Adapt. Improvise, in order to overcome. Those are wise words I learned in military boot camp. First year of service was deployed to Japan. Interesting culture, met Japanese that studied in universities in the USA. A whole new level. Was stationed in several States in the Union, learned the local expressions, a quick way to “smooth in” into the culture. Lots of fun. Especially, for someone that immigrated to the USA from South America 5 years earlier. Pidgin English in Hawaii, Southern California “dude” languages, Southern drawl from Tennessee, Alabama, Bostonian accent, big mix. Love interacting with people, from all over the USA, and the world. Down here in Florida, I use “flip flops” for my sandals, most of the time, while enjoying an ice cold Coke, in hot sunny weather, while watching….falling snow….on tv…..in Ohio😎 Thanks for your latest, Sparky! Be well. Post Tenebras Lux.
Hello Feli, I don't know if you knew this already, but Cincinnati, your adopted city, is named after the Ancient Roman politician, Cincinnatus, who himself acquired that cognomen by dint of his curly hair, since that's what it means in Latin. Furthermore, when you factor in the original Latin pronunciation which uses neither the "soft c" (so like "s") - nor the Italianate "ch" - but the "hard c" in both cases - and is thus rendered as kin-kin-AH-toos. So from that, you can easily see where the English word "kink" or "kinky" comes from😏 Again, you probably knew that but as someone interested in linguistics, thought i d write in, just in case you didn't🙂
I don’t call it that anymore because no one ever understood me. But I used to call pop tonic. I grew up in Massachusetts but left in the 70’s when I went into the army. Since then I have lived in several parts of the country (Florida, California, Texas, Kentucky and Ohio) so my accent and what I call things has evolved. Tonic changed pretty quick because people thought I was talking about tonic water that is used for mixed drinks. I switched to pop, soda or saying what type I wanted to drink. Less confusion that way.
I am sure there is one somewhere. I remember in high school, kids at school would have guns in their gun racks in their trucks. I can remember seeing people driving with them around the bigger cities and small towns. That is back before you had lunatics shooting up schools, malls, concerts, parks and such. @@andreimircea2254
The explanation I always understood for wife-beater was from watching Cops on TV. Dude comes home after a long day at work, takes of their shirt, cracks a few beers, wife makes tuna casserole, and dude loses his shit and starts swinging then ends up in cuffs outside his trailer wearing his jeans/shorts/sweats and his tank top under shirt, aka wife-beater.
As a linguist I love this video in its entirety, but I particularly I love the moment at 21:20 where Geoff doesn't even perceive the difference between the sounds! That's such an elegant example of categorical perception! Basically the idea is that there are no hard boundaries between sounds - they're like colors, they're on a gradient, so you can't draw any clear demarking point. So, our brains/ears have evolved to perceive sounds that are similar as the same sound. The kicker is that not every language has the same inventory, and what we see here is exactly as you described it, evidence an active vowel merger in American English, where Alex still has the different vowels in cot and caught, and so perceives them as different sounds, whereas for Geoff the sounds have merged so they perceive them as the same thing. Also, where I'm from in Texas, we basically don't have them, which is why I think the "traffic circle" one shows up there because that's what they're called in driver's ed which is probably the last time many Texans saw one. In person most people I know in Central Texas actually call them roundabouts or don't know what to call them at all. I've definitely heard Beer Barn though - I remember there was one on Richmond in Houston when I was growing up. Probably still there! And my father was from New Orleans, so I grew up hearing "the devil's beating his wife" whenever it rained while the sun was shining. It's a folksy saying, and I was never sure whether it was just supposed to be contrasting the rain/storm (the devil, representing bad) with the sun (his wife, representing good), or whether the rain was supposed to be the tears of the devil's wife and the devil was the sun because it was hot? Beats me, I'm sure there may be some research into it but I'm not familiar with it.
