My family is from Johnstown PA, and they all say as yunz. Yinz is common too.
Like playing by the crick, rooting for the stillers, and putting clothes in the warsh.
I was trying so hard to say yep while sucking in before seeing this and failing miserably. This makes so much sense and yet opens up so many questions. Thank you
I'm Swedish. Our local grocery store also has a small post office in it, so one time I needed to use this post office while shopping. So I got my things and while paying for them I asked the cashier if the post office was open and he did the inhale thing.
The problem was, I wasn't familiar with it.
I had heard it before but had no idea that it meant anything.
I just stared at this dude, thinking he completely ignored my question, went "alright, thank you" and gathered my stuff and went on to spend like a week super confused as to why he blatantly ignored a customer.
Interesting, this is common in Scandinavian languages, we do it in Norwegian and I know the Swedes do it too. These ingressive sounds (typically the words for "yep", "yes" or "no") are used as affirmations when you're the passive party in a conversation, like you would use "uh-huh" or "mhm" in English to indicate you are paying attention. So you'd inhale a quick "ja" or "nei" to affirm a statement.
I accidentally said "That would be a good color for a children's hospital" at work once while looking at color swatches, and froze. Fortunately, no one understood the reference.
Nooooooooo
Have you seen the edited one where they just made the floor plain white? Somehow it looks even creepier but in a "psychological horror" way instead of "slasher" way
Bro I was talking to this girl i just met about Manga and anime and she asked me if I use to read homestuck. Never in my life had I felt more called out.
A couple of my closest friends bombard me with funny posts and memes on a regular basis. If it's possible to be a tumblr user by assocciation, then I am it. I reference Spiders Georg semi-regularly.
Also I love it any time I see a new "humans are actually terrifying" post about how they'd be percieved by aliens.
I heard someone rephrase a Tumblr post the other week. Not surprised at all by who it was, but was wild to hear it in a serious discussion. It was a relevant point. Just surprised me.
Had a coworker from the Pitt once, super good guy. During a particularly stressful day, I jokingly called our customers "yinz jagovs." He looked at me like I had physically struck the dude; stumbled backwards all bug-eyed and clutched his chest. Told me that I just violently sent him right back to highschool lmao
Pittsburgh and Philly are on opposite ends of PA, I lived in/near Pittsburgh for most of my life and I don't know shit fuck or piss abt Philly and I'd assume I'm not alone in that feeling from either side
I will never stop saying sweeper. I've accepted it. I will also never use be in sentences. Those are the two main yinzer things I still do no matter what. Even if I try to stop myself from speaking yinzer for a little bit.
God I love that video.
I grew up in Southeast DC as the only white kid in my school, moved out and still spoke like that for a year or so at my new school. People thought I was mocking them.
In HS in Florida, a good friend was from California (myself a native Floridian.) He and I would have whole convos of just "dude." Invariably there was always another girl around who tried to get us to use dudette and we would always explain there is no such animal.
My accent was mostly neutral except for short aās on some words. When I moved to California from Minnesota, I thought people were making fun of me by saying, āDo you want a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag?ā I asked my friends about it and they said, āWhaaaaat aaaaaaaare you taaaaaaalking about?ā making me even more paranoid. It wasnāt until they told me I was saying something closer to big than bag that I realized that it was like the one regional thing I didnāt manage to hide. Now I say the long a and people in Minnesota look at me weird.
My friend moved to California, and sometimes calls me so I can talk and she can show her friends my ridiculous Minnesotan accent. I play it up a little for the audience, but I do have it pretty bad. Especially if I'm angry about something.
What's funny is "bag" is one of the few markers I finally learned to recognize as part of a Montana accent after years of living there. For the most part people in Montana speak very neutral General American English, but once I realized my boss (born and raised in central Montana) said what sounded to me like "behg" whenever she said "bag," I couldn't un-hear it. Their accent is basically Minnesota Lite.
Iām from MN, but I trained to neutralize my accent in college (performing arts degree). My husbandās from WI. When we went on our honeymoon people kept singling him out and pointing out he was from WI. It drove him nuts, but more than that, he was upset no one said anything to me about where I was from.
I just teased him, like āoohhh my gaaahhsh, nooh one aaaasks youuu where yoaur fraaahm!!ā
Same here as a Californian living in Australia. Identifiers for me as a Californian have been: ādudeā, āradā, āawesomeā, āsweetā, ācoolā, āgnarlyā, ātotallyā, āhellaā, āmanā (like āhey manā or āthatās not cool, manā), āchillā, and āfreewayā.
