Regional identification by vocabulary choice

Caramon13

Caramon13

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Romeo
Well that's a rather overdone title...another thread got me thinking about this a bit.

I've been able to USUALLY identify where people are from based on some of the phrases/words and accents for certain words. Just curious if anyone here has a few examples of that.

I'll start with a few:

"War"sher (washer) - > Arkansas/south central US
Wicked - NE US, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, etc..
Sweet Tea -> Southern mostly
Pop -> Northern term though more central north I think.
"War"ter (water) -> My wife hates this one..always corrects me on it. Thinking NY/PA/NJ areas...
 
Take "The" I-10 East...you might be from Southern California.

Get me a glass whuter (water) with my arnge...one sylable...(orange) and you are from the North East
 
The NY Times had a website that would ask you a series of questions on word usage and estimate where you are from (or where you lived when you acquired language). It didn't work for me, but it is spooky accurate for native speakers.
 
might could
usta could
might should
etc...

You probably have a few branches missing from your family tree.
 
Shawn said:
Take "The" I-10 East...you might be from Southern California.

Get me a glass whuter (water) with my arnge...one sylable...(orange) and you are from the North East
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Never called it "I " ever......SoCal boy here. Can't recall anyone calling it " interstate" either or I-405 (eye four oh five)



"Jump on the 101 and take that to the 405. Run through OC and merge onto the 5 south. Take the 163 to TJ and party on Wayne."
 
Fixin' to slap some ribs on da grill

Watch this!

Bless his heart....
 
Cooter143 said:
Also in Eastern NC, ---"won't"--- seemed to substitute for isnt, wasn't and weren't.
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I can confirm you are correct. Also if someone suggestes a bbq restaurant they are referring to pig. Not beef. Also "coke" references any soft drink. So if you tell the waitress you want coke she will rattle off what soft drinks they have and ask which one you want.
 
If I said I didn't know that "damn Yankee" was two words until I was in high school, where would you say I'm from?

I generally drink either sweet tea or Coke. Barbecue is a noun, it is smoked pork; that thing out in the deck that I cook steaks and chicken on is a "grill." I drive a truck back and forth to work, and brush all of my teeth with a "tooth" brush. Woulda, shoulda, coulda are common words, and I ain't never drunk outa no "bubbler."
 
Going beyond the US, to Canada, a dead giveaway for a Canadian is the word process.

It's "PRA"cess for most people in the US, but up there they say it like it's spelled "PRO"cess
 
Caramon13 said:
Going beyond the US, to Canada, a dead giveaway for a Canadian is the word process.

It's "PRA"cess for most people in the US, but up there they say it like it's spelled "PRO"cess
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Also garage. In the US it's mostly guh/gah-rahj, but the second syllable is pronounced more like the ra in Randy, than the ra in Roger.
 
"You can go wid me if ya ownt to"
(with me if you want to)
 
roncachamp said:
Which means residents of all 50 states call it something other than the name the inventor used.

Bubbler
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I swear people born in Wisconsin were brainwashed as kids with this whole bubbler thing. Majority rules. Telephones were once called speaking telegraphs.
 
JB1842 said:
I swear people born in Wisconsin were brainwashed as kids with this whole bubbler thing. Majority rules. Telephones were once called speaking telegraphs.
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Why is this an issue with you? I think the majority of people don't give a rat's ass what nomenclature is common in Wisconsin. You're just some kind of control freak.
 
roncachamp said:
Why is this an issue with you? I think the majority of people don't give a rat's ass what nomenclature is common in Wisconsin. You're just some kind of control freak.
Click to expand...

Not an issue, I just like to mess with people who use the word bubbler. :D
 
My wife has a rather neutral southern accent, but when she travels back to her home state it's like I'm hearing a different person talk.

I've been back up to my home state of PA and I do the same thing...by the way, the natives of Pennsylvania I've met (myself included) seem to refer to their state as "PA" as opposed to the full name.

Where you from originally? "PA"
 
People used to tell me that they knew I was from Connecticut from my pronunciation of a $0.25 piece ==> "qwaw - ter"
:)

Then, there was also my grandmother's pronunciation of "pa day da" [potato]
 
they call Charlotte "shaw luh"

Colorado is Colo rah do (like rah, rah rah), not ra as in rag.
 
Took me a while to discover what Texans meant by "Barditch". Gotta give it that west Texas pronunciation though. Kinda leave out the r.
 
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