Warning, this is long and probably boring to many. It poured out of my head and is more than I originally intended to say on the subject. Indulge me the catharsis of writing something lengthy and pretending someone else is interested in my meager opinions. This has nothing to do with guns, so you might want to just move along. You have been warned.


I am intrigued by the evolution of language, and particularly, regional variations. I find them wonderful and enjoy learning new ways to say things that I always thought were settled. I remember a boss I had once told me to find her a "gum band" - I stared at her for a second, trying to figure out wtf she was talking about, before admitting that I had no idea what she wanted me to do. She looked at me as if I was ridiculously moronic - who wouldn't know what a 'gum band' is? For those not in the know, she meant what most people outside of Pittsburgh call a "rubber band".

Likewise, when I waited tables at a restaurant near Orlando we constantly had tourists come to dine with us. When I first started and they would order "coke", I would follow up with what seemed to me to be a sensible clarifying question: Ok, what type? Locals knew that the correct answer was to name the brand of coke they wanted: Sprite, Pepsi, or even Coke. Just as bandaid has become standard parlance for any bandage, even if it isn't Band-Aid brand, and kleenex means, to many, a disposable paper tissue, even if it is not Kleenex brand - coke to old school Floridians is akin to what others call "soda", "pop", "cola", etc.

Here is a great map of the distribution of names for fizzy sugar drinks. You will notice that it isn't only Florida that calls these drinks "coke". But when I said this to my yankee tourist customers they would act as if I was mentally handicapped. It didn't take long to listen to accents and adjust my questions based on accents. You will notice in Florida the regions of heavy immigration - those yellow areas near the large coastal communities - the local variation has given way and 'soda' has replaced 'coke'.



One of the things that really used to get me was when the customers would come in and give me English lessons. They would criticize me for saying "y'all" or, a favorite target, "ain't". I don't use "ain't" very often but, in some situations, its use flows better in casual conversation than "am not". And, less face it, "amn't" is a sucky word. But it would never fail that if I let it slip in front of some outspoken tourists they would not only feel the need to correct me, but would sometimes ridicule me lightheartedly. I remember one woman telling me that I needed to go back to school to 'better myself' so that I could learn 'proper' English.

I had always thought regional variations were interesting, but these people were invading and telling me what a simpleton I was. And at the same time they were using their own regional dialects and colloquialisms that went unnoticed to them - or they simply thought were more 'standard'. Perhaps this is my inner wimpy liberal coming out but I *want* to travel to different parts of the US and find variation. I don't want every place to look like, sound like, taste like, my home. If it did, why would I need to travel?

I know this is a long winded missive that probably sounds like much ado about nothing. But I say that more and more Americans are less and less willing to embrace variation, difference and diversity. They want things to be comfortably familiar and are aggravated by that which is different. People visit new regions and want to go to familiar national restaurant chains rather than local eateries. They aren't interested in the local architecture, history or other localized variations. They want to go to the nearest outlet mall or Bass Pro Shops or Olive Garden and want everyone to either have their accent or sound like the man on the 6 o'clock news. These are indeed small issues and our interconnectivity is likely to make us more and more homogenized as time goes by, minimizing regional variations. That hasn't happened yet in many places, but people are uninterested, nay uncomfortable when presented with it. Why? As we all sit behind computers, interacting digitally, and seeking information that confirms our prior beliefs, matches our tastes, or makes us feel good about who we are - we shield ourselves from the all the wonderful variation around us. Our desire for comfortable familiarity somehow has also translated into contemporary politics. People want to hear other people say the same things they say in their internal dialogues. Other ideas are dismissed and ridiculed.

Don't get me wrong, this is not at all in response to the recent nuttiness on the board. This actually simply sprung from reading the article below. I am not advocating the BO political tactic of embracing all opinions, regardless of how ridiculous they are. But, until we have become a homogenized people, we should celebrate all the things that make our country diverse because, in my opinion, those diversities of experiences, cultures and people actually make us a stronger country - much like a diverse ecological community is much more resistant to environmental perturbations than an agricultural monoculture.