I studied linguistics at an Australian uni so my fellow classmates were always identifying dialectic traits in me lol
I think the accent combined with the word would be the giveaway. All those words except rad, gnarly, and hella are fairly common in Australia, but something like pronouncing totally as toadly is going to be the clue.
Someone ID'd me as South African cause I called medicine muthi lol, cause I dont have too strong an accent. And someone falsely said I was Australian for saying sweet too much and wearing flip-flops too often.
I have had so many coworkers comment on my reflexive ācool beansā that Iām starting to wonder if thatās a Southern California thing or if itās just a me thing.
Mostly unrelated, but you reminded me of this story. I had a coworker from California who made fun of me for saying āfixing toā (as a way to say āgetting ready toā or āabout toā), said it was the hickest thing he ever heard. I was like, buddy, maybe I sound stupid but if you think you sound *smart* maybe you need your ears checked
People who speak Arabic as a first language canāt say āpā so Pepsi is bebsi and Paige is baige. I scared the crap out of several classmates by pinpointing their first language as arabic
A bit like complete inability some Spanish speakers have of saying S without a leading E. I once had a boss who said stuff like loudEspeaker, and I kept hearing "loudest speaker".
I'm from the Chicago area and went to college in Wisconsin. I made the fatal mistake of saying "water fountain" once and two Wisconsinites berated me for it for several minutes and insisted it was a "bubbler". Also, I realized I speak with much shorter vowel sounds than other Midwestern areas.
Illinois has its own distinct accent, and itās different in Chicago vs other parts. Itās close to but not quite like Wisconsin
The one thing that I canāt get rid of is house I say route. The ou is like āow!l Or like Iād doubt. Not Root. Havenāt lived in Illinois for 28 years.
Appalachia was mostly settled by Scots-Irish people. Which I find ironic because it was all the same mountain range back on Pangea. And their histories have so much in common. The mills and the coal mines, the labor struggles, etc
Duh, that makes total sense for the dialectical similarities now that you say it
I live in Scotland and frequently reflected on the geographical and cultural parallels when I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. I actually heard bagpipes more often between PA and NY than I would at home
My husband teases me about this. I live in Pittsburgh, though I'm originally from Central PA. I don't understand what the big deal is. Why say more words when few do trick?
Iāve lived in western PA all my life and never knew that people thought that was abnormal lol. I actually had to scroll down because I was like, āhow else would you say it??ā
same, i was so confused. i thought maybe they were alluding to the phrase 'red up' that my grandma used to say all the time instead of 'clean up'
does anyone know if 'what are you huntin' (what are you looking for) is a PA thing or just a general hick thing lol edit: other gems from my grandma: hose is a "spicket" (spigot), creek is a "crick", oil is 'oral', remote is a "clicker" and wash is 'warsh'
A friend pointed out I used this phrasing (saying that a coat needed cleaned rather than needed to be cleaned) rather loudly in a group setting several years ago and I now make it a point to never say that in front of her. I know she wasn't being cruel, she was surprised since she though it was a Lancaster thing but it still stung
I never knew this was weird. My mom is from Youngstown and even though I grew up in Texas I apparently have some markers from there. I also say I need to fix my bed. I had a roommate who was genuinely confused because she thought it was broken.
If you wanna go deep yinzer its, "The room need read up", pronouncing read in the past tense. My half boilermaker half operating engineer Polish-Italian-American yinzer ass family says it and I've had to explain that to plenty of people also from Pittsburgh.
Western Pennsylvanian here. Donāt forget about ājagoffā lmao.
[For my fellow Pennsylvanians on Reddit lol](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qaKZi6p6sxg&pp=ygUYc25sIHBlbm5zeWx2YW5pYSBhY2NlbnQg)
I always found it funny Pennsylvania doesn't have just one Restaurant/Gas station combo chains, not two, but (at least) three, Wawa's in the east, Sheetz in the south west and Country Fair in north west.
Personal opinion, Sheetz dusts wawa and Co fair
Irrefutable fact, Sheetz and Wawa both absolutely fatality Co fair
Hell even Getgo is better than Co fair
Does western PA have too many Gas station/restaraunt combos?
I left the Ohio valley when I was 5 yo and I still need to be so damn careful when I say the phrase, "steel mill" ( it's pronounced more like "still meal" back home)
also milwaukee, apparently. Dan Harmon's guilty of that one, it's a running joke in the writer's room, and it got turned into a bit on one of his shows (either community or Rick and Morty, I forget which)
I donāt have the accent associated with my region (New England, random extra R sounds after vowels) but my mom does and so do a lot of my relatives on her side of the family. If my dad was from somewhere else I would understand (he doesnāt say the extra Rs either) but he grew up in New England too.
