Regional slang - Pop? Bubbler? Grinder? Toboggan?
 

I have lived in 4 different regions. Grew up in upstate NY, then moved to boston for 5 years for college, Then Raleigh NC, now Columbus OH. I have heard things I never thought I'd ever hear...

I thought I was pretty normal, drinking soda, or water from a water fountain. Eating a sandwich, maybe flying down a snowy hill on a toboggan. Then I moved to Boston. Soda was replaced by Tonic. I thought that was strange...but dealt with it ;) I still called it soda. They also called rubberbands "Elastics". Strange, but whatever...

Then I go to NC for a few years. Now they are talking about putting toboggans on their heads! WHAT?? How do you fit through the door? They have the typical southern words like y'all and "used to could". I dealt with it.

Now im living in Ohio, and im learnring a whole new set of words and phrases. When something needs to be fixed, thats just it. it needs to be fixed. Its not "needs fixed"!! Its "needs to be fixed!" SAY IT SAY IT!. This whole pop thing is enough to drive ya crazy but ill get used to that too I suppose.

Anyone live anywhere where they call things differently? what do you say?

I am trying to find a list or website with all the different sayings and words from different places. I found the mecca of soda vs pop but not any other words..

Just my random thought for the day.

Mike

found something, sort of answered my own question - but its a very interesting site with studies....

where do you stand? http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/%7Egolder/dialect/maps.php

http://www.slanguage.com/
beware of popups, I have the google popup thing, but, just so yall know.

I know we've covered this over and over again... it's such a popular topic when one discovers that there's somewhere other than where they are....

I'm going to dig... and when I find it.. merge it with this thread

edit: no such luck and have been beckoned by the Xbox to play for a spell.... life is good when you can Xbox at work for a spell.. :)

Down here in Alabama we do not refer to soft drinks as "soda" or "pop". Soda is used when baking a cake, and I still don't know what "pop" is. Soft drinks, whether you are referring to Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, Coke, Diet Coke, RC, or whatever are referred to as "coke". Would you like a coke? Sure. I'll have a Diet Pepsi. Or, I'm thirsty. Would you get me a coke out of the fridge? You might be handed a Pepsi, but it is still a coke.

When you are getting ready to go to Walmart, or organizing the ingredients to prepare a meal, or taking the car to get an oil change, you are "fixin' to" do all of these things. I'm fixin' to eat dinner. I'm fixin to go to bed. I'm fixin' to go shopping. Or just, I'm fixin' to, when someone asks you to do something. This, I think, is one of the oddest of the regional phrases used in the South. But, it is used more often than any other. I was raised in the South, and I don't use much southern slang except fixin' to. I can't explain it. It is so comfortable and applies to so many different situations. And I am aware of how strange it sounds to those from other parts of the country.

I lived in the heart of the midwest for several years, and it took a while for me to become accustomed to hearing "yet", "you bet", "you guys" and "stop back".

I did do a search first, didnt want to bring up old topics....but thanks for any work you do cyn.


just thinking of a few more -

in boston, they call sprinkles "jimmies" -- too strange

after being here thru 2 server crashes and restarting from scratch sometimes I remember threads posted 2 servers ago :)

I call it whatever they call it wherever I am. So here it's Soda...

here it's Stand ON line...

I was born and raised and still live in SE Wisconsin......for some reason i use "yall" even tho i dont use any other southern slang, and have never even been t o the south.. :crazy:

Pop is a carbonated, sweet beverage that one drinks. A toboggan is a big ass wooden thing that you use to go down hills. It's pronounced deh-kal, and black people are identified by their skin colour, not by the prefix "African". :)

I'm sure there is an absolute load of things I say differently than you do, but I don't have the ability to discern most of them.

edit: Thought of more (will update as I think of them):

A blood mary is called a caesar.

edit (again): zilla, I just looked at that Harvard site, and while it's interesting to see which way the majority of the population pronounces certain words, it seems that the distribution is primarily just a display of the total distribution of the United States' population (primarily on the East Coast (especially the North East) and coastal California).

the first 50 or so are just pronunciations but if you read the links at the bottom, its interesting to hear what people call things.