Some of these differences hold a lexical distinction for me. Example: /'pıka:n/ is the nut but /'pikæ:n/ is its flavor, hence /'pikæ:n pai/ vs. /'but(^h)ər pıka:n/. Same thing for caramel vs carmel, only in this case the latter is the flavor while the formal is the substance. Additionally I've only ever called them athletic shoes
I'm from new york city originally and I moved to texas and I found that the people here born and raised have a hard time distinguishing between pin, pen, and pan sounds. They run e/i/a sound together so much that it's sounds like 2 syllables. Pee'-an, so the don't hear the diff.
As a New York transplant to Texas you can hear my diff between cot and caught. I still pronounce caught like cawt (you hear the w sound for sure and the aw like a cat's paw). Cot sounds like not.
Growing up in Nashua, NH. we used the word "tonic" as a generic term for soft drinks. If you wanted a particular type, you asked for a Coke, a Pepsi, a Ginger Ale, etc. "Caramel" (3 syllables) is a sweet, while "Caramel" (2 syllables) is a place. A Semi truck is called that because it pulls a semi-trailer. All rubber soled footwear are "Sneakers"; I first heard them referred to as "Tennis Shoes" in Marine Corps bootcamp. They can also be called Deck Shoes for those fortunate enough to afford a yacht. "You" is either singular or plural, depending. I occasionally use "You Guys", and very occasionally "Y'all" (pronounced "yawl"). I say "Gesundheit" when someone sneezes. A "water bubbler" I call a scuttlebut (a Navy and Marine term for a ship's drinking water, kept in a barrel called a scuttle (Fun Facts to know and tell!). "Lightning Bugs" and "Fireflies" are one and the same here (getting rare, I'm not sure why. BTW, "Firefly" was a fantastic TV series, but only lasted one season. Check it out!!) 'Bye now!"
@@stevetalkstoomuch I wore "boat shoes" in high school eastern Nebraska. No socks. Only pull out socks if it is around freezing or less outside. "Tonic" is something you got that didn't work, usually with some claimed medicinal value, sold by fraudsters from the back of their van. Could also have been added to alcoholic drinks to make them fizzy, but that was always "tonic water". This is all interesting. Ben does have a charm. Feli might want to cover accents before they all homogenize away due to relocation and mass marketing.
Re: firefly’s getter rarer. Do you think all those crazy bugs (stink bugs and lantern flies) that are coming in from China (mostly) are maybe eating the fireflies?
I'm coastal MA Cape Cod and we say boat shoes too for those or sneakers for others. Also we say bubbler and we also say Carriage for the cart at the grocery (S NOT SH) store. Actually we usually call the store the 'market' and depending on where in MA you may say the MAH-kit ;)@@stevetalkstoomuch
In Chicago we call them gym shoes because most school districts around here make you change into them for gym class, or physical education. For example, it's against district policy to wear sandals to gym class, so you have to change into your tennis shoes, hence "gym shoes"
Coming from Feli‘s hometown, we were all trained in changing footwear several times in school. You would arrive in one pair of shoes, then change into „house shoes“ (slippers) when entering classrooms, then change again into „gym shoes“ for P.Ed. and… just in case it’s raining or wet, have a pair of rubber boots, in case the teachers want us to go outside to play in the mud. Yes, elementary school in Munich was fun.
I moved to Nashville area Tn when I retired n 2017 n my 1st time at a restaurant I wanted to use the restroom ….and I asked the waitress “where is the washroom”….she had a puzzled look and asked me what I wanted to wash…
Yes, I remember that too. I questioned someone, perhaps our gym teacher, they said it had to do with some of the dress shoes scuffing up the gym floor. So like someone here said already, gym class = gym shoes.
Loved this. My dad grew up in Ann Arbor, MI and moved to CA in the late 50s to do graduate work. He called tennis shoes ‘gym shoes’. I had a roommate in college who was originally from Indiana where drive through liquor stores were popular, but I never saw one in CA in my whole life. To me a ‘bubbler’ is British or Australian (lived in AZ for a year in grade school). Never saw lightening bugs (interchangeable with firefly) in CA, but saw them a lot in rural western PA where I moved to in the late 90s. They live where it is humid in the summer, and it is anything but humid in my part of CA growing up.
It's great to see you with Ben, especially for this type of video and cool having invited Alex and Jeff of AGDW to collaborate for this type of video as well.