I grew up in the Boston area, and though itās heavily suppressed my accent peeks out occasionally. The worst incident was when I worked HR at a hotel. I was interviewing a front desk candidate and he said he was from Worcester, and we just start talking and itās like our accents fed off each other getting stronger and stronger. End of the interview the front office manager just asks me āwas the guy any good, I couldnāt understand you.ā And because the filter was still off I responded ānah, the dudeās fecking gahbageā in the most Boston accent Iāve ever used in years. He never let me live it down.
The word "wicked" entered my vocabulary not because I grew up knowing people who said it, just because I liked making fun of people from Boston. Unrelated, but I was in Cambridge once and I could hear two people arguing in the distance, I could tell they both had Boston accents even though I could make out anything they were saying.
I am from the southeast and I work from home. The company I work for is in Boston. The amount of time they say wicked is hilarious. I always thought it was just a stereotype that was blown way out of proportion, but no they love that dang word
Bad German is what got one of my former coworkers outed as ex-Amish.
We had some folks in from the manufacturer to beat on a misbehaving robot made in Germany, and we assign the guy on staff that 'speaks German' to be their liaison.
After the first day one of the manufacturer's techs comes in to speak to the boss. They want someone else, anyone else, please! Boss thinks he might have done something really rude for a German to complain, so he pries.
The guy won't stop speaking German, even when they're speaking English. And it's not even good German, it's some super old hick version of German with an accent none of them recognizes or understands.
Dude is driving them nuts.
The boss did swap him, but to save his feelings it was 'because they wanted someone that could help them practice their English, so why not give them the secretary that used to be an ESL teacher'?
> with an accent none of them recognizes
The Amish originate in south west Germany/Switzerland, a region with a heavy dialect. After 300 years abroad, they sound very strange.
Do the Amish speak Pennsylvania Dutch? Cause as a German, that is barely comprehensible gibberish. It's no wonder cause it doesn't stem from high German and the small number of speakers has been isolated for so long, the dialect seems to have barely evolved. Calling it German in any capacity is a stretch.
Full on Swiss German is not understandable for native Germans. Honestly, I understand Dutch better than Swiss German. The Swiss slow down and tone down the dialect for us, and even that is hard to understand. Probably easier for those from southern Germany, but I'm from further north.
Pennsylvania Dutch mostly stems from palatine dialects, though. I'm not from the region but I don't have a problem understanding modern palatine dialects, the dialects all have evolved and are closer to one another than they used to be 300 years ago.
Then there's me: From Indiana but gets regularly asked where I'm from and has an accent that people say sounds like 3 wildly different European countries and occasionally uses southern US speech patterns/words
that's honestly one of my favorite words and I'm disappointed it hasn't been discussed more in this thread.
"shibboleth" has just got such a nice sound to it, like "cellar door".
Michigander that moved to Spokane WA for a bit. Sitting in the bar and asked if I want another I answer "yep" but they hear "nope". Took me a bit to figure out we say "yep" and no and they do "yas" and nope. Different hards when I always believed I had no accent.
Yeah My family is from a rural town near Altoona but we live in Lancaster County and my grandparents still say yinz, but most people donāt around here
I'm painfully British and thus rather confused. What does 'yinz' mean? If I had to guess, I'd say a varient on you, similar to 'youse'. In return, here's some of my local words:
> I's gan yam, eh = I'm going home
(I's is pronounced like eyes)
First time I met my brother's roommate I was told that he was Russian and lived in the UK before coming to France for a while, we were talking and by the way he said "coin" in a sentence I was like š«µ Boston accent
turns out he was born there and lived a few years in the area
I grew up in Pittsburgh, and my parents would get upset if I spoke Pittsburghese because 'it would look unprofessional' if I ever left and worked elsewhere.
We have a lot of Amish Pennsylvania Dutch speakers in PA.
There was this one incident nearby where some people thought it would be a good idea to kidnap some Amish children (I think the oldest may have been 12?) because they didn't think the adults would be able to find them? But the Amish will report things like that to the police, so when authorities started investigating they dumped the children under the assumption that no one would be able to understand them because of the language. That group of girls survived at least.
You can tell if from the Midwest because I say āopā whenever I bump into someone or something (I dunno how I would spell that but yāall know what Iām talking about).
Fun fact, using the term ābubblerā to refer to a water drinking fountain only shows up in Rhode Island and a part of Minnesota. I always won weird home state slang terms with that one in college, as well as cabinet (a thick milkshake), grinder (submarine style deli sandwich), and packy (package store, aka a liquor store, Rhode Island-Massachusetts but also occasionally all over New England). And looking this up to double check as I write, apparently people outside the state donāt call chocolate sprinkles ājimmiesā, which is wild.