So..... pie pan or pie tin?

http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2 ... -in-order/

That was fascinating. I had many similar experiences as a waiter--my favorite being when the people at the table begin discussing you as an anthropological specimen right in front of you as if you can't hear them, e.g. "Did you notice how he drops his final 'g's?" Helloooooo....I'm right here! Waiting tables is a great corrective for anybody who thinks social class is an alien concept to Americans.

I lived some of my (linguistically) formative years in Appalachia, long enough to pick up "y'all" and use it naturally. These days if somebody goes to correct me, I just point out that English lacks a clear second-person plural form and that "y'all" fills the void. If you want to say "youse" or "youse guys," be my guest; it doesn't show that you're ignorant, it shows you're trying to improve and perfect our beautiful native tongue. Since moving to New England I find I get a few stares when I drop a "y'all" but it also helps folks understand that I ain't from around here, so they limit their own colloquialisms to those I might be able to get from content, e.g. "carriage" instead of "shopping cart."

I find in general that southerners have been mocked as rubes by the rest of the country for so long they've either grown to ignore it or might drop colloquialisms in conversations as a dare to the other party to correct them. Note the look in their eye after one of your neighbors says "y'all" to a Yankee tourists, the look says "Yeah, I said 'y'all,' got a problem with that?" Other people aren't so inured to insult. I was living in Minnesota when "Fargo" came out and many people there were extremely offended. The slap was felt so hard I thought I noticed many people foregoing the colloquialisms featured in the movie for a couple years afterward, perhaps not but it seemed so.

Around my house we say "pie pan," not tin, but all our pie baking...uh, basins, are actually Pyrex.

Growing up in the Merrimack Valley, all the townies called soda "tonic". I don't hear that one very much anymore. Our strongest remaining colloquialism is the frappe.

I was constantly stumped taking French as college freshman because I could never remember the word for y'all.

mark wrote: One of the things that really used to get me was when the customers would come in and give me English lessons. They would criticize me for saying "y'all" or, a favorite target, "ain't". I don't use "ain't" very often but, in some situations, its use flows better in casual conversation than "am not". And, less face it, "amn't" is a sucky word. But it would never fail that if I let it slip in front of some outspoken tourists they would not only feel the need to correct me, but would sometimes ridicule me lightheartedly. I remember one woman telling me that I needed to go back to school to 'better myself' so that I could learn 'proper' English.

I had always thought regional variations were interesting, but these people were invading and telling me what a simpleton I was. And at the same time they were using their own regional dialects and colloquialisms that went unnoticed to them - or they simply thought were more 'standard'. Perhaps this is my inner wimpy liberal coming out but I *want* to travel to different parts of the US and find variation. I don't want every place to look like, sound like, taste like, my home. If it did, why would I need to travel?

I have a pressman that works for me who's from Michigan, everyone else in the company is from the south. He got in the habit of ridiculing the other employees for their southern colloquialisms, particularly y'all (he's never mocked anyone for saying ain't as he says it himself). One day myself, one of our sales people and the prepress supervisor were standing outside talking when he walked past and heard the prepress super., a lady from a very small Florida town who is admittedly pretty country fried, use the word YONDER. He responded as such "Yonder!?! what the fuck is yonder? What kind of country fried shit is that? You hicks need to learn English." Now take into account that this guy never even finished high school and two of the three people he was speaking to (myself and the salesman) have college educations, we took offense to him. I proceeded to inform him:

1. of the definition of yonder

2. that the word is of Saxon origin, can be traced back nearly 2000 years, that yes it is in the dictionary and perhaps he should expand his vocabulary.

3. and that he's in the south, we say things like y'all and yonder, that he's in the minority and if he doesn't like how we talk he should either keep it to himself and go back to Michigan.

… I've not heard any more shitty comments from him about how us 'hicks' talk since then.

