GTKY Tuesday

mrs_fogue

With so many of us from all parts of the world and different walks of life, what's something that you have a different name for than most?

Ex: I call shopping carts a "buggy."  Also, here in my part of the south, if you want to drink a carbonated beverage, they are all called "cokes."

jessafishy

Cart & Soda.

You animals.

jessafishy

I'm boring and from the midwest so we don't have many weird colloquialisms that I can think of. 

mylittleversailles

This is such a great gtky. I love linguistics! Regional differences are some of my favourite things to learn about

I'm Canadian, from the prairies and settled in Toronto. My husband is from around here and we sometimes find that we have different ways of saying things, or even terms for things the other had never heard (ex. an easy course you take to round up your grade average he calls a bird course, which I've never heard). We lived in Montreal for a few years and because of its Frenchness, there are so many differences in every day language (ex. dep is what you call a convenience or corner store)! 

I feel like because of tv, we're losing a lot of especially Canadian terms (chesterfield for couch is mostly gone), just like we're losing regional accents.

curlyq423

Also from the Midwest and say carts and soda. Though My dad and stepmom live in North Carolina and people there say buggies and "I'm fixin' to..." whenever they are getting ready to do something. They don't say those as they aren't originally from there. 

mamabear148-2

@jessafishy , what? You don't call it pop?!?
I lived in Ohio for a yr in middle school and they called it pop. 

Here's a handy guide of how most Miamians speak, LOL
https://www.businessinsider.com/miami-has-a-unique-english-dialect-2013-9

jessafishy

@MamaBear148 I actually think Missouri is pretty split. Northwest uses pop and so does most of Iowa. One of my good friends is from KC and she says Coke for everything. Where I am from and most of the rest of the state says soda. 

mamabear148-2

This map helps, @jessafishy! 
 According to this map, you're 100% right! And we call it soda in southeast FL so they got that right too LOL

afwoods10

Buggy and coke here too, y'all. 

mrs_fogue

@afwoods10 love the little yall add on.  I seriously have a panic attack when trying to be professional and figuring out the proper replacement of yall.  You all just doesn't sound right. 

Cythe

jessafishy said:

I'm boring and from the midwest so we don't have many weird colloquialisms that I can think of. 

Untrue - In Minnesota, they play Duck Duck Grey Duck and Wisconsin calls drinking fountains "bubblers". Weirdos.

sjohns908

I'm in Iowa and I call it soda or pop, just whatever comes out of my mouth at the time. I grew up in CO and even after 14 years here, some things still surprise me. My main thing I notice is pronunciations. Like, my grandma adds an "r" to words that don't have it. She says wash as warsh. I have heard people say crick instead of creek. Drives me crazy 

mylittleversailles

I say soda but it's normal to say pop here. I don't know where I picked it up, but pop just feels wrong.

bluejeanbabi05

What a great thread idea @mrs_fogue! I moved to Fort Lauderdale (holla @MamaBear148) from Michigan 7 years ago, and I've mostly adjusted linguistically, but it took awhile. People here literally had no idea what I meant when I said "pop." No clue. 

Have you ladies taken this NYT quiz before? 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html

It's pretty amazing. It pinpointed down to the county where I have lived in Michigan and Florida, just by asking what words I use. 

beezeee

I'm from Milwaukee. Carts and soda.

Also, bubblers (for drinking fountains). I'm pretty sure the term bubbler is unique to Milwaukee, not even the entire state of Wisconsin. My understanding is that bubbler was what Kohler called them, which is a popular plumbing company around here. Like calling tissues "Kleenex." I grew up in Minnesota, but had to change quickly upon moving here because people would have no idea what I was talking about when I said water or drinking fountain.

jessafishy

Cythe said:

jessafishy said:

I'm boring and from the midwest so we don't have many weird colloquialisms that I can think of. 

Untrue - In Minnesota, they play Duck Duck Grey Duck and Wisconsin calls drinking fountains "bubblers". Weirdos.

@Cythe Oh yes! My SIL is from Minnesota and that is the first time I had heard of that. 

mrs_fogue

@bluejeanbabi05 Pretty spot on.  Except there were some odd balls that I blame on having a Yankee husband and picking up some of his dialect.

mamabear148-2

Yep!! @bluejeanbabi05, pretty accurate!! And Hi, neighbor!! LOL

bluejeanbabi05

I took a class on history of the English language this past summer for my masters and actually did a paper on the Coke vs soda vs pop thing because I find it so interesting! The best guess of linguists is that:

Coke: Coca-Cola is hq in Atlanta, which could explain the southern tendency to call all fountain drinks Coke.

Soda: The first soda fountains were built in Connecticut, which is probably why using the term "soda" became popular.

Pop: There were no soda fountains in most of the Midwest, so "pop" probably became popular for more literal reasons- the sound of a cork when it is taken out of a carbonated beverage.

DTKokoro

I'm in Texas and I call them shopping carts and typically I just say the name of the drink, Dr. Pepper, Coke, Sprite, etc... rarely I will say soda.  