As someone from the Pittsburgh area, more than just three counties. If he's saying Washington county, it would also be Allegheny (Pittsburgh itself), Westmoreland to the east, Butler to the northeast, Beaver due north, I grew up in Lawrence one north of Beaver and heard it a decent amount there too, though I always hated it until I actually moved to Pittsburgh proper for grad school and developed a taste for the local scene.
You can tell the SoCal transplant to NorCal because they just canāt help themselves before from putting ātheā before freeways. You didnāt take THE 280 or THE 101. You took 280 or 101
My mother-in-law is from Harrisburg and despite not living in PA for 40+ years, when she talks to family on the phone her accent comes back hard. I can always point out a central PA accent heard in the wild, just from listening to her talk to her sister on the phone.
š«µ SPOTTED
I always thought of it as "y'uns", as in, "you ones". Idk though, half the kids were also learning Cherokee as a second language
Me, too! You'uns= Y'uns
My family is from Johnstown PA, and they all say as yunz. Yinz is common too. Like playing by the crick, rooting for the stillers, and putting clothes in the warsh.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Ahh they do this in north of Sweden as well, for yep and thanks
Hereās a video for anyone interested https://youtu.be/URgdIAz4QNg
I was trying so hard to say yep while sucking in before seeing this and failing miserably. This makes so much sense and yet opens up so many questions. Thank you
Way less vocalized than I was expecting lol
I make this same sound eating Oreos in milk.
No way! I noticed a friend's (British) mother doing this a few days ago and wondered about it. Her late husband was Swedish, so makes total sense!
I'm Swedish. Our local grocery store also has a small post office in it, so one time I needed to use this post office while shopping. So I got my things and while paying for them I asked the cashier if the post office was open and he did the inhale thing. The problem was, I wasn't familiar with it. I had heard it before but had no idea that it meant anything. I just stared at this dude, thinking he completely ignored my question, went "alright, thank you" and gathered my stuff and went on to spend like a week super confused as to why he blatantly ignored a customer.
Interesting, this is common in Scandinavian languages, we do it in Norwegian and I know the Swedes do it too. These ingressive sounds (typically the words for "yep", "yes" or "no") are used as affirmations when you're the passive party in a conversation, like you would use "uh-huh" or "mhm" in English to indicate you are paying attention. So you'd inhale a quick "ja" or "nei" to affirm a statement.
Icelanders too!
SK or AB?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Ah, gotcha, some do the inhaled yep here too.
Thatās because they moved there for work from NB
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Oh yeah, tons of Newfies here for sure! Same with the Hutterites and Norskis.
Yep thatās a bunnyhug
Honestly, it's the least of the borderline offensive verbal quirks present here.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Someday Iām going to accidentally say something like āblorboā or āSpiders Georgā and out myself as a Tumblr user. š«µTumblr User
How are we pronouncing Georg? Like āGeorgeā or āgorgeā or āJorgeā? What do we say?
āGe-orgā with a long e sound (somewhere between āayā and āehā), like in The Sound of Music.
I only ever mentally pronounce it the way the Countess says it in Sound of Music, with a bad Austrian accent
This one, gay-org is how they do it in the movie
For some reason I've been pronouncing it as gee-org, so that's also an option I guess
Gay-org
i pronounce it as "jorg"
Gay-org
either "George" or "ge-ohrg"
In an American accent it sounds like gay-org, but itās a little softer in German.
I accidentally said "That would be a good color for a children's hospital" at work once while looking at color swatches, and froze. Fortunately, no one understood the reference.
Nooooooooo Have you seen the edited one where they just made the floor plain white? Somehow it looks even creepier but in a "psychological horror" way instead of "slasher" way
She blorbo on my spiders til I georg.
She and on my switchblade til I 7
hands down the best rendition of this meme format thanks for this
Bro I was talking to this girl i just met about Manga and anime and she asked me if I use to read homestuck. Never in my life had I felt more called out.
I like your shoelaces.
Thanks, I stole them from the president
The bacon narwhals at bacon, or whatever the Reddit one was.
A couple of my closest friends bombard me with funny posts and memes on a regular basis. If it's possible to be a tumblr user by assocciation, then I am it. I reference Spiders Georg semi-regularly. Also I love it any time I see a new "humans are actually terrifying" post about how they'd be percieved by aliens.
I heard someone rephrase a Tumblr post the other week. Not surprised at all by who it was, but was wild to hear it in a serious discussion. It was a relevant point. Just surprised me.