Very interesting. I'm from New jersey. (South Jersey) We have both Roteries and Traffic Circles. Rotaries' are fairly new. They are smaller than Circles. ( we normally drop Traffic). Also I have one for you Route? I use both pronunciations 1) Root 2) Rout. Example Take root Y to rout z.
I remember sometimes hearing Gesundheit from cartoons. I knew overtime that it was a foreign word. Then in my first German class in Junior High, I started hearing Thea her say that when any member of the class sneezed - a fun clarification.
I am from Michigan. So of the ones I can recall off the top of my head: POP. Tennis Shoes. “ SIRUP”. Shopping Cart. You Guys. I watched the whole video and pretty much stay within the boundaries of my home state on which form of the word I use. On a slightly different take , most of Michigan is standard upper Midwest pronunciations. However when you get to the WESTERN half of the Upper Peninsula you start to run into what is called the Yooper accent. Yooper is a colloquial way to refer to the U. P. ( Upper Peninsula) Hard to describe the Yooper accent. You just know it when you hear it. I think it might come partially from the large amount of people that have Finnish and Cornish ancestry. Also it has a resemblance to a Canadian accent . Great video. I enjoyed it.
I absolutely LIVE for this type of content! So entertaining, so fun! I’m from North Carolina, and while I grew up saying things a certain way, somehow as I got older, there was a change. Thank you for your super fun and well produced content 🤟
I'm born and raised in San Francisco and I am still living there. The following list is how I say each things that are covered in this video according to how I was taught in school and grew up speaking that way: Tennis Shoes Soda Caramel as "carra-mell" Pajamas as "pa-jommas" You guys or you all (y'all is also sometimes used) Crayons as "cray-ons" Pecan as "PEE-cawn" despite being born/raised/living in the red zone (e.g. Pecan Pralines as "PEE-cawn PRALL-leens") Syrup as "sir-rup" I had to run but will view the rest of this video later when I can. Cheers! :)
I really enjoyed this episode, Feli, as I do all of your vlogs. I've always have been interested in the different words people in the U.S. use to say the same thing. BTW, if you want to hear people from Philadelphia talk and use the word "yous" watch the first "Rocky" movie. And being born and raised in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, area I can attest that most of us don't say "yinz." We say "yunze." This colloquial word extends into the little piece of West Virginia that sticks up between Pennsylvania and Ohio and a little ways south into the part of West Virginia around Morgantown along Interstate 79. Keep up the great work with your TH-cam channel . I started watching you after I visited Mainz, Germany for two weeks in 2015 and had the best time. The people were so friendly and helpful to this non-German speaker. Take care.
Mostly the big truck is called a tractor trailer or an 18-wheeler named after the number of wheels. Both become a semi when they attach a second trailer in the back. So you have the tractor in the front pulling along two boxed shape trailers...
Something to think about the farm tractor came before the "semi tractor" and they hauled wagons "trailers" hence the phrase semi truck and trailer when combined. For me a truck has a bed to haul things and the original "semi tractor" did not have a sleeper
Very enjoyable video. One of your best. I was raised in Philly, and now live in NE PA and I say "caramel" but when I say it fast, the second "a" is elided so it comes out "carmel". Also, the "yo" is elided in "crayon" so, try as I may, it comes out "cran" (and I live 5 miles from Crayola’s headquarters!) I also say "seerup". For those who think "traffic circle" is a weird way to say "roundabout", I guess you’ve never been to New York City (Columbus Circle), Philly (Logan Circle) or Washington, D.C. (DuPont Circle) or anywhere in Jersey, where every intersection seems to be a circle. And it’s definitely "soda" in Philly, "I went to the Iggles game and ate a hoagie, cheesesteak wit’, two Tastycakes and a soda." (Philadelphians have hearty appetites). If someone sneezes we say, "yo, could ya turn your ugly face away from me when you do that!"
