Quote:
Originally Posted by rubicon
(Post 696336)
I was born and raised in central New York. Folks from that part of the country have flat A's For instance aunt is pronounced ant. They also have there own version of a sandwich. Its called a sangwich. They all like to add drama when they speak as in All I know which is really suppose to be All's I know. Locally in my hometown is the word jabeep. What is a jabeep think Joey Buttafuoco.
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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!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patty55
(Post 696423)
Here in TV they call living on a retention pond "waterfront". On LI we call retention ponds SUMPS, nobody wants to live on the SUMP, so they put a big high fence and shrubs to hide it-LOL
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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!
Quote:
Originally Posted by zonerboy
(Post 696783)
According to my wife, if some one is not wearing any clothes, they are nekkid.
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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....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patty55
(Post 697199)
Maybe because they're from the Bronx.
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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!!!