This is an interesting thread and I look forward to reading more. My husband is from Ohio and never heard of Johnny Marzetti but I looked it up and it sounds delicious Gracie, I might have to make it. I agree a pot luck should be as it sounds and not assigned, takes the fun out of it. I am from MA and many of us don't roll the 'r' as much as others but I love hearing someone say 'wicked awesome' brings me right back home.

The Kennedys have their own dialect. Nobody in Massachusetts talks anything like them

According to my wife, if some one is not wearing any clothes, they are nekkid.

Is that like "BUCK nekkid"? (far more naked, I think)

And what about saying "warsh" instead of "wash"? I used to hear that in the midwest.

Today on 640 AM radio here I heard one of the typical Villager on the Street interviews and the woman said she was from "Warshington State" (and would never go back to needing a snow shovel). She was lovin' the lifestyle as we all are.....

Some people call it BUTT nekkid!
LOL

no, no, no....

If you just don't have any clothes on....you are NAKED.

But if you don't have any clothes on & you're up to sometin....then you're
NEKKID!! :22yikes:

Maybe because they're from the Bronx.

I am originally from Wisconsin but when I joined the Army, my first duty station was in Alabama. Needless to say, their choices for words were very different from what I was used to, ie. toboggan is used to describe a hat worn by robbers (in Wisconsin, we called them stocking caps or beanies). According to Wikipedia: A toboggan is a simple sled which is a traditional form of transport used by the Innu and Cree of northern Canada. In modern times, it is used on snow to carry one or more people (often children) down a hill or other slope for recreation. They also used the term "mash the button" for pushing the button when using an elevator or any other device where a button needs to be pushed.

I once had a mechanic in the south tell me to "Mash my incinerator pedal" instead of my gas pedal.

Do you push a grocery cart, buggy or basket?

What do you wash the car with; a water hose or a hose pipe?

I don't know where she was from, but my sister brought her college room mate home who said my mother's home cooked dinner "tasted like seconds". She meant that it tasted good enough to eat two helpings. My mother said, "Oh no, I cooked it fresh tonight."

That's not the way I do it, Serenoa.

I "worsch" our cars..............(with a water hose)!!

:pepper2:

Bill :wave:

Tounament. Ahem... How do you pronounce the word "four"? I believe we Pittsburghers are on to something there.:smiley:

I grew up telling time by using the terms "until" and "after", such as 10 until 5 or 20 after 6. I was in Washington DC once and asked a police officer for the time and he said it was 10 of 10. I wasn't sure if that was 10 minutes until or 10 minutes after 10. I've since adopted the digital method, 10:15, 4:45, etc. It seems to be more universal.

nothing wrong with warsh....My sister in Boston isn't using her rrr's so we are ;-)

I never heard "jabeep," but you have the only "speidies" in the country, I believe. On the other hand, if you lived just a little further west in NYS, you'd have a "beef on weck"—a real Buffaloism!


Well, in truth, as explained to me by a Villages construction employee, what are called "water views" here are indeed "retention ponds" or "sumps." As he said, to dig a necessary hole in the ground to allow for rain water catchment and call it a premium lot with a "water view" is a bit of a stretch!


Is your wife from Iowa? That's what Radar O'Reilly (M*A*S*H) used to say ("nekkid"), and he was from Ottumwa, Iowa. At a workshop I once met a woman from there, who told me when people heard she was from there, they would invariably ask her if she knew Radar....


Actually that's pretty close; the Kennedys did live for a period of time in Bronxville!


I've been told that nothing ever completely disappears from any dialect; it always turns up somewhere. For example, the R's missing in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ("pahk the kah") turn up in Texas and parts of the Midwest (when one does "the warsh"). There is no escape.

A young fellow in Casablanca, Morocco who was studying English once asked me if there are dialects in the U.S. I told him there are. He then asked if people from one region can understand the dialects of people from other regions. I replied as honestly as I could that sometimes it's yes, while at other times one is left completely clueless....

If anyone is particularly fascinated by this subject, I suggest reading the Bill Bryson book The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got that Way. At the same time it's both hilarious and very well researched. You'll find out how "colonel" came to be pronounced the same as a corn "kernel," what the only word in the English language is that is derived from Tagalog (the native language of the Philippines), and that in writing his plays, William Shakespeare created so many new expressions, of which some 1,800 still commonly exist in our everyday language—all created by one man!!!

[QUOTE=Quixote;697

Actually that's pretty close; the Kennedys did live for a period of time in Bronxville!