In New Mexico (that's in the US), we used to call these drive-thru liquors or drive-up liquors. But all have been outlawed in the state since the 90's, so a lot of people don't even know the term. Most that I have seen are like the example in your video - a drive-thru window, but at a liquor store. I have seen some in Texas that were truly drive-THRU. Imagine a warehouse style building with a garage door at the front and back, and you drive through the building to buy your beer. You don't drive up and down the isles (at least not in the ones I’ve seen), but in a line that goes through the building . Most of the "barn" names you list seemed to be centered in Texas, and I think this is why. I think the reason for these barns is that there are a lot of “dry” counties in Texas, so the liquor stores in “wet” counties have to stock so much more to fulfill the demand. You can tell where some of the “dry” county borders are, because that’s where a bunch of liquor stores and beer barns are located.
Oh Feli, there are regions in Germany where Glühwürmchen are more than common. For example in Odenwald, on warm early summer nights, they are abundant, and yes, I did that „catch them in a jar“ activity when I was younger. ;)
After three years in Germany in the US Army, I came home and my mother said, I sound like I was from Tennessee, because most of the guy I was with were from the South. Thank you Feli, love your reports
Interesting. @33:59 if you pause this, these 2 are so in sync with one another, they close their eyes at the same time! lol Great content Feli. Great to see Ben again. Instead of blowing up this topic with all the different pronunciations for each, I will just address the 1 you put on the tag line. When I was a kid(many decades ago) being as far West as I am, (not Cali)we would say Pop. Coke, pepsi, sprite, etc. were definitely referenced specifically by name. But the beverages in general were pop. I had east coast relatives move out here for awhile and 1 of my cousins and I actually did get in a bit of a cultural debate/argument over this topic. She called them Sodas. Which at the time, I had never heard used before. Now, ironically, I don't call them pop, I call them sodas. I have since the kid days heard all the terms used here. Except the very last. And your 2 guests today, amplified what I was saying about how your videos educate so many, even Americans. From 1 region to another, if you never leave home, you may never know differently. My vocabulary also includes a lot of words from other nations depending on who I am speaking too and the topic at hand. So long, pardners.
I was born in a suburb of Chicago, but right now I live in Florida. I say gym shoes, but say some other things the Floridian way I must have picked it up from my family who also born in Chicago area also.
In Hungary, we also use the term "The Devil is beating his wife" when the sun is shining and raining at the same time ( az ördög veri a feleségét) and we also have the same name for the tank top - wifebeater - (asszonyverő). Never would have thought about a connection like this. 😅
Actually, wife beater comes from the 1951 Marlon Brando film, "A Streetcar Named Desire." Brando's character in the film wears one and beats his wife. The film was famous in America and in Europe.
I love your videos! I was wondering if you did a video where you talk about the differences between Munich and Berlin. Just thinking about how in the US, people sometimes "east coast v west coast". LA vs NYC, that kind of thing..I wondered if there was that kind of friendly competition between Munich/Berlin or any other cities in Germany?
Canadian here -Runners, although other terms are used, especially if they are specialty shoes, but runners is the overall name. Like all Top hats are hats, but not all hats are top hats. - Pop -mostly three syllable for caramel, but you hear syllables sometimes -pyjamas gets both pronunciations, but PJs and jammies get used a lot -You, you guys get used a lot, you do hear Y’all sometimes, but mostly if it’s transplanted Americans or people they know. -Crayon two syllables, mostly cray-on. -Pecan- both pee can or puh khan -Sir-up, mostly -When someone sneezes, you never know, lots of possibilities -water fountain, drinking fountain or just fountain, but you don’t see them much anymore overall -cot/caught, if there’s a difference, it’s subtle, but context helps - often: usually silent t or barely there -lawyer- loy-yer -Semi= sem-me, or sem-eye -mostly traffic circle -grocery, often two syllables with a soft c, sometimes three syllables, or 2 1/2 -cart or shopping cart -Firefly -no liquor store drive thus around here, so nothing. -raining while the sun is shining? No word for it.
I love this video! I recently spent a week traveling with my parents and I am noticing things they say now that I remember them saying when I was a kid but I forgot about when I moved out. We are from Maryland and we say soda, carra-mel, I switch between y'all and you guys, sneakers, pa-jamm-ahs, cray-yon, seer-up. My parents refer to an ATM as a "Money Mover" and I forgot about that until this past week!
