the whistling treatment, as does "which." Oddly enough, "witch" gets a plain, unadorned "w" sound.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

I grew up in Illinois, but my parents were originally from Tennessee, so I'm not always sure whether my regionalisms are Midwestern or Southern. One that is definitely Southern is "coming up" to mean "growing up," as in, "When I was coming up, we didn't have cell phones and cable tv."

Atara, my family says "spatzie" (short "a" as in cat) instead of "sputzie," but same meaning. I can't tell you if that's a Midwestern or Southern pronounciation, though.

My hometown is in Southern Illinois, near St. Louis, and a lot of the regionalisms there originate from German (e.g., "I got my hairs cut.") People in my area say "soda," but the closer you get to Chicago, the more you'll hear "pop." When my mom first moved to Illinois, she was used to saying "Coke" and "white Coke." She got teased at work because someone asked her for some white soda and she thought they meant baking soda.

A couple months ago, my partner and I were visiting my grandmother's apartment. For her own peculiar reasons, she has set up her bedroom in what should be the living room and vice versa, and therefore rarely uses the front door to the apartment. She and my partner were discussing the set-up, and he asked her, referring to the room where she has her bed, "This is really the front door and the front room of the apartment, right?" She responded, "No, my front room is back there." He was completely confused, and I had to explain that "front room" is Southern for "living room," which makes "come on in and just head on back to the front room" a perfectly logical statement.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

What a great thread! I learned a lot of new regionalisms here -- and the information that "fih to" is a contraction for "fixing to" in Georgia makes me wonder how we got the expression "fit to be tied." Is that a misspelling of "fih to be tied?" -- as in, so mad he's going to need tying up?

Anyway, my homeland of Maine has a million regionalisms, which you all have probably heard in "The Spitfire Grill" and "The Cider House Rules."

Here are a few that appear to be unique to the western foothills of Maine: "Dink" is the same insult as "d*ck," although it's not considered as rude (it's like "gol-durn"). When kids catch other kids misbehaving, they say "aah-vaah," instead of "I'm telling" -- apparently a corruption of a similar-sounding French word. Lots of objects have genders, which match the French -- cars are "she," and tractors are "he." Older men occasionally call each other "dear," instead of "bud" (I suppose that could be another French Canadian thing). Distances of more than a few hundred yards are "a piece," as in, "The store is down the road a piece."

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

Re Ron Collings's "Another Brantfordism: cop-a-boo. Means to have a look at"--

I don't know where "cop" originated but it means "take" or "get," and embarassingly the only example I can think of is Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman" saying "cop a squat" meaning to sit down somewhere.
The "boo" part of that I find very interesting and I wonder if it's a corruption of "butcher's hook," the rhyming slang for "look."
(And, whoever asked, no, the US uses no rhyming slang except by affectation. No one would ever say "trouble and strife" or "apples and pears" with any reasonably expectation of being understood to mean "wife" or "stairs."

"Down the road apiece" is I think a New Englandism, not just a Maine-ism. One term I've never heard anyone else use is "yea." It's pronounced "yay"; I spell it "yea"--I've never seen it in print-- because I figure it must be derived from some archaic or obsolete Middle English word. Something is "yea high"--here you gesture with your hand to indicate the guesstimated height or "yea long," and that's about it--never "yea far" to the store, perhaps because you can't indicate that kind of distance with a gesture.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

There is one example of rhyming slang that most Americans know -- the raspberry (that farting sound you make with your mouth, as in "giving someone the raspberry.") I didn't know it was rhyming slang until recently, though, when someone told me it came from "raspberry tart," i.e., a fart. Charming, eh?

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

as a born 'n bred texan, i can confirm that all sodas in the south are 'coke' ... although 'white coke' is a new one on me.

'Y'all want somethin' ta drink?' 'Yeah, can I have a coke?' 'What kindja want? We got Pepsi an' Seven-Up.'

here's another one: kleenex. in my family, everyone pronounced it 'klih-nicks' with a short i -- except one grandfather, who as my grandmother's second husband was kind of a latecomer to the family and called it 'klee-necks.' i remember having a very stubborn argument with him about that when i was young, because i'd never heard *anyone* pronounce it with a long e before.

i also heard 'yea high' used as lisa described. 'fixin' to,' particularly 'fixin to go to,' was standard even in urban texas; when i moved to missouri for my freshman year of college i busted up my friends with that one. i had no idea it was regional, but i dropped it in a hurry.

if a torrential rainstorm was approaching, the proper phrase was 'it's fixin to come a gully-washer.'

and if you're not immediately about to do something, then you'll 'get around to it dreckly' (directly).

when i was growing up, we had breakfast, dinner, and supper -- not breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

colloquial phrases: 'he was all over him like stink on shit,' cleans up to 'he was all over him like white on rice.'

i was frequently accused of 'gittin' too big for my britches.'