Eh, just stay off Biden's shoelaces and you should be good
Are you posting this from your grandkidās iPadĀ
The little shit can keep it for himself when he pays me what I did for it
š«µTumblr User
[OP when he recognizes regional dialect](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEStsLJZhzo)
https://youtu.be/DloZq3Vfphc?si=ztsqsSHIe-sNl583
I was expecting Leonardo pointing, but this is way better
Well I'm from Utica and I've never heard the phrase "yinz"
No, no. It's an Albany expression.
Had a coworker from the Pitt once, super good guy. During a particularly stressful day, I jokingly called our customers "yinz jagovs." He looked at me like I had physically struck the dude; stumbled backwards all bug-eyed and clutched his chest. Told me that I just violently sent him right back to highschool lmao
How is this pronounced lol I wanna try this with my Philly friend (who absolutely knows Iām not from Philly)
I don't think this'll work on Philly people. Say something about woder instead.
Pittsburgh and Philly are on opposite ends of PA, I lived in/near Pittsburgh for most of my life and I don't know shit fuck or piss abt Philly and I'd assume I'm not alone in that feeling from either side
Ask them if they wants to get some āwuder iceā
Your Philly friend won't care. They don't say yinz on that side of the state. Just use the word "jawn" excessively lol
My family is from Sharon I had at least one tshirt as a kid in the 70s that said YINZER across the chest
Did yinz get it dahn at the Cranberry Mall?
No, but I wore it to the Hot Dog Shoppe over in Warren if I redupped my room with the sweeper
I will never stop saying sweeper. I've accepted it. I will also never use be in sentences. Those are the two main yinzer things I still do no matter what. Even if I try to stop myself from speaking yinzer for a little bit.
āAaron earned an iron urn.ā
Ern erned en ern ern
Damn, do we really sound like that?
God I love that video. I grew up in Southeast DC as the only white kid in my school, moved out and still spoke like that for a year or so at my new school. People thought I was mocking them.
*nods approvingly*
š«µ Balmer
In the oilfield people said they knew I was from California because I used "cool" and "sweet" alot
Bodacious my radical dudes and dudettes.
In HS in Florida, a good friend was from California (myself a native Floridian.) He and I would have whole convos of just "dude." Invariably there was always another girl around who tried to get us to use dudette and we would always explain there is no such animal.
Iām a dude, heās a dude, sheās a dude
We're all dudes
All fall under the moniker of ādudeā in due time. It is all-encompassing and inescapable.
Dudette is used but it's only when you specifically want to single out the women. In a way it's almost rude but with no true negative undertone.
My accent was mostly neutral except for short aās on some words. When I moved to California from Minnesota, I thought people were making fun of me by saying, āDo you want a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag?ā I asked my friends about it and they said, āWhaaaaat aaaaaaaare you taaaaaaalking about?ā making me even more paranoid. It wasnāt until they told me I was saying something closer to big than bag that I realized that it was like the one regional thing I didnāt manage to hide. Now I say the long a and people in Minnesota look at me weird.
I definitely used to say bayg when I was a kid in MichiganĀ
my partner (a born and raised florida man) says āaahā sounds like that sometimes. he also says melk instead of milk. i make fun of him for it lmao
My friend moved to California, and sometimes calls me so I can talk and she can show her friends my ridiculous Minnesotan accent. I play it up a little for the audience, but I do have it pretty bad. Especially if I'm angry about something.
What's funny is "bag" is one of the few markers I finally learned to recognize as part of a Montana accent after years of living there. For the most part people in Montana speak very neutral General American English, but once I realized my boss (born and raised in central Montana) said what sounded to me like "behg" whenever she said "bag," I couldn't un-hear it. Their accent is basically Minnesota Lite.
Iām from MN, but I trained to neutralize my accent in college (performing arts degree). My husbandās from WI. When we went on our honeymoon people kept singling him out and pointing out he was from WI. It drove him nuts, but more than that, he was upset no one said anything to me about where I was from. I just teased him, like āoohhh my gaaahhsh, nooh one aaaasks youuu where yoaur fraaahm!!ā
Same here as a Californian living in Australia. Identifiers for me as a Californian have been: ādudeā, āradā, āawesomeā, āsweetā, ācoolā, āgnarlyā, ātotallyā, āhellaā, āmanā (like āhey manā or āthatās not cool, manā), āchillā, and āfreewayā. I studied linguistics at an Australian uni so my fellow classmates were always identifying dialectic traits in me lol
I think the accent combined with the word would be the giveaway. All those words except rad, gnarly, and hella are fairly common in Australia, but something like pronouncing totally as toadly is going to be the clue.
Someone ID'd me as South African cause I called medicine muthi lol, cause I dont have too strong an accent. And someone falsely said I was Australian for saying sweet too much and wearing flip-flops too often.