I absolutely loved this video, it had me laughing the whole time. I live in ND and have heard most of the words you guys covered in the video. There are alot of Germans in the state and they all stay stuff differently. So in up north we call it a pop. I was told that it was a pop, because when you open a can, it makes a popping noise. I don't know if that is true or not that's just what I've been told. We also call a semi-truck, a tractor trailer, eighteen wheeler, or a big rig. Anyways I really enjoyed the video, keep up the good work.
I was born in California and lived till the end of high school. The maps were very accurate about the words that I used and the way I pronounced them. Then I moved to Arkansas and realize that I have changed over time. I now say and pronounce these words according to the maps for my current area. Very interesting video. Thanks
The quavers or 8th notes, 16th notes, and 32nd notes have some kind of hemi, demi, or semi in some kind of order. A parallel kind of thing is also kind of like the syllables for the accentuation of the Classical Greek words, oxytone (last syllable for the acute accent), paroxytone (second to last syllable), and proparoxytone (third to last syllable). The circumflex accent is called penult (last syllable) and antepenult (second to last syllable).
Being from western Pennsylvania was surprised you mentioned yinzers there is a whole dialect around the Pittsburgh area btw I have heard the parts of the state outside Pittsburgh and Philly called pennsyltucky for what that's worth
New Englander here - fireflies/lightning bugs are plenty abundant, but probably not in more urban areas like Rhode Island. Fun fact - these bugs emit different colors depending on the species (and therefore region). Where I am, they're somewhat bluish.
Generally, you will not see fireflies or lightning bugs in urban areas. They are mostly in more rural areas whether they be suburbs around the city or out in the country. The farther you move into the country, the more lightning bugs you will find...
Up in the area around Boston they call soda "Tonic." The proper use of "y'all" refers to one or two people and three or more is "all y'all." For the pecan, the pronunciation for the nut is pick-AHN and the pot kept under the bed when you have an outhouse is a pee can. The bubbler was a 5 gallon jug upside down and bubbles when the water is released as you filled your cup, while a drinking or water fountain was the unit mounted on the wall that you leaned over and drank directly from it.
I know you're focusing on the US, but here's a few examples from Vancouver BC 🇨🇦 Syrup is Sir-up, You guys, Runners or Sneakers is most common. Bless You, Crayons is Krey-Awns. For Pecan I've used and heard/both pee-Kahn and pick-AHN. Water Fountain, Semi/Semitruck, roundabout. We definitely say POP. Occasionally you might hear someone say soda. However it makes (no sense) to use Coke as an umbrella term for all POP beverages. Unless you don't care what someone gives you. Are you a sociopath? 😅 Sprite is completely different from Coke. Fun video
I'm from Victoria, BC, Canada, and I would say "Running Shoes", "Carra-mel", usually "Pee-can" (altho I flip-flop on this one), "Sir-up", "Water Fountain" or "Drinking Fountain", usually "Ofen" (no pronounced T), "Big Rig", "Groh-shery", "Shopping Cart". I've never seen fireflies in real life!
