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Regional Slang

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  • #825385
    Elena
    Participant

      Well just a fun/funny little topic idea that bit me today 😉
      As we all know, there are funny bits of slang or words and phrases that we might understand but has visitors (or you as the visitor) to the area/region scratching their heads and going huh? For example… British bobbies, whinging vs whining etc. So, since we have members from around the world, I thought it might be fun to share a bit of this and people might find it interesting to see some of the different ways of expression from around the world.

      So my start… I’m from Western Canada
      – Any reference to “Timmies” or “Tims” (Canadians better get this, even if you don’t like Timmies 😛 ) = Tim Hortons, the Canadaian super chain coffee/donunt/sandwich shop. For some it’s almost a religion.
      – Chesterfield = Sofa
      – CheezWhiz = a spreadable cheese product, kinda like peanut butter but we use it on Everything
      – Prairie Oysters = Bull calf testicles. After a gelding session they are grilled, fried, stewed etc. Had them, but they’re not really to my taste
      , though my relatives inform me the fresher they are and younger the ‘donor’ was the better 😮
      – MUM is the proper spelling of the word (though an example of ‘americanization’ is that MOM is also accepted. Teachers cannot mark either spelling wrong)
      – We spell it CHEQUE rather than CHECK

      #501478
      Elena
      Participant

        #825386
        WolfenMachine
        Participant

          LOL! Tim Hortons. That explains a lot. There’s a show called How I Met Your Mother (which is a FANTASTIC show!) and one charachter (Robin) is Canadian. She, in one episode says “Ha! You’re nutter than a Tim Hortons Maple log!”

          She also goes to a Canadian bar called “The Hoser Hut” what’s a Hoser? Does everyone really offer you a dougnut? (Another episode where she is in The Hoser Hut, purposely bumps into someone and the guy says “Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there. Here, have a doughnut on the house” LOL)

          We call em Mountain Oysters :puke: Never had one! Don’t plan to try. And we have Cheese Wiz here too ^_^

          This will be a really fun post-I like hearing this stuff. You dont ever find this stuff out until you visit a place, and some places you may never visit!

          I’ll have to give this some thought, but in Texas

          Coke=any soda beverage. Could be a Pepsi, Sprite, Dr.Pepper etc.
          Y’all=Contraction of “you all”. Yes, we really say that!
          Aggie=A person who has attended or is attending the University of A&M, which stands for Agricultural and Mechanical. We like to tease that they are all dumb farmers or ignorant hicks. Its one of the 2 most popular universities in the state. Useage: “C’mere ya dumb Aggie!”
          Randalls=a decreasingly popular groccery store. I was surprised they didnt have these everywhere, its just a…Houston?…thing.

          #825387
          dragonmedley
          Participant

            Let’s not forget about the twooney, our 2-dollar coin. Now where did that come from, you ask.

            The 1-dollar coin bears a loon, that wonderful bird, therefore, the coin came to be known as a looney. When the 2-dollar coin came, well, then, it could only be called a twooney, right? Nevermind that it has a polar bear on it…

            Read my books! Volume 1 and 2 of A Dragon Medley are available now.
            http://www.sarahjestin.com/mybooks.htm
            I host the feedback lists, which are maintained by drag0nfeathers.
            http://www.sarahjestin.com/feedbacklists.htm

            #825388
            bayoudragon
            Participant

              omg… CheezWhiz! My sister ate that straight out of the can. :puke: And yes, you hardly hear the word soda. EVERYTHING is called a coke! Except for Pop Rouge… when you wanted one of those, you specifically asked for one. 😀

              mudbugs = these are crawfish, sometimes also called crawdads.
              skeeter hawk = short for mosquito hawk, which are insects most people know as dragonflies.
              hose pipe = this is the actual watering/garden hose. It has nothing to do with the faucet or the pipe the watering hose is attached to. For some reason, we call the the big green thing a hose pipe. LOL

              I’m not even going to list all the animals (unless you want me to). I had the hardest time in Ichthyology class because I had to RE-LEARN a lot of names. All I grew up hearing were the slang terms. 😆

              #825389
              Anonymous

                Representing the Midwest, here:

                We say SODA for all fizzy beverages

                More of an old-age thing than slang but we still say ICEBOX instead of refrigerator

                CheezWhiz – is everywhere and I believe it’s only in a jar. I used to eat it as a kid (we called it fake cheese) but don’t eat it anymore.

                We call crawdads, crawdads lol I nevet heard of mudbugs (cute)!

                I can’t think of anything else 😡 LOL But that’s an old-age thing, too haha!!

                #825390
                kitsunelady
                Participant

                  Haha, I like ‘mudbug’ better than crawdad too. >.>… *will call them that from now on*

                  Eh, I’m about two hours south of Poems, and yeah, we do call soda…well, soda. Although I think some people call it pop, but idk where they’re from. When I went to Mizzou, there were a lot of girls in my dorm who called all soda ‘pop’.

