LM_NET: Library Media Networking
Well, I have to get into this! It's Friday.
I am from central Iowa, and at one point in my long life you could tell
whether someone was from northern, central, or southern Iowa by the
accent--northerners sounded like those people in the movie Fargo,
southerners sounded a bit like Missourians and we sounded, of course,
normal. The big regionalism controversies in my life were sink or zinc
(my father called it a zinc, as did his father, while my mother, born
two miles from him, did not), just exactly what one calls a skillet--or
a frying pan, or, as my grandfather called it, a "spider." Also, the
bathroom sink, taps, faucets, lavatory; bags or sacks of groceries (how
the heck else can you say that except "grosheries"?), woysh or wash
(again, my father with the woysh, my mother ringing in with wash), and
how one defines a creek as opposed to a "crick." We had a "crick"
running at the bottom of my street, which frankly was run-off from the
sewers, but Four Mile Creek was a whole other animal. Do you pronounce
sandwich "sangwich" as I still do? Did your grandfather inexplicably
pronounce the word three as "thlee?" Did your grandmother for some
reason pronounce delicious as "malicious?" Finally, what is the little
step or rise in front of your front door, where people stand and ring
the bell? It is a stoop, clearly, not a porch. A porch has room for a
swing. Yet we were the only family in my neighborhood to have a stoop.
Identical to others' porches. Sat on the stoop drinking pop. The
interesting thing to me about pop is whether a person says "I want some
pop" or "I want a pop." For me, pop has always been a noun like
Jell-o--you can have some, but a single pop is not "a pop." It's a can
of pop. And exactly when did the word party become a verb? For me, it
dates to 1980 or so. Would like to know how long it took to travel to
Des Moines.
Okay, I have to stop--I've loved this thread--but there is one thing I
am interested in, and that is whether you notice a regional aspect to
sayings, aphorisms. My father's family always had a very crude saying
that one used when some told you they wanted something, and you wanted
to convey the fact that they weren't going to get it--and pardon me for
the vulgarity--"Want in one hand and shit in the other." Meaning the
substance in the other hand was more substantial than the first, the
stuff in the other hand has as much worth as the stuff in the first. I
never heard anyone say it beside my father's side of the family--saying
it to friends usually cost me friends--until a friend of mine married a
man from Kentucky who claimed that his family had been using the
charming saying as long as he could remember. How did my grandfather,
born in holland and reared on a farm in Iowa, come to have stoops,
spiders, and vulgar phrases from Kentucky? I guess we'll never know.
Have a great weekend!
Jennie E. Ver Steeg
Education Liaison Librarian
207 Founders Memorial Library
Northern Illinois University
De Kalb, Illinois 60115
voice 815-753-1351
fax 815-753-2003
jversteeg@niu.edu
floodhover@hotmail.com
Compute-Ed: an electronic journal of learning and teaching with and
about technology. Find it at: computed.coe.wayne.edu
____________
"Many are cold, but few are frozen."
Joy Ver Steeg
___________________
>>> Jan Birney <stmark6614@YAHOO.COM> 01/27/00 03:00PM >>>
I just listened to NPR's Talk of the Nation today and
their topic was Accents in America. I caught the last
few minutes of the program but it intrigued me because
it reminded me of an article I read in Yankee Magazine
about twenty years ago. The article talked about
regional speech and dialects. There was a quiz that
was quite comprehensive and that claimed to be able to
pinpoint exactly where the quiz-taker was from--right
down to the county in some cases. It was fascinating.
I'm from Southern New England, about an hour from New
York City. Our speech patterns and word choices don't
fit the typical "New Yawhk" accents. Nor do we have
the typical New England use of "wuuhds".
I always thought that my speech patterns and choice of
words was fairly standard--until our family moved to
St. Louis, Missouri several years ago where I received
a little lesson in humility. One Sunday morning my
husband went to a local 7-11 and asked for "hard
rolls", which make great egg sandwiches and are also
great with cold cuts (probably another regionalism).
The clerk looked at my husband in all seriousness and
said, "Of course not--why would we have hard rolls?
All of our rolls are strictly fresh." It took a while
for us to adapt to our new environment, but soon we we
eating Kaiser rolls with our eggs and lunch meat and
we learned to enjoy frozen custard on hot summer days
(tastes remarkably like soft-serve ice cream) and
celebrated, with cake, the day we were "barn". I
never got used to "warshing" the clothes in the
"zink", however, nor did I ever shop for "grosheries".
Linguistically enriched, I am,
Jan Birney
=====
Jan Birney, Computer Specialist
Stratford Catholic Regional School System
Stratford, CT 06615
stmark6614@yahoo.com
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