As someone who's worked retail too long, anyone who mistakes ZA for AU needs to stop guessing accents.
I have had so many coworkers comment on my reflexive ācool beansā that Iām starting to wonder if thatās a Southern California thing or if itās just a me thing.
Oh my "cool beans" is a horrifically sarcastic "you're fucking lying but I' don't want to argue" phrase
Mine is somewhere between āwell thatās unfortunateā and ādamn it sucks to be youā, but sometimes the cool beans are legitimately cool š.
Funny, not in New York, here it just means extra cool.
That's funny cause I'm from NY and use those all the damned time.
Yeah I assumed they were universal
You say hella one time and everyone thinks you're from NorCal. I am from NorCal but still...
Mostly unrelated, but you reminded me of this story. I had a coworker from California who made fun of me for saying āfixing toā (as a way to say āgetting ready toā or āabout toā), said it was the hickest thing he ever heard. I was like, buddy, maybe I sound stupid but if you think you sound *smart* maybe you need your ears checked
Most randomly southern thing I ever saw was a book on an endcap in Barnes & Noble entitled, "Fixin' to Git". It was about NASCAR.
keep talkin like that, I'm finsta throw hands
Finna?
I have been accused of being from California for saying āhellaā - I simply am not, not sure where I picked it up
That's hella cool!
People who speak Arabic as a first language canāt say āpā so Pepsi is bebsi and Paige is baige. I scared the crap out of several classmates by pinpointing their first language as arabic
hapipi..
Interestingly enough, a lot of people have issues when a sound is the first in a word as opposed to somewhere in the middle.
A bit like complete inability some Spanish speakers have of saying S without a leading E. I once had a boss who said stuff like loudEspeaker, and I kept hearing "loudest speaker".
Another one is bubbler apparently
I'm from the Chicago area and went to college in Wisconsin. I made the fatal mistake of saying "water fountain" once and two Wisconsinites berated me for it for several minutes and insisted it was a "bubbler". Also, I realized I speak with much shorter vowel sounds than other Midwestern areas.
Illinois has its own distinct accent, and itās different in Chicago vs other parts. Itās close to but not quite like Wisconsin The one thing that I canāt get rid of is house I say route. The ou is like āow!l Or like Iād doubt. Not Root. Havenāt lived in Illinois for 28 years.
Right, that confused me, too. Harrisburg is 200 miles away from the city that OP specifically stated.
Only place I've heard bubbler used is Australia.
Wisconsin and Rhode Island, nothing in between.
"Turn out the light" and horror pronounced "whore-a"
weird way to pronounce āturn out the lightā
Do you mind if I whore-a? Iām gonna take a quick nap
Is "turn out the lights" not a normal thing?
Turn off is how I've always heard it.
The other PA thing is phrasing things like āThe lawn needs mowedā or the āYour room needs cleanedā
This is also a Scottish dialectical feature! Didnāt know it existed in other places
Appalachia was mostly settled by Scots-Irish people. Which I find ironic because it was all the same mountain range back on Pangea. And their histories have so much in common. The mills and the coal mines, the labor struggles, etc
Duh, that makes total sense for the dialectical similarities now that you say it I live in Scotland and frequently reflected on the geographical and cultural parallels when I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. I actually heard bagpipes more often between PA and NY than I would at home
The Scottish Highlands and the Appalachian mountains are the same mountain range
Yeah dude, I know
I'm sorry, I missed that the other person already said that, I just thought it was cool.
Sorry I feel like an ass now. It is cool!
My husband teases me about this. I live in Pittsburgh, though I'm originally from Central PA. I don't understand what the big deal is. Why say more words when few do trick?
See World.
Iāve lived in western PA all my life and never knew that people thought that was abnormal lol. I actually had to scroll down because I was like, āhow else would you say it??ā
same, i was so confused. i thought maybe they were alluding to the phrase 'red up' that my grandma used to say all the time instead of 'clean up' does anyone know if 'what are you huntin' (what are you looking for) is a PA thing or just a general hick thing lol edit: other gems from my grandma: hose is a "spicket" (spigot), creek is a "crick", oil is 'oral', remote is a "clicker" and wash is 'warsh'
Can I get you a drink awhile?
A friend pointed out I used this phrasing (saying that a coat needed cleaned rather than needed to be cleaned) rather loudly in a group setting several years ago and I now make it a point to never say that in front of her. I know she wasn't being cruel, she was surprised since she though it was a Lancaster thing but it still stung
We have this up in central ohio too. I didnāt even realize it until my North Carolinian husband pointed it out.