...

my ex-girlfriend grew up in new orleans, and added 'where y'at?' to my daily lexicon, as a sort of general 'what's up?' or 'how ya doin'?' greeting.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

Re: duck duck gray duck...You will never convince a native Minnesotan that it's goose. It's gray duck. Gail Cooper of popculturejunkmail.com did a Star Tribune weblog on the topic. She pointed out that you have to use "duck" if you're going to do the colors. It gets boring and you go "Purple duck, red duck, green duck, orange duck, turquoise duck, GRAY DUCK!"

There's a whole book written on the topic of quirky Minnesota-speak, so I will just hit the high points: Pop, not soda. Duck duck gray duck. "Going up to the lake", even if the lake is south. Name of lake never specified. Everyone "goes up to the lake" or alternatively, "up to the cabin". We eat "bars" (think brownies) and "hotdish". We talk about the weather alot. "Borrow" instead of "lend" is more of a non-Twin Cities thing, I've never heard an urban dweller use that unless they were raised up north. Same with dinner (the midday meal) and supper (the evening meal).

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

You know, no matter how far I go, I *cannot* escape Brantford. That town pops up *everywhere*!!!

Anyway - Ron, I lived in Brantford for five years or so, and I've never heard the cop-a-boo expression. However, Brantford *was* the first time my bigcity Toronto girl ears ever heard the expression "Buck-and-Doe" --- and *oh* did I laugh! I never did go to one although I have a few friends down there still who are getting close to marriage age and I'm sure I'll get sucked into the festivities eventually.

And yeah - explaining cottage country to Seattlittes is pretty tough.

One that I recently noticed on a language page I hadn't even thought of was how Ontarians say "Dick-all" to mean "nothing". As in "I did dick-all at work today!". It's funny too because I remember using it when I first moved out here and getting some pretty strange looks.

The 'eh' thing is funny - I've got it almost completely edited out of my speech, and I currently have a houseguest visiting from Alberta - he's originally from Winnipeg - and OMG does he say "eh" a lot. I mean at the end of almost every sentence! Shocking!

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

Why is it "up to the lake" in Minnesota? In Maine, east is "down." I have been told that this is because early maps of the area used west as the top of the map, turning the usual orientation 90 degrees so that more coastline could be displayed -- but I wonder if it isn't just that going "up" along the coast took you to the fishing grounds and "down" took you home.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

I subscribe to a newsletter that usually includes a "Southern Word of the Day". Painfully, I recognize a lot of them as being part of my vocabulary (Louisiana). Today's was:

FRUNCHARD (noun) -- the usually grassy area in front of a residence. Usage: " Bubba's out in the frunchard with Mary Ann pickin' some blackburres."

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

What a fun thread. Reminds me of one time as a child I got in a huge indignant fight with another kid about whether dogs said "arf" or "woof".

By the way, I'm from Kansas and have lived in Texas for the last 3 years. Everybody at home says "pop" but I started saying soda in high school just to be different. I appropriated "y'all" into my speech shortly after arriving here, but I'd never be caught dead saying "fixin' to" or "reckon", for some reason it sounds really unsophisticated to me.

-- Anonymous, August 05, 2000

here in London, tons of people say "All right?" to mean hello. At first I was totally confused, and wondered if I looked ill or unhappy or something. 'Yeah, I'm fine' I'd say. Especially around West Indians, it becomes "Y'Aright?" "Wha'appen?" is another one, used to mean "what's going on?", sometimes just as a greeting, and sometimes about something specific.

-- Anonymous, August 05, 2000

Oh my god, Trouble - when I first was living in London, that "Y'awright?" thing just about did me in. Totally freaked me out. I had the same reaction - "What, do I look like I'm in *pain* or something?"

I love this thread. Should have been a linguist, I guess. Thanks, everybody, for the ... uh ... shits 'n' giggles. Where does that one come from?

-- Anonymous, August 05, 2000

Although I never hear a particular difference in everyone else, people here in Denver do say I have a New England accent. Which I think is bullshit because there is no one New English sound. Coastal Maine, Worcester, Rhode Island, Fairfield County (the SE corner of CT, a suburb of NYC more than a part of CT), north Boston: they're all different. In southern New England, between NYC and Boston, we do talk pretty fast, but I'm not sure we pronounce much differently.