                  We don’t call our fridge an ‘icebox’…but my grandmother does. She lives a little to the east of us, across the river in Illinois.

                  Umm, I know I’ve heard other versions of this, but when we’re saying something is way out in the middle of nowhere, we say “It’s out in BFE.” I’m not sure I should enlighten you about what BFE stands for or not. 😆

                  #825391
                  etruscan
                  Participant

                    Soda is called “pop” in the upper Midwest (Wisconsin)for sure. Foxfeather cited “Chesterfield” for a sofa. I had a great-aunt that called it a “Davenport”. I don’t know where that originated. Or you can call it a “couch” (or you can call it a sofa). 🙂 Lots of names for one piece of furniture!

                    #825392
                    Skeeterdeee
                    Participant

                      We also say BFE out here in Pittsburgh 😀 I was born and raised in New Jersey where I learned to say “soda” then I move to Pittsburgh where it is called “pop”. anything fizzy is a pop. I still say soda and get laughed at 🙁
                      Here we say “Crick” instead of “Creek”.
                      In New Jersey we would say “you guys” but in PA it’s “YINZ”, as in “What are YINZ doing tonight?”
                      And for some reason people in Pittsburgh can’t pronounce the name of their football team: they call the Pittsburgh Steelers “The Stillers”
                      This is a weird place, I miss New Jersey 😥

                      #825393
                      Jasmine
                      Participant

                        My cousin from California, who was visiting,didn’t know what I was referring to when I asked if she wanted a “pop”. To her, it’s “soda”. 😀

                        #825394
                        Lupin
                        Participant

                          I’m actually from Newfoundland… You REALLY don’t want to know 🙄 , we actually do have our own legitimate Dictionaries, & there have been international Linguistic studies on the Language/culture!
                          As for “Chesterfields” & “Davenports” I know where they came from. It’s actually Brand names, like calling a Snowmobile a “Skidoo”.

                          Just a small idea/example…
                          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEfcx5cFajM

                          #825395
                          kitsunelady
                          Participant

                            I remember someone from Pittsburgh (I think, it’s been a while) telling me that ‘jeetjet’ translated to ‘did you eat yet’ for them. 😀 Cause they say it so fast, so it it all blends together, haha.

                            Do any of you call a sofa a couch? We always call it a couch (almost never a sofa). o.o;

                            I thought of something else – we call tissues ‘kleenex’ no matter what brand they really are! I bet a lot of people all over the place do that, though. e.e Oh, and we call rednecks ‘hilljacks’, although I have a suspicion my friend Jeffrey made that up himself when he was making fun of another friend who is from Marble Hill (aka The Hill), which is pretty…well, it’s way out there in BFE, and they have honed their redneck skills to a fine point, let’s just put it that way. 😀

                            I wonder if your BFE means the same thing mine does. >.> @ skeeterdee

                            Anyhoo, I will listen tomorrow at work, and see if I can catch any other weird things we say!

                            #825396
                            kitsunelady
                            Participant

                              Lupin wrote:

                              I’m actually from Newfoundland… You REALLY don’t want to know 🙄 , we actually do have our own legitimate Dictionaries, & there have been international Linguistic studies on the Language/culture!
                              As for “Chesterfields” & “Davenports” I know where they came from. It’s actually Brand names, like calling a Snowmobile a “Skidoo”.

                              Just a small idea/example…
                              http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEfcx5cFajM

                              That was hilarious, although I could barely understand anything he said. XD The translated bits in that person’s comments were the only thing that gave me the first clue, lol.

                              #825397
                              Jasmine
                              Participant

                                I watched Snatch the other night (yum, Brad Pitt and Jason Statham) and had to watch with the closed captioning on because I couldn’t understand a word Brad was saying (I was warned beforehand about that). He did do a wonderful job with the dialect.

                                And it’s always been couch and kleenex here too. 😀

                                #825398
                                bayoudragon
                                Participant

                                  hahaha… there’s a local band here who made a song titled “BFE”… but they actually used the entire phrase and not just the letters. 😆 😳

                                  Yep, I have an ice box. 😀

                                  A greeting you constantly hear is… “How’s ya mom and ’em?” (em=them, meaning family)

                                  When it’s time to eat, you have breakfast, lunch, and supper… but you can also have dinner. Doesn’t sound too strange, but growing up dinner could be any time after noon. If it was sandwiches, you pretty much had lunch. If mom asked (at 2:00pm) what you want for dinner, it meant she was probably going to fix something good. :yum: Because of the influence of the french language (diner=to dine), dinner basically became “what do you want to eat?” So yah, I sometimes ate dinner at 2:00pm… and then again and 7:00. 😆 I still ask this question to my husband and he always asks, “You mean lunch?” … … … whatever, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO EAT? I swear, he does that on purpose. :spank:

                                  Another translation thing lost somewhere is that we “save” things. Go save your clothes. Save the dishes. They aren’t on fire or anything. They just need to be put away in there proper place.

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