Definitely use y'all, all the time. 

I use the term caddy corner, for something that is diagonally acrossed from another place. 

deadasthatsquirrel

@mrs_fogue I'm originally from Scotland - shopping trolleys and any soft drinks are "juice".

@DTKokoro I'd call that "kitty corner".

riababy4

In the UK we call it fizzy drinks instead of pop or soda. Instead of shopping cart we say shopping trolley and couches are sofas. A chesterfield would be a particular type of sofa, one of the old traditional leather ones. And as mentioned in the pushchair thread, we call prams pushchairs or strollers too. Apart from that I can't think of anything else...

PizzaMonster3

Y'all, fixin' to, might could (instead of might be able to), coke, buggy, and we don't have basements in Texas. I thought it was just for cinematic purposes in movies until I interned in Indiana lol. 

I also read read a lot so I accidentally use some of the lingo from the time period or region. DH and I are going through the Harry Potter audiobooks right now and have found ourselves saying "Get off it" for no way or you're joking lol. 

riverrainez

PNW and we use all the normal, correct words for everything.

monstera13

I've lived in Nevada, California, and Texas, so I've been exposed to a good range of linguistics. A couple I can think of: 

I grew up calling those red river bugs crawdads, but in Texas they're crawfish. 

I call those big trucks 18-wheelers, but I've also heard semis. 

For the ones you've all been discussing, I say shopping carts, strollers, and soda

OliveOyl2014

I'm in Ohio and have never heard of the "Ohio accent" until recently. I work in a call center and a customer on the phone said I sound like I'm from Ohio and that blew me away! I never thought Ohio had its own accent. If you Google it you'll see lots of examples of what they mean. Like they say people from Ohio "shift" their vowels. The word fashion comes out as fay-shion. National sounds like nay-tional. It's pretty interesting! 

mrs_fogue

@jessirh not a Texan but I'm close enough to that and Louisiana, so I call those little bugs that build dirt mounds in your yard crawdads and crawfish come out of big ditches and that's what you eat.  But I've never stopped to think if they are actually the same thing.   

sjohns908

If anyone came to my house and responded with "I'll have a coke" when I ask them what to drink, this is what they're getting. I can't understand calling all pop coke and I will not accept it!

Mommaswizz

Big sandwiches: Heros (not hoagies, subs, submarines). Native NY-er here lol

singing_lyn

Wicked chiming in from NH. If something is cool it's wicked cool, wicked hot, wicked, etc. We just use wicked everywhere. I lived in Florida for a few years and picked up y'all, but now that I live back in NH I lost it within a few years. In regards to everything else it's soda, stroller, shopping cart or buggy, couch, kiddy corner, crawfish, fountain, and I think that's it. I got a lot of my friends in Florida using wicked while I lived there too. Lol.

sjohns908

I'm trying to remember what we did on m14 when this subject came up. I can only remember one, which was what do you call a candy on a stick? We call it a sucker

purplestarz

Grew up mostly in the PNW, but still mostly called it Soda. I think because my parents were from California. Friends did think I was weird for not calling it Pop. I'm in California now so I'm back with my Soda people.

Here's another weird one that I DO NOT use anymore. "Jap Flaps" for flip flops or sandals. Apparently it's a SoCal and Hawaii thing (mainly in the 70s from my brief research). With my parents being from SoCal I just thought that's what they were always called for the longest time..until someone told me it could be considered racist I don't know if that's true, but they are flip flops now lol

jessafishy

@sjohns08 Sucker here too!

I have a good one.

Do these sets of words all sound the same or different when you say them out loud?

Mary, merry, marry
ferry, fairy
Barry, berry, bury 

mrs_fogue

@purplestars I have heard that before, but they are flip flops here.  I hate when people call them thongs or toe thongs.

@sjohns08 I call lolly pops suckers too.

@jessafishy those are all pronounced the same.

afwoods10

Oh and what do you called the little sugar bits on top of ice cream? Sprinkles? Jimmies? 

riababy4

@sjohns08 we call it a lollipop!

bluejeanbabi05

@jessafishy definitely all pronounced the same!

@mrs_fogue ew @ "toe thongs" 

bluejeanbabi05

@afwoods10 I really want an ice cream cone with sprinkles now! I haven't heard them called jimmies before.

beezeee

@afwoods10 I have always just called them sprinkles, but DH is a stickler on this. According to him, sprinkles are the sugar flakes (you know, the opaque ones), and jimmies are the oblong shaped ones that you usually have on doughnuts. Lol.

eta a picture of jimmies, for clarification.

cranburyposh

I call hair ties; scrunchies! Pancakes - instead of hot cakes/flap jacks. Handbag rather than purse. Lip balm instead of chapstick.

sjohns908

One thing that drives dh and I up a wall is that my dad calls pacifiers/binkies "jibby". Idk why but we cannot stand it and I had never heard it before him and his side of the family called it that when we had our youngest