What do you call the day before halloween? my whole life it was cabbage night, and when i said that to someone in the office here, they thought I was crazy.

I call it October the 30th. :P

When I lived in the south, everyone called shopping carts "buggies". I only took notice of this because I worked in a grocery store ;) The first time someone said buggy to me, I was confused as hell. Here in Utah we just call them carts.

my mom calls them wagons. that is the weirdest thing to me. I call them carts.

Goosey Night
Mischief Night
Cabbage Night

all three were used in the area I grew up in..

During my short stint at Kmart, some people called them "baskets".

I've always thought it was Devil's Night (maybe that's just MI cause of the old riots).

Also, i've always called carbonated soft drinks cola or pop. I have met a few people from out of state who had no idea what people were talking about when "pop" specifically is mentioned.

Well in Massachusetts...

Your order a tonic.
It's a rotary... not a roundabout.
You know how to pronounce the names of towns like Worcester, Billerica, Haverhill, Barre and Cotuit.
You know what they sell at a packie.
You know what First Night is.
You know the words 'WICKED' and 'GOOD' go together.
You know how to make a frappe.
You never go to "Cape Cod", you go "down the Cape".
You know that P-Town isn't the name of a new rap group.
You do not recognize the letter "R" as a part of the English language.
You've called something "wicked pissa" .
You brake check people all the time.
You know what candlepin bowling is.
You know what a "regular" coffee is.
Two words. "Yankees Suck".

That always seriously confused me, and eventually pissed me off. I heard "basket" and thought of the baskets that you carry. Ugh I hate illogical naming of things.

Here`s a nice site to look up English slang words

http://www.urbandictionary.com

The toboggan thing screwed me up recently. As I've been born and raised in North Carolina, I never even knew that was a regional term, I had always thought that was what everyone called them. So I needed to find a cheap one for part of a halloween costume and being stuck at work I resorted to the internet. Low and behold everywhere i search I can't find a damn thing about any toboggans! Except for the odd site that referred to what seemed to be a sled, nothing about a nice, knit, warm, toboggan to wear on your head while sledding. Eventually I gave up and just walked around some stores till I found one, and it wasn't till this thread that I finally know why it was hard to find a simple toboggan online.

If i was to hear someone say they were sledding on a toboggan I'd think they were out of their freakin' heads, trying to sled while standing on their head. I mean jeez, that'd have to be cold, good thing they've got a warm toboggan on!

pop, gumbands... nothing too interesting here, but afew years ago my one friend was telling me of an encounter with a new band director who came up from the south (i'm in the north), well... he lived kinda near her, and asked her for a ride one day... she got all freaked, because when he asked her for a ride to his house, she thought he was asking "for a ride", as in sex :lol:

I hear janky alot in Michigan.

When things are half broken it's janky.

Interesting! What is a toboggan, in terms of the hat? I've never even heard of that...the only thing I know as a toboggan is either a long sled without runners made out of wooden planks that are curved at the front, or a cheap thing that's made out of molded plastic that's also used for sledding or tobogganing. I wouldn't call either of these things sleds, although they're used for sledding; to me, a 'sled' always has metal runners.

I've always said soda but an hour south of my hometown, it's called pop. They say gumband there too. And what's a bubbler?

Anyone know what a hoagie is? It's kind of like a hero, sub or grinder, but it's a very specific kind of italian style sandwich that NEVER comes with mayo :) Good karma goes to anyone who can also tell me the right way to make a hoagie!


I know this topic on regional slang has been repeated loads of times, but I still think it's fascinating.

A toboggan to a southern person, is a snow hat/winter hat. y'know - the knit hat? I had a friend in NC who I worked with who had the opposite experience from you, Gustoferson.