As I mentioned in your preview post earlier, I'm originally from Columbus, where we drink pop. However, my dad was from upstate New York and, as a result, he made some important contributions to my personal dialect. For example, "youse" (with a silent "e") is indeed the plural of "you" in everyday small-group discussion. (When speaking publicly, however, I say "you".) Another example is the fact that I pronounce "route" as it's spelled (emphasizing the "out") instead of as "root". Ironically, however, I pronounce "roof" as spelled (emphasizing the "double 'O'") instead of as "ruff" (which is how I pronounce "rough"). And, again perhaps reflecting the Northeastern influence, I pronounce "cot" and "caught" the same way (with the "O" sound). I also pronounce "fought" and "fraught" that same way (with the "O" sound). At the same time, over the years, I've noticed an increasing Canadian influence in my personal dialect as well. There are at least three reasons for this. First, at one point some ancestors on Dad's side of the family were French Canadian. Apparently, they were in Canada long enough that at least traces of the accent have made it into my DNA. (It's noticable enough that, for decades, people have asked me if I'm from Canada.) Secondly, I've lived in Florida twice over the years. And, historically, Florida has had a sizable Canadian population whether year-round or snowbirds. Thirdly, several years ago, I came across some research which indicates that people born on the Eastside of Columbus from and after 1965 have developed what's called the Canadian Shift, which refers to a definite "shift" (thus the name) to a marked Canadian accent. The indication is that, if the trend continues, people in central Ohio will sound more as though they're from Canada than from the Middle West. (Specifically, I am from the Far East Side and was born in the late '70's.) Incidentally, but for the results of the War of 1812-14, Ohio would be one of the largest provinces in Canada today. The history, at least as taught here in the United States, is that the United States won that war. (There are reasons to doubt that claim which would be for another video.) If, though, that's the case, in certain respects Ohio lost that war. At the same time, however, the results of the War of 1812-14 ensured that Ohio was able to make important contributions to victory in the War of the Southern Rebellion (1861-65). Had the earlier conflict ended differently, that would have been a fourth reason for my accent. As to the "traffic circle/roundabout" debate, I come down four square on the "traffic circle" side. However, I use the term derogatorily as I've never liked those things. If transportation authorities seriously want to improve the flow of traffic through busy intersections, they should build interchanges with ramps (colloquially referred to a overpasses). As one final example, I pronounce "grocery" and "groceries" as they're spelled. On the other hand, as I get older I've developed a tendency to refer to the grocery store as a "supermarket", although when referring to the store by name I refer to "Kroger's" due to being from Ohio and the fact that the company actually owns the store where I do most of my shopping where I currently live, albeit the company itself uses a different name. While I'm on the topic, I refer to corner stores or convenient stores as "bodegas", although that again may reflect the New York influence.
Feli, I'm in northern IL near WI, and I give them the name based on what their use is, such as hiking, basketball, track, gym, etc. The only brand name I use is Skechers. I live in the pop zone; however in recent decades I'm hearing more and more often the term soda being used here. . . . and then, there's the CA city of Carmel pronounced car-MEL. I noticed the Miami area is a sort of pink. Is that due to the strong Spanish influence? Buggy is the British term (I thought).
wait, having lived in NYC for 9 years as a german who loves carbonated water i was taught to order soda as in soda water which does not corroborate with your map, now i am confused. but i always got carbonated water, so i guess it was alright. fun fact, you guys also call carbonated water 'Seltzer' which is a town in Germany that produces - you guessed it - carbonated water :-). being an anglophile wanting to know more about how accents develop I have GOT to get this book! thanks so much, Feli, this was fun and also educating!
I grew up in Washington state, as an adult I live(d) in Utah and Wyoming. It’s pretty accurate to the maps you showed. I call it soda, sneakers for the lower profile shoes and high tops for the taller shoes. Vans get their own category! I have caught myself saying y’all more as an adult mostly because a lot my husband’s family live in the south! Buggy was hilarious to me when my daughter dated and married a southern gentleman! They call beanies (the hats we wear in winter) toboggans which is wild because a toboggan is a sled to me! Great video! It was entertaining and fun to learn about!
I'm a Canadian who now lives in Germany. My English speech preferences come from the GTA (the Greater Toronto Area). - Pop - Cara-mel - Pa-jam-as - You (or you guys) (but I also have started texting "y'all" for "ihr" since moving to Germany) - Cray-on - Pee-can - Runners/running shoes - Sir-up - Bless you/Gesundheit (I didn't even know the latter was a German word until I moved here. As it's somewhat common among Southern Ontario). - Water fountain - Cot and caught sound the same - I do pronounce the 'T' in often - Loy-er - A transport truck or just 'transport' - A round-about - Grow-shree - Cart/grocery cart/shopping cart - Firefly - No term I am aware of for drive-thru liquor stores - A sunshower - And bonus: muscle shirt
Feli: This was a tremendously interesting video! The different regions pronouncing English words differently is an everyday occurence and usually causes little more than a few seconds of clarification at the worst. But, go to England (or Ireland, etc.) and the differences occur frequently and often cost money. Like when phoning to reserve a Ferry spot costs like £200 more than expected. This was due to saying our vehicle was a "van" but the Brits call it a "people carrier". A people carrier is short (not tall), like an ordinary vehicle; vans are tall to carry workman supplies, etc.
