Regionalism's

[Aggie_Ama]

In Texas, it's known as a "crick".

Not in my area, it is a creek.

[Eden]

No. Way. My DH is from Maine, too. They got some nerve, making fun of the way we talk.

Ayup.

so lets see here
we are both from Pittsburgh, married to Mainers and moved to Seattle - cue the twilight zone music.... (not to mention we are both rather petite)

[sundial]

Not in my area, it is a creek.

You're close to civilization. I lived out in the back 40.

[OakLeaf]

Spelled "creek," pronounced "crick," the formal name on maps is "run."

[Crankin]

I can always tell when someone is not from New England, because they refer to Boston as "the city." We say "town," as in "I'm going in town for dinner." A native would never say "into town," as it seems like we abbreviate everything. So, "in town" is like going "down the Cape," or "down Maine," or (not heard much around where I live) " down the corner."
My husband says "city," which marks him as the Philadelphian he is. My NY friends call it the city, too.

As a kid, we called the evening meal supper. Lunch was lunch, but when I moved to Florida, some people called it dinner. I stopped saying supper years ago.
My kids have no accent; they speak standard American (midwest) English. When we moved to MA from AZ they both sounded like they were from Chicago, but that sort of flattened out as the years went on. The younger one started talking with a thick Boston accent from listening to friends and teachers, but we put a stop to that. He was doing it on purpose to fit in. All I know is that after moving away when I was 15 and working really hard to rid myself of that accent, I still do not pronounce "r's" at the end of words naturally. It is a forced sound. If I am angry or rushed, the accent comes out. One time, on one of my first job interviews for a teaching position in AZ, I introduced myself to the principal, shook his hand, and he looked at me and said "Cape Cod." I was like, "huh?" He had detected that whiff of accent no matter how hard I tried to get rid of it!

[Beane]

You Might Be From Vodilun (say it aloud) if........


And finally, you know you're a rhode island TE girl when you ride a hundred miles and end up leaving the state. Twice.

I have to say, having lived in the DC suburbs, Philadelphia, RI, and now Wisconsin, lil Rhody (with its lobstahs and mobstahs) has the most and wackiest sayings I've ever encountered! And with the accent many are very hard to figure out.

My favorite is definitely "pasta and gravy", especially if you wake up at 9 am to start cooking.

...such a fun place though. And i did make my mom bring a dozen donuts (from DD, not Allie's.. btw, we had a GIANT allie's donut as the cake at my 21st b-day party) across the country the last time she visited... they didn't make it very well. but hey, a squished donut is still a donut.

[Tuckervill]

We say "go to town" when we want to go to the biggest city nearby, even though we live in a town. In some cases that could mean Pine Bluff or Little Rock when we lived between the two, and now it means we have a choice of Fayetteville or Bentonville/Rogers, cuz that's where all the best shopping is. Sometimes we don't decide which town until we're in the car. (Um, 50,000 people in three of those "cities".)

I have a friend in NY state who uses "crick" for creek. I thought she was making fun of me when I first heard her say it--or "puttin' on airs", like she was now some kind of country-folk, having moved from The City. Then the more I heard it I thought she must be illiterate, because surely she can see it is spelled with two e's! Then I realized that's just how they say it up there.

I had some regional immersion today. I read a book of my son's grandmother's letters she had written to her daughter over the daughter's life. They were put together in a binder for everyone on that side after the grandmother passed. (Isn't that sweet?) The most quaint expression she used was "Myrtle's waiting." Every fourth letter had a phrase about Myrtle waiting for her baby--Grammaw's first grandchild--to be born. "Myrtle's still waiting." Just that phrase and nothing more about Myrtle or a baby. I had to divine what she meant by the dates, and then of course, the baby came and got his first mention in the letters!

Karen

[NbyNW]

so lets see here
we are both from Pittsburgh, married to Mainers and moved to Seattle - cue the twilight zone music.... (not to mention we are both rather petite)

well . . . Pittsburgh and Maine both export people (DH thinks that's part of what we have in common: industrial/extraction economy that went into decline) . . . and Seattle (still) has jobs . . . can't really explain the petite thing, though

[Eden]

well . . . Pittsburgh and Maine both export people (DH thinks that's part of what we have in common: industrial/extraction economy that went into decline) . . . and Seattle (still) has jobs . . . can't really explain the petite thing, though

I met my husband in college. Neither of us would have had a job had we moved back to his small Maine town (he's a programmer, I'm a medical photographer - neither conducive to employment in lumber or in the paper mill) and though we probably could have lived in Pittsburgh, most of my family was gone from there already and heck, I grew up there, why not experience somewhere else.

[bmccasland]

In Cajun country your grandparents most likely would be called Mawmaw and Pawpaw.
I'm not sure how all this works with the ethnographers, but my family is from north Louisiana, and I remember calling one of my greatgrandfathers Pawpaw. He was originally from Mississippi, but I can't quite remember where. Mawmaw had passed before I was born. They weren't Cajun (Acadian), but were Scotch-Irish.

Which sort of brings me to the euphamisims we use for when someone dies. We NEVER say so-and-so died. They "passed."

One of the things I've noticed is the way people pronounce the "ou" or "oa" combination, as in the word "house" or "coast". I'm not quite sure how do describe it, but the "ou" sounds more like the vowel in "ouch". And in coast, the o is more a round "oh" sound.

[sundial]

The younger one started talking with a thick Boston accent from listening to friends and teachers, but we put a stop to that.

LOL!

[7rider]

We say "go to town" when we want to go to the biggest city nearby, even though we live in a town.

Gloucester, Massachusetts (northeast of Boston) is on a little spit of a cape that sticks out into the Atlantic. There is a highway, Route 128, that connects it with nearby towns and the main interstate (I-95). Locals refer to going "up the line" when they plan to make the trek off-Cape (gasp! ) and visit nearby Peabody, Danvers, Salem or where ever.

I grew up in Connecticut, and when I was in Massachusetts, decided to have a "tag sale" to unload some household stuff. I plastered signs all over the place - even on my car's windshield - pointing the way to my tag sale. I actually had folks show up and ask me what a "tag sale" was. In Gloucester (and MA in general), they are "yard sales."

[Tuckervill]

I've been to Gloucester! Whoopie Goldberg was tending bar in a little restaurant at the pier where we went whale watching. No lie!

Karen

[malkin]

When I lived in North Carolina, people would always say "might could," as in "Would you fix the sink?" "I might could do that."

Yes! Utah folk do that "might could" (double modal construction, if you want to sound like a linguist) too!

But instead of asking "Would you fix the sink" they'd be more likely to say:
"That sink needs fixed."

[Aggie_Ama]

In Cajun country your grandparents most likely would be called Mawmaw and Pawpaw.

I have a Mammaw, but it is because my big brother couldn't get out Grandma.

Both of my grandpas were Pawpaw. My husband called his Grandpa Poo-paw.

My Dad's mom is Nanny. She wanted to be called Nan because she thought she was too young to be a grandma but my brother thought she would be Nanny.

In the Hill Country there is a large German influence so there are Opas and Omas. Opa is really fun for kids to say it seems by watching my nieces.