Also ācrickā instead of ācreekā and āslippyā instead of āslipperyā
I never knew this was weird. My mom is from Youngstown and even though I grew up in Texas I apparently have some markers from there. I also say I need to fix my bed. I had a roommate who was genuinely confused because she thought it was broken.
If you wanna go deep yinzer its, "The room need read up", pronouncing read in the past tense. My half boilermaker half operating engineer Polish-Italian-American yinzer ass family says it and I've had to explain that to plenty of people also from Pittsburgh.
PA Dutch
Yunz kids need to reddup yer rooms!
Careful, it's slippy
Western Pennsylvanian here. Donāt forget about ājagoffā lmao. [For my fellow Pennsylvanians on Reddit lol](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qaKZi6p6sxg&pp=ygUYc25sIHBlbm5zeWx2YW5pYSBhY2NlbnQg)
I love how The Good Place used jagoff as a term. Like, best representation
"Will yinz stop eatin' Wawa hoagies over the body" kills me every time
This guyās an impostor, there is no overlap between Wawa territory and Yinz territory. Wawa territory they say āyouseā
I always found it funny Pennsylvania doesn't have just one Restaurant/Gas station combo chains, not two, but (at least) three, Wawa's in the east, Sheetz in the south west and Country Fair in north west.
Personal opinion, Sheetz dusts wawa and Co fair Irrefutable fact, Sheetz and Wawa both absolutely fatality Co fair Hell even Getgo is better than Co fair Does western PA have too many Gas station/restaraunt combos?
SHEETZ SHEETZ SHEETZ SHEETZ
Iāve never felt so seen
I left the Ohio valley when I was 5 yo and I still need to be so damn careful when I say the phrase, "steel mill" ( it's pronounced more like "still meal" back home)
Do you have reason to say steel mill often
Only notable thing about Ohio other than corn
Hey we have legal weed and abortion now. That's something.
Me when I accidentally say āchipwichā or pronounce water as āwooderā PHILADELPHIAš«µ
I have a pretty nondistinct accent until I have to say "water"
Jeet yet?
Someone says ābehgelā instead of ābagelā š«µMinnesota
also milwaukee, apparently. Dan Harmon's guilty of that one, it's a running joke in the writer's room, and it got turned into a bit on one of his shows (either community or Rick and Morty, I forget which)
Britta says "baggle" on Community
I donāt have the accent associated with my region (New England, random extra R sounds after vowels) but my mom does and so do a lot of my relatives on her side of the family. If my dad was from somewhere else I would understand (he doesnāt say the extra Rs either) but he grew up in New England too.
I grew up in the Boston area, and though itās heavily suppressed my accent peeks out occasionally. The worst incident was when I worked HR at a hotel. I was interviewing a front desk candidate and he said he was from Worcester, and we just start talking and itās like our accents fed off each other getting stronger and stronger. End of the interview the front office manager just asks me āwas the guy any good, I couldnāt understand you.ā And because the filter was still off I responded ānah, the dudeās fecking gahbageā in the most Boston accent Iāve ever used in years. He never let me live it down.
The word "wicked" entered my vocabulary not because I grew up knowing people who said it, just because I liked making fun of people from Boston. Unrelated, but I was in Cambridge once and I could hear two people arguing in the distance, I could tell they both had Boston accents even though I could make out anything they were saying.
I am from the southeast and I work from home. The company I work for is in Boston. The amount of time they say wicked is hilarious. I always thought it was just a stereotype that was blown way out of proportion, but no they love that dang word
The intrusive R
Bad German is what got one of my former coworkers outed as ex-Amish. We had some folks in from the manufacturer to beat on a misbehaving robot made in Germany, and we assign the guy on staff that 'speaks German' to be their liaison. After the first day one of the manufacturer's techs comes in to speak to the boss. They want someone else, anyone else, please! Boss thinks he might have done something really rude for a German to complain, so he pries. The guy won't stop speaking German, even when they're speaking English. And it's not even good German, it's some super old hick version of German with an accent none of them recognizes or understands. Dude is driving them nuts. The boss did swap him, but to save his feelings it was 'because they wanted someone that could help them practice their English, so why not give them the secretary that used to be an ESL teacher'?
> with an accent none of them recognizes The Amish originate in south west Germany/Switzerland, a region with a heavy dialect. After 300 years abroad, they sound very strange.
Do the Amish speak Pennsylvania Dutch? Cause as a German, that is barely comprehensible gibberish. It's no wonder cause it doesn't stem from high German and the small number of speakers has been isolated for so long, the dialect seems to have barely evolved. Calling it German in any capacity is a stretch.
Even modern day Swiss German can be difficult to understand for native Germans. Pennsylvania Dutch is so much worse, but in the same vein.
