Inspired by laceymcbain

[gnomi]

Give me your favorite regionalism (whether from where you are originally from or where you live now or just one you've heard) and its "translation."

Bring your jimmies, your frappes, your elastics, and your bubblers. Stand in line, on line, or queue up. Just share your favorite regionalism. 'Cause I know that my friends list includes people from all sorts of different areas. And I'm a language nerd.

Comments

[somehedgehog.livejournal.com]

"Wicked" is easily my favorite New England term. Another term I've heard mostly in the northeast is to "bang" a turn, and particularly, to "bang a u-ie" for making a u-turn. Then there's "Packie" for the liquor store.

If you want some really awesome regionalisms, though, you should read up on Newfoundland English. Here's a few of my favorites:

Yis Bye ("Yes, boy")/Yis m'dear = sure, yes, you bet, count on it
Tickle = narrow passage into a harbor, usually made by a fjord
Fish = codfish, specifically
Mug up = work break
And, my personal favorite, though I never heard it myself, but have been assured is a local expression
"Flat on the back with that" - Expression of approval, by a male speaker. Women say "Flat on the back for that."

[somehedgehog.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, here's another -

"Growler" - small piece of iceberg, large enough to sink a boat, that lies at the water level, making it very difficult to see.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Neat. Something, definitely, to be aware of, I'd figure.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool! I love the Newfoundland regionalisms.

And, yeah - I've never heard "bang a u-ie" anywhere other than Boston.

[zmook.livejournal.com]

There's also "pogey", which is Maritimes/Newfie for unemployment insurance.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I wonder what the origin of that is. Public-something, would be my bet. But I'm just guessing.

[zmook.livejournal.com]

Well, the dictionaries say origin is unknown, so it's possible. Seems unlikely to me, though.

http://www.wordreference.com/definition/pogy.htm

Another favourite Canadianism: "two-four", referring to a flat of beer (containing 24 cans). For that matter, "flat" might be too, in place of "case".

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

"flat" of something makes me think of flats of plants....

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, plants and, specifically, strawberries were what first occurred to me.

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

"knock up" as britslang, meaning to wake someone up in the morning. i don't know if it's regional in england or just a general britishism, but every time i hear or read it i do a double-take.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Hee! I lived in Israel for a year between high school and college, and there were a bunch of Brits on the program I was on. Sometime not long after we got to Jerusalem, a bunch of us were going out for the night. Danny, one of the British guys, said to the gathered multitude of (mostly) American teenagers, "I'm just going to run and knock up Justine before we go." There was much confusion and hilarity as the Americans explained what "to knock up" means in US slang.

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

"I soliti quattro gatti" ("The usual four cats") is my favorite. I heard it in RASFC from annafdd. It's an Italian phrase meaning "just a few people," as in, "Only the usual four cats attended that convention."

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Hee! I love it.

[magid.livejournal.com]

In Chicago, there's 'gaper's block' when everyone stops to look at the accident and traffic jams up.

From around here, grinders. None of your hoagies, subs, or heroes for me.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. The phenomenon that Kevin O'Keefe (of the old WEEI traffic reports) used to call "gawker blockers".

And those really big sandwiches seem to have myriad names. They're also giros, po'boys, and about 10 other things I can't think of off the top of my head.

those sandwiches

[magid.livejournal.com]

They do have myriad names, but the only proper local one is grinders (at least, in metro-Worcester, when I was growing up). All the rest of those are imports.

[zmook.livejournal.com]

I've always understood giros (gyros) to refer to a specific Greek sandwich involving pita bread, spiced broiled lamb, and yogourt sauce. Not the same thing as a sub at all.

But maybe that's a local usage, too? I think I came to that impression in western New York.

[laceymcbain.livejournal.com]

I'm hungry, I guess, so I'm thinking about food.

In Western Canada, doughnuts as opposed to donuts, of course, but we also call jelly doughnuts, Bismarks. The kind that are sugary on the outside with the jelly filling in the middle.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I think that there are a lot of regionalisms that center around food, because it's such an elemental aspect of our lives. So we come up with things to call the stuff we're about to eat.