[/QUOTE]

They also lived on Independence Ave in Riverdale.

I push a grocery cart. And I put pop in my grocery cart. Not soda.

Long ago I almost married someone from Texas. While we were first dating the first time I heard him say "I am fixing to go to the store" I asked him what was broken that needed fixing.

I wash my car with a water hose.

I grew up in Iowa, but moved to Chicago 34 years ago. For your last meal of the day do you call it supper (Iowa) or dinner (Chicago)?

Grandma or Nana
 

I called my grandmothers "Grandma." My nieces who grew up in Wisconsin call their grandmother "Grandma." My niece who lives near Cincinnati calls her grandmother "Nana."

So what do your grandchildren call you, Nana, Grandma, something else, or what did you call your grandma? And is the grandma vs. nana title a regional difference?

I remember seeing signs in southern New Hampshire and parts of mass when I was a kid that read Tonic and grinders. Which was soda and a sub. Also I remember drug stores having signs that read Rx and sundries.

When I moved to Hawaii, I didn't understand a thing. Most locals are bi lingual , Mainland English and Pigin. Everything was try. Ie Try wait, Try think. and more betta (much better). And of course "Da kind" The one Hawaii term I always thought was descriptive was " talk story" As in " I don't go there for Da Kind food, just go for talk story"

I picked up the slang and my husband started talking like he was from New England go figure.

Geez, that's right—in an appropriately stunning mansion overlooking the Hudson River; in my old age I'd forgotten that.... For those who'd have no reason to know, Riverdale is part of the Bronx; the nature of the area is such that people who live there never say they're from "the Bronx" but rather from "Riverdale"....

Huh. I've never thought about it before, but I'd only use the "X of X" wording if the time was less than 30 minutes before the hour. And usually only 5 or 10. Like, I'd never say "30 of 4." I guess you need to be creeping close to the hour to make that phrasing useful.

I was taking a Samoan language class once and we were learning how to tell time, for which there is a specific syntax. The instructor told us if we used numbers to say something like "2:15," a Samoan would think we were referring to a hotel room number or the price of rice.

Being a perverse person -- and because I could never remember the correct syntax -- I determined that I would henceforth use the "2:15" wording, just to see what kind of looks people gave me. Sadly, no Samoan person ever asked me the time.

I grew up in Massachusetts and upon graduating from college started my first job in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where I often heard the following:

Living room suite........pronounced as "living room sweet" in PA.......suit in MA
Up the creek.....pounced as "up the crick"
Outen the lights........for shutting lights when leaving the room

Positive response especially from females to a statement with......"Ah Ahh"

I had a college roomie from the Laurel Highlands area of Pa. I asked him which can of soda was mine. He pointed to one and said, "That's urine." He meant "that's yours".

I believe in that context it would be spelled "your'n".... When I was in college, back in the days when college was first being invented, I had a friend whose mother was a public school teacher who had a student named "Urine." Exactly this spelling. The teacher found it awkward and uncomfortable to address the student by her name like this, instead altering the pronunciation to "You-Rine" or "You-Reen," but the girl always corrected the teacher back to "Urine"....

Great thread! I grew up in suburban Cleveland and was surprised when attending OSU in Columbus. People here put groceries in a sack not a bag. In Southern Ohio, they poosh the door open. Our neighbors had a dog named Bootch (Butch). Of course, there they warsh and wrench their laundry. My neighbor wouldn't let her son piece (snack) between meals. People on the East Coast seem to interchange bring and take. We use bring when we keep the item with us and take it when it gets left somewhere. I bring my lunch to work but I take my trash to the curb.

Where I grew up in Alabama a boggin was a wooly hat we wore in cold weather. I knew it as an abbreviation for toboggan. When we moved to NY I was a teenager and wondered why in the world anyone would try ride down a snowy hill on a hat. Took awhile to realize they were talking about a sled-like platform mainly used to slide into trees.

I'm not sure if these are regional differences, but what do you call a spatula --

this: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yqzNGNP71l...0.51.49+PM.png

or this: http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbvie...es-spatula.jpg

And what's a macaroon?

this: http://www.theculinarylife.com/image...mmacaroons.jpg

or this: http://mobile-cuisine.com/wp-content.../macaroons.jpg

This reminds me of friends of ours when we were stationed in England. She was in a store looking for her husband and started to yell out his name. She got some interesting looks. His name was Randy...

And in The British Isles, they might pop by and knock you up.

Honest.

(It means knock on your door)

Whew, thought a wedding would be soon afterwards.

Good thing his name isn't Willy.