Danke sehr, Feli, this has been truly interesting, as always. In fact, the expression "the devil's beating his wife" is found in Hungarian, too (it's pretty common, actually). Let me just note one thing, as a linguist: the term "accent" refers to the way you pronounce words (like in the "cot-cought" case). Choosing between different vocab items (like "soda" vs. "coke") is not a matter of accent. Thanks! :)
I found this interesting and plan to order the book. I'm originally from Western Michigan but have lived in the Cincinnati area since the 1970's I still sometimes get accused of having a Michigan accent. There's a couple word usages I find unique to Cincinnati. First, the use of "please" instead of "what" or "pardon me". I believe this might have its roots from the German use of the word "bitte" brought over by early German settlers to Cincinnati. Second, is the use of the word "mango" for "green peppers". I know mango as a somewhat tropical sweet fruit with a big pit. Not sure how the Cincinnati mango came about. Of course, when I first moved to Cincinnati years ago, I was totally confused in a chili restaurant when I didn't know what a 3/4/5 way was. They were also confused at me,
I never really noticed until watching this video, but for the pajamas question I use both depending on the sentence and in particular the age of who owns the pajamas. If its an adult, the a as in father; for a child they are a as in jam.
Great video does show how even though in the US we are speaking English, it can be so different. I especially like that you brought on two Americans now living in Berlin (which is where i lived from 86-89)
Canadian from Manitoba: Pop / Simi / Often with a T / Sir-Rup double R / Gym Shoes / Pee - Kahn / Water Fountain / Cot Caught same / Fire Flies / Sun Shower / Shopping Cart / Gro-Shury / Roundabout / Carmel / You Guys / Pa jam mas / No Drive-Thru liquor / Krey Awns - fun video!
22:33 Radio and movies have a great deal to do with the pronunciation. In America, the "preferred"(by the city-fied and wealthy class)accent is the Mid Atlantic, and in the British it's the "recieved" one. Think Katherine Hepburn and Basil Rathbone back in the 40s and 50s.
I'm English, I think I mostly speak RP, although I've spent my whole life in Oxfordshire so I think my accent must be somewhat influenced by that. One thing that comes to mind is that I pronounce either as "eether" and my mum pronounces it as "iyther". 4:31 I would say fizzy drink or soft drink. 6:49 Caramel - so three syllables, but with the last one less stressed than they said it. 7:38 With a long "are" sound. So like father to go with the map's example. 11:08 Originally I think I would have just said "you", but thanks to influence from the internet I think I would say "you guys" most often now, and sometimes even "you all" or "y'all". I don't say "yous", I would associate that as Irish, although I know people around the world say it. 14:18 Just how it's spelt: cray-on. 15:12 I'm not really very familiar with this word, so I don't know. Maybe just however I heard it most recently. 15:55 When I first heard this question I thought it meant plimsolls, but I realise it meant trainers. 17:59 I didn't hear anybody say it, but I'm pretty sure I say what the map wrote as "sih-rup" 18:49 I probably wouldn't say anything, sorry. But if I said anything it would be bless you. 19:38 Probably drinking fountain. 20:41 Definitely different, and I think even more different than the people who said it differently on here. 23:00 No, I don't pronounce the T. 23:30 Loy-u. 23:57 A really massive lorry... I guess? I've never really seen anything like that. It looks huge. 24:34 Sem"ee", like what Ben said some people in Kentucky say. 24:57 Definitely roundabout. 25:48 With an S sound. 26:16 Trolly. 26:57 Firefly. 28:13 No word. 30:26 A rainbow? I mean, it's the kind of weather that makes a rainbow likely. 31:25 I'm pretty sure he's describing a vest, although they're not just for men. Children especially wear them a lot.
I grew up in New