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

they call them that in michigan too. i always thought it was just a michigan thing. cool.

[laceymcbain.livejournal.com]

i always thought it was just a michigan thing. cool.

And I always thought it was a prairies thing - cool. *g*

[seborn.livejournal.com]

mmm, crullers. Now that we have Krispy Kremes up here people will understand why I was confused when as a freshman, I was handed a linear twisted cake made of donut dough instead of a dense donut shaped like it was made from a phone cord joined at the ends into a circle.

[jencallisto]

Minnesotans say "duck, duck, grey duck" instead of "duck, duck, goose." as far as i can determine (haphazard non-scientific conversational samples), we're the only ones, and i have no idea why.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Interesting...are there no geese native to Minnesota?

Hey - beths_stanley - are there any geese by you?

[sethg]

"By you" is Yeshivish, right? I've never heard people outside the Orthodox community use it, and it seems to be a calque of the Hebrew "'etzel" (or whatever the equivalent Yiddish preposition is).

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, "by you" is Yeshivish. I think it's borrowed more from the German than Hebrew, but I'm not sure.

[jencallisto]

during migration season we get a lot of Canada Geese flying overhead, so they are around...

[42itous.livejournal.com]

That's "bubblah." Bubblah!

I grew up in RI, and although I don't have the regional accent myself (thank God!), it sounds really really weird to hear someone say "bubbler," pronouncing the R.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

I grew up in MA, without the accent (though I say /ahnt/ not /aent/ when referring to my mother's brother's wife), though I can mimic the accent when necessary. And yeah - "bubbler" is pronounced "bubblah" (though that spelling makes it look like "bubbelah," which is completely different).

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Let's see. In Seattle, some of my favorite regionalisms are related to the weather:

"Sun guilt": That which is experienced when it's actually sunny outside and you stay inside regardless; you feel bad, as though it's your obligation to go outside and play, dammit! With all the rain we get in fall winter, and spring, this is a very real phenomenon, and I have fallen prey to it any number of times.

"Sun break": a weather phenomenon wherein during a rainy day the sun comes out for maybe a half hour here and there before the rain comes back.

"Sunshine slow-down" refers to at least two different things: Sales slowing down at mall department stores when the weather is nice, or traffic slowing down because the reflection of the sun on Lake Washington is so bright it actually dazzles your eyes and makes the driving dangerous.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Oh, those are wonderful. Here, too, we have sunshine slow-downs, but we don't have a good name for them. The traffic guys just refer to them as slowdowns due to glare or something else equally unpoetic.

some of my favorites

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

"gone pear-shaped" = Britslang for a situation gone all wrong, gone to hell

"Bob's your uncle" = Britslang for "all will be well," "can't go wrong," that kind of thing

"hundreds and thousands" = Aussie term for jimmies/sprinkles

"spit the dummy" = Aussie slang for "gone pear-shaped" :) [this one baffled me until I figured out that "dummy" was Aussie for "pacifier"]

"map of Tassie" = Aussie slang for pubic hair, specifically female IIRC

"don't come the raw prawn with me" = Aussie slang for "don't bullshit me," "don't pull my leg," etc.

Re: some of my favorites

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Oh, those are lovely. I knew some of them ("gone pear-shaped" and "Bob's your uncle") but had never heard the others. Thanks!

Re: some of my favorites

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I have heard "hundreds and thousands" for jimmies before, but I'm not sure where... hmmm...

[lisafeld.livejournal.com]

Not a lot of Jerseyisms where I grew up. I love the yiddishism maybe, as in, "You want maybe a sandwich?" Scotland has some fab regionals, like "Cheers!" as an abbreviation of Cheerio, and adding 'isn't it' to the end of a statement to make a wry rhetorical. But my favorite period regionalism is make love, as used in Jane Austen to mean formally courting someone. That never ceases to freak me out.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

That's a lovely collection of regionalisms. I use "maybe" that way sometimes, though more often I use "perhaps" in the same context - "you want, perhaps, a drink of water?"

And hee! on "make love." How language has changed over the years, eh?