I enjoy language variations, it would be boring if everyone spoke the same, but for mostly older conservative folk sameness and nostalgia are very comforting. Movies and TV have contributed a lot to the stereotypes and Southern accents have probably been bashed the most - "Beverly Hillbillies", "Dukes of Hazard" etc. New York and New Jersey accents also suffered since they are often equated with mobsters, think Godfather films.

On linguistic surveys I have an Upper Midwest accent, my parents were Midwesterners and the San Francisco Bay Area where I grew up was settled by many Midwesterners. The West doesn't have the pronounced accents of the East Coast and South, but there are variations with stronger Hispanic influences closer to the Mexican border.

I used to work in hotels which attracts a lot of first generation immigrants looking for entry level jobs. I always found it interesting that employees whose first language could be Korean; or Japanese; or Chinese; or Spanish; or Tagalog; or Polish; or Russian had one language in common, heavily accented English. It was generally the only language they shared.

The intolerance I see here is put downs towards Spanish only speakers that often runs, "They've been here long enough they should speak English." Language acquisition is much more difficult as an adult and many immigrant adults are too busy working multiple jobs to support their families.

It's soda and pie tin for "store bought pies" and pie plate for others.

http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/maps.html

tl;dr

Joking...

The one thing that drives me up the wall is "I seen" when it comes to languages.

I've used ain't and y'all. I especially like using all y'all just to have some fun.

People think if you ain't done gots none good English, then you must be some sorta fool. To a certain extent, I agree (See: Sarah Palin) but I also think you can't base your whole opinion of someone on how they talk. You should also consider if they own a gun.

stickman wrote:Growing up in the Merrimack Valley, all the townies called soda "tonic". I don't hear that one very much anymore. Our strongest remaining colloquialism is the frappe.

No kidding? man, is that an isolated throwback to a bygone era. That is pretty cool. Obviously, you guys were one of the "other" areas

highdesert wrote: The intolerance I see here is put downs towards Spanish only speakers that often runs, "They've been here long enough they should speak English." Language acquisition is much more difficult as an adult and many immigrant adults are too busy working multiple jobs to support their families.

As someone who's married to a Spanish speaking immigrant and who knows a great many Latinos, I've got to say it's not so much because they're working multiple jobs and don't have time, though for some Latinos that is a factor. It has more to do with social contact and necessity.

Many Latinos, particularly farm workers, day laborers, etc., often work with a majority of other Latinos and live in neighborhoods that are predominately Latin and therefore don't get enough exposure to English to learn it. This situation is made worse by the fact that Americans who only speak English, regardless of race, are uncomfortable with trying to communicate with people who don't speak English and it's very difficult to learn a language adequately without a a fluent speaker to practice with.

There's also the factor that there are many Latinos who can barely read and write Spanish, let alone learning to in English. A good friend of mine is an immigration lawyer and one of his greatest frustrations is that many of his clients have little or no writing skills in any language. He basically has to start by getting them into remedial adult classes for English.

Add to these frustrations that many Latinos fear the government/police/etc and therefore won't seek assistance from free and readily available sources (My wife to this day gets paranoid when we're driving and see a police car. This from a woman who in her native country has a college education and was a teacher, speaks English and has basic English writing skills, has never done anything illegal in her life and is a U.S. citizen.). Of course if you can't read it's rather difficult to seek out said resources.

Fact is throughout U.S. history this has been the case for immigrants. The first generation struggles with language, American social norms, and trying to fit in. The second generation grows up here, speaks the language and becomes normalized to American life. Within 3 to 4 generations they have integrated into American society and are no longer seen as significantly different. A good example is Italian immigration during the first quarter of the 20th century, initially they were despised, today they are a significant element of mainstream American culture and are found in every corner of the U.S. and every walk of life.

Ten years ago no one was talking about immigration and in fact Latin culture was a significant force in pop culture. It's really only been in the last five years since the economy began to fail that a big issue has been made of Latino immigrants. One of the Repugs favorite demons when they need to distract the cattle from noticing just how horribly they've screwed things up, just blame everything on those evil, malevolent immigrants!