He had a friend from NY who had come down to visit. He (the friend) was talking about using a toboggan to dig tunnels in the snow. My friend was thinking, and thought for a few years, on how in the world he was able to dig holes in the snow with a toboggan, he thought "what does he do, put it on his hands and dig???"

of all the regional terms, that one still amazes me.

This is a tobaggan
http://images.canadiantire.ca/media/...0_CC_29e7b.jpg

..and this is a toque....cool shaped one at that.
http://www.puffingear.com/96510a.gif

This is a sled to some people...
http://images.canadiantire.ca/media/...50_SC_dea2.jpg

..but this is a real sled.
http://home.gci.net/~shem/Wallpaper/...Snowmobile.jpg

The sled variety of "toboggan" is fairly ancient. It's French, no?

Oh, and a _real_ sled:
<img src="http://beqiraj.com/bilder/us/sonstige/sr71h_256.jpg">

In New Orleans...

It's not the median of the road...it's the 'neutral ground'.
It's not a trolley...it's a streetcar.
If you want everything on your sandwich at the deli, you order it 'dressed'.
You go to the supermarket to 'make groceries'.

Finally realized the best place to look for a toboggan listed online would be somewhere here in NC, so tada! found one. If you happen to be in North Carolina (not sure about the rest of the south), then this is a classic example of a toboggan!

http://store1.yimg.com/I/chapelhills..._1825_13244684

They can either be exactly like that and worn snug, or oversized and flopping around a bit on the top, some cutsey ones will have those annoying balls on top, etc. The main requirement is its a knit-type hat like that. And before my story in the previous post, i seriously had no idea there was anything else called a toboggan or that this was a regional thing.

Here, that wooden sled above is simply that, a wooden sled.

Also, I almost forgot, its often shortened to 'boggan in casual conversation.

this, my friend, is in fact, a toque.:)
http://store1.yimg.com/I/chapelhills..._1825_13244684

Its devil's night here in ontario too, so it's not exclusive to MI. and i get the same thing from my use of the word "pop" as well

and that is a toque, it would be very hard to ride down a hill on a toque ;)

I thought the night before Halloween was Thursday night is Halloween was on a friday.

A Coney is a hot dog with coney island chili and a loose is a bunch of cooked hambuger on a bun with coney island chili on top.

Pop is what a firecracker does and coke is any soft drink, diet or otherwise.

Soda is what you put in biscuits unless unless you are drinking a bourbon or scotch and soda, which is sad because why would you put anything in perfectly good scotch? It's like jumping out of a perfectly good plane.

A Skyline is chili over spagetti noodles.

I'm from the south but have lived around. found out in NY that a regular coffee is with cream and sugar, not a medium sized cup.

Stuff is your belongings, like I'll be ready to go as soon as I get my stuff. While junk is what is between your legs, especially if you are a dog.

Dinner is lunch in the south and supper is dinner - the meal in the evening. Of course, you have to eat supper food (green beans, okra, greens, mashed taters, ham, etc.) at dinner for it to be dinner, otherwise if it's a sandwich it's lunch. Supper is the food that was left over from dinner and stored in a cool oven.

Oh, and red eye gravy, which is made with fried ham drippings, coffee and posibly the ever so slightest amount of flower goes on your grits for breakfast if you havne't made sausage for milk gravy.

Here a "toboggan" or "Touque" is called a stocking cap or hat...

You put your groceries in a bag, not a sack.

It is "soda" not "pop"

This would be St. Louis...

Here in my Massachusetts

It's only tonic to adults (40-ish and older)
Toboggans are not hats
We've never heard of toques, but we know of ski hats/knit hats
Water fountain and bubbler are interchangeable
Elastic is a perfectly good name for rubber band
It's a sub, not a hero, grinder or whatever else
You stand in line, not on line
"I might should do that." Is bad grammar
It's car-a-mel

So is it Boston or Bastan'? :)

I hereby declare that cat shall mean dog, dog shall mean television, and television shall mean '59 Caddy. Who's with me?