The one thing I can't say the way natives say it here is "Colorado." The first syllable isn't quite "cal" but it's got more "a" in it than "coll," how I say it. Also, the stress is more on the third syllable than the first.

No, there are two things. A Home Depot peon was giving me directions to another hardware store and he said "past Coors Field" (where the Denver baseball team plays) and I wasn't sure I'd heard him and repeated, emphasizing the first, unclear word, "Coors Field?" He took that as a correction. I say it like the cores of apples; probably because I neither drink the foul swill it's named for nor have the slightest interest in baseball, I've never paid proper attention. But the clerk was right: it's a Dutch name and therefore should have more of an "ooo" sound.

Oh yes--and the one Southernism that I, the chauvinist New Englander, have deliberately picked up is "y'all." I resent that the singular second person "thou" has dropped from English and I'm willing that "you" can be singular if "y'all" can be only-- only--plural.

Which leads me to one of the best misspellings I've seen in a long time--a bumpbersticker with some phrase (a blessing?) from (sources tell me) "The Lion King" followed up by "Jesus is in control, ya'll." I was nearly in tears. I'm easily amused, especially when I'm feeling superior.

-- Anonymous, August 06, 2000

I always thought a drinking-water fountain was a "bubbler" until I left Massachusetts. I noticed someone mentioned using that word in Wisconsin, but it was unheard of in Vermont. Is "bubbler" still said in MA (I always figured it was probably used around New England), or am I delusional? :-)

-- Anonymous, August 07, 2000

i too love this thread. posting AGAIN because of my beloved massachusetts accents. My sweetheart and me can pick out (between us) over six different regions-of-massachusetts quirks. not quite accents, but more town-based pronunciations. from the "nohth shah" (nohth sorta rhymes with 'moth') to "sowthiy" to "winta hill" to the ghostly "h" that appears at the END of some words: "yah right'h" .

-- Anonymous, August 07, 2000

I'm particularly fond of British automotive nomenclature.

flat battery = dead battery (incidentally, is the pronounciation "BAT-tree" or "battERRee" a regional thing?) the boot = the trunk spare wheel = spare tire lift = jack petrol = gas tyres = tires gearbox = transmission windscreen = windshield

I also love "the underground" for subway (train).

A friend of mine lived in Alaska for a time and he said Alaskans refer to us folks in the south as "Lower-48ers."

Is the difference between catsup and ketchup A regional thing?

I love the Northern California vs. Southern California reference to freeways. In Los Angeles and Southern California, highways and freeways are referred to as "The 10" or "The 405". Southern Californians also refer to freeways by their names: The Harbor Freeway (The 110), The San Diego Freeway (The 405), The Golden State Freeway (The 5).

Now, in Northern California and the Bay Area, folks drop "The" and just say "Let's take 101" or "Take 80 to 280 and get off at 92" Also, Northern California people rarely use the official name of the highway/freeway. I don't think I've ever heard anyone call Interstate 280 "Junipero Serra" and only traffic reporters call the stretch of Highway 101 by Candlestick Park "The Bayshore Freeway" or Interstate 880 "The Lakeshore Freeway".

-- Anonymous, August 07, 2000

matt, Northern Californians are starting to use "the" with numbered highways, leading to much consternation.

In California we speak of going to the beach, but I hear that on the East Coast it's the shore.

When I worked with British guys, I learned that they use "reckon" the way we use "figure" - "I reckon that this disk is corrupted." This always cracked me up. I also like the British use of "Right" as sort of a synonyme for "Okay", sort of a conversational place holder.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2000

matt, Northern Californians are starting to use "the" with numbered highways

That's because the "Northern Californians" who do so are actually Southern Californians who have moved up here and are now spreading their evil little regionalisms around, and they're catching on like a nasty cold. It's gross! Cover your mouths when you do that!

You nasty Dodger-loving Southern Californians--first you stole our water, now you're poisoning our lingo! You're just . . . you're just bastard people, you're bastard people, that's what you are!

-- Anonymous, August 10, 2000

"Is the difference between catsup and ketchup a regional thing?"

I'm not sure, but my guess would be that the former is the original spelling and the latter a newer spelling following pronunciation. (Think of the Bologne sausage being spelled "baloney.")

-- Anonymous, August 10, 2000