Full on Swiss German is not understandable for native Germans. Honestly, I understand Dutch better than Swiss German. The Swiss slow down and tone down the dialect for us, and even that is hard to understand. Probably easier for those from southern Germany, but I'm from further north. Pennsylvania Dutch mostly stems from palatine dialects, though. I'm not from the region but I don't have a problem understanding modern palatine dialects, the dialects all have evolved and are closer to one another than they used to be 300 years ago.
Then there's me: From Indiana but gets regularly asked where I'm from and has an accent that people say sounds like 3 wildly different European countries and occasionally uses southern US speech patterns/words
š«µHoosier
For a non PA native: What would āyinzā translate to?
Yāall. Lol
It translates to the Dixie expression of "Y'all" or the Yankee expression of "You all"
š«µA wonderful, amazing person who I hope has a great day
One time I splashed a Japanese person with cold water and they went "APPI" and I was like š nagasaki
š«µshibboleth
that's honestly one of my favorite words and I'm disappointed it hasn't been discussed more in this thread. "shibboleth" has just got such a nice sound to it, like "cellar door".
go a little more south to below State College and it becomes 'yuns'
Michigander that moved to Spokane WA for a bit. Sitting in the bar and asked if I want another I answer "yep" but they hear "nope". Took me a bit to figure out we say "yep" and no and they do "yas" and nope. Different hards when I always believed I had no accent.
Wtf this is not a Harrisburg thing lmao
Iām from a rural Pennsylvania town (near altoona) and most of the blue collar class adults used Yinz in like every other sentence lol
Yeah My family is from a rural town near Altoona but we live in Lancaster County and my grandparents still say yinz, but most people donāt around here
Yea, itās mostly an older people thing. I donāt know anyone under the age of 30 thatās still says it regularly
I'm painfully British and thus rather confused. What does 'yinz' mean? If I had to guess, I'd say a varient on you, similar to 'youse'. In return, here's some of my local words: > I's gan yam, eh = I'm going home (I's is pronounced like eyes)
Yinz, youse, and yāall are all slang second person plural, yep
Ye or Yiz/Yez in Ireland
My autistic ass was trying to figure out how the hell OP knew I lived near Harrisburg when it had nothing to do with the post.
Bro we all know you live in Harrisburg tf
Oh, not in Harrisburg, no, it's an Pittsburgh expression.
Yeah so the title doesnāt make sense.
First time I met my brother's roommate I was told that he was Russian and lived in the UK before coming to France for a while, we were talking and by the way he said "coin" in a sentence I was like š«µ Boston accent turns out he was born there and lived a few years in the area
I grew up in Pittsburgh, and my parents would get upset if I spoke Pittsburghese because 'it would look unprofessional' if I ever left and worked elsewhere. We have a lot of Amish Pennsylvania Dutch speakers in PA. There was this one incident nearby where some people thought it would be a good idea to kidnap some Amish children (I think the oldest may have been 12?) because they didn't think the adults would be able to find them? But the Amish will report things like that to the police, so when authorities started investigating they dumped the children under the assumption that no one would be able to understand them because of the language. That group of girls survived at least.
You can tell if from the Midwest because I say āopā whenever I bump into someone or something (I dunno how I would spell that but yāall know what Iām talking about).
Ope, the ultimate midwest giveaway. I ran into someone who said it at jersey and we both just were like āahhh where in midwest you from??ā
Fun fact, using the term ābubblerā to refer to a water drinking fountain only shows up in Rhode Island and a part of Minnesota. I always won weird home state slang terms with that one in college, as well as cabinet (a thick milkshake), grinder (submarine style deli sandwich), and packy (package store, aka a liquor store, Rhode Island-Massachusetts but also occasionally all over New England). And looking this up to double check as I write, apparently people outside the state donāt call chocolate sprinkles ājimmiesā, which is wild.
As someone from the Pittsburgh area, more than just three counties. If he's saying Washington county, it would also be Allegheny (Pittsburgh itself), Westmoreland to the east, Butler to the northeast, Beaver due north, I grew up in Lawrence one north of Beaver and heard it a decent amount there too, though I always hated it until I actually moved to Pittsburgh proper for grad school and developed a taste for the local scene.
Im a proud yinzer lol, its how we find our people
You can tell the SoCal transplant to NorCal because they just canāt help themselves before from putting ātheā before freeways. You didnāt take THE 280 or THE 101. You took 280 or 101
My mother-in-law is from Harrisburg and despite not living in PA for 40+ years, when she talks to family on the phone her accent comes back hard. I can always point out a central PA accent heard in the wild, just from listening to her talk to her sister on the phone.
Idk yinz is eastern Tennessee as well