It never fails to amaze me how your typical uninformed right wing types seem to think that over the last few years 40 million Mexicans (because, you know, they're all Mexicans, right?) got up and decided to cross the border. They're either quite shocked or flat out don't believe me when I inform them that most of the American west as well as Texas and Florida used to belong to Spain and that there are roughly 30 million legal U.S. citizens of Latin heritage, many of whom are descendants of families that have been here for hundreds of years or are of Native American origin.

Love&A.45 wrote:

highdesert wrote: The intolerance I see here is put downs towards Spanish only speakers that often runs, "They've been here long enough they should speak English." Language acquisition is much more difficult as an adult and many immigrant adults are too busy working multiple jobs to support their families.

As someone who's married to a Spanish speaking immigrant and who knows a great many Latinos, I've got to say it's not so much because they're working multiple jobs and don't have time, though for some Latinos that is a factor. It has more to do with social contact and necessity.

Many Latinos, particularly farm workers, day laborers, etc., often work with a majority of other Latinos and live in neighborhoods that are predominately Latin and therefore don't get enough exposure to English to learn it. This situation is made worse by the fact that Americans who only speak English, regardless of race, are uncomfortable with trying to communicate with people who don't speak English and it's very difficult to learn a language adequately without a a fluent speaker to practice with.

There's also the factor that there are many Latinos who can barely read and write Spanish, let alone learning to in English. A good friend of mine is an immigration lawyer and one of his greatest frustrations is that many of his clients have little or no writing skills in any language. He basically has to start by getting them into remedial adult classes for English.

Add to these frustrations that many Latinos fear the government/police/etc and therefore won't seek assistance from free and readily available sources (My wife to this day gets paranoid when we're driving and see a police car. This from a woman who in her native country has a college education and was a teacher, speaks English and has basic English writing skills, has never done anything illegal in her life and is a U.S. citizen.). Of course if you can't read it's rather difficult to seek out said resources.

Fact is throughout U.S. history this has been the case for immigrants. The first generation struggles with language, American social norms, and trying to fit in. The second generation grows up here, speaks the language and becomes normalized to American life. Within 3 to 4 generations they have integrated into American society and are no longer seen as significantly different. A good example is Italian immigration during the first quarter of the 20th century, initially they were despised, today they are a significant element of mainstream American culture and are found in every corner of the U.S. and every walk of life.

Ten years ago no one was talking about immigration and in fact Latin culture was a significant force in pop culture. It's really only been in the last five years since the economy began to fail that a big issue has been made of Latino immigrants. One of the Repugs favorite demons when they need to distract the cattle from noticing just how horribly they've screwed things up, just blame everything on those evil, malevolent immigrants!

It never fails to amaze me how your typical uninformed right wing types seem to think that over the last few years 40 million Mexicans (because, you know, they're all Mexicans, right?) got up and decided to cross the border. They're either quite shocked or flat out don't believe me when I inform them that most of the American west as well as Texas and Florida used to belong to Spain and that there are roughly 30 million legal U.S. citizens of Latin heritage, many of whom are descendants of families that have been here for hundreds of years or are of Native American origin.

Good points and I agree about social contact. The cultural enclaves are really no different than previous immigration cycles where there were Irish, German, Polish, Slovak etc districts in major cities where shop keepers catered to those specific language communities. By the second generation though they branched out.

A Latino university professor I had years ago noted that those immigrants who came to the US in the past believed that they would never return to their native country, so they immersed themselves and their children in American culture and the English language. They crossed the Atlantic or Pacific because they wanted to get away from the past and there was a definite break. It's very different now with inexpensive transportation and quick communication, Latinos drive over the border on weekends or Chinese fly to Asia on vacation and they become re-enculturated. The professor who had a PhD from UC, noted that because he was an older Mexican American man with strong Indian features and drove a small pick up, he had been stopped a number of times by police who thought he was illegal.

I agree on remedial education, we used to run Vocational English classes at one hotel I worked at and the teacher always had to start by teaching those students Spanish grammar before jumping to English. Most had few educational opportunities in their native countries.

I say y'all and ain't (is not, are not, am not, will not) though my parents are from New Jersey and Chicago. My dad says pop and my mom says soda. I grew up on the SE coast of Florida (land of Yankee retirees), then in North Central Florida. I've waited tables downtown in a college town that attracts people from all over the country; I've also been on a few 4 month national tours-two of which were with Romanian groups, another with Aussies and I share your appreciation for linguistic peculiarities. I like to try picking up different accents when I hear them, though I don't practice in front of those who actually have the accent for fear of offending, I do enjoy trying to pin point someones accent though, it breaks the ice and is educational.

One phrase that I always thought was funny was one my Grandpa on my mom's side used to use: "So I says to him, I says..." I didn't hear that very often growing up except from he and his wife, and now I only hear in comic references. My father pronounces the word decade as de-CADE, like some New Englanders I've heard (JFK is one).

Personally, I seem to have the non-regional standard thing going, like the new networks use for the most part. I've only ever been pegged as a southerner when outside of the south a couple of times, and I think I may have let y'all slip in more than one of those...

Ain't most certainly is a word.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ain%27t

As a first generation American (Mexico), I still remember getting teased for my sh's vs. ch's (I said battle-chips vs battle-ships). Perhaps it was too subtle for me to tell the difference, but boy did my buddies have fun with me.

Nowadays I get teased when I say "debt", but to others it sounds like "depth".

I'm really going to enjoy it when Bill Richardson finally gets the presidency.

Xela

As much as I have adopted Southern speak y'all... I still sound like Slav with somewhat fancier vocabulary. For the most part when I say whiskey it sounds as I said it with v (like vessel).

The best joke with my accent that I have was one time, about 5-6 years ago a copier machine salesman came to our company and talked to me about the specifics of our needs. Kid just moved from California to Jax and was totally clueless where he is. In one moment he asks me where am I from, because of my accent. Now, most of the times I just say that I'm originally from Sarajevo, Bosnia but this time I just felt tired of that question and felt like having some fun so I just said: "I'm from Ocala!" and he was - "Really?", and I said: "Yessir! That's how we tawlk in Ohcala." My colleagues almost peed their pants.

Anyway, this is about language specifics. When I arrived to US, 14 years ago... I had somewhat English accent (lived in London 1.5 years). So, I walk into Publix and at the meat department I'm asking about minced meat and everybody is looking at me as if I just arrived on space ship from outer space! It took good 10 minutes and janitor from South America to decipher that and translate to meat clerk that I'm looking for a ground beef.

Hopefully KV will get to the annual meeting , so all of you can get an earfull of Yooper. Think Fargo, although that's more like eelj's accent. Yoopers sound like Cannuks.

The West Virginia kinfolk are Appalachian, but not quite Southern or Northern. So instead of y'all you will hear "you'uns" pronounced "yunz".

Antiquus wrote:Hopefully KV will get to the annual meeting , so all of you can get an earfull of Yooper. Think Fargo, although that's more like eelj's accent. Yoopers sound like Cannuks.

The West Virginia kinfolk are Appalachian, but not quite Southern or Northern. So instead of y'all you will hear "you'uns" pronounced "yunz".

You gonna make it? KV and eelj already said they are out. Wimps.

Lol, damn we should at least do a Skype hook up.... you can do 4 way video calls I understand now.

No, not me either. I have a real deficit in vacation time this year, and what little I get is going to take the wife somewhere she wants to go. Especially since I blew my Christmas bonus on a S&W....

Antiquus wrote:Hopefully KV will get to the annual meeting , so all of you can get an earfull of Yooper. Think Fargo, although that's more like eelj's accent. Yoopers sound like Cannuks.

The West Virginia kinfolk are Appalachian, but not quite Southern or Northern. So instead of y'all you will hear "you'uns" pronounced "yunz".

The Stoolers are playing again tonight for the AFC's Super Bowl slot, and somebody has to remind me of "Yinzers". Somebody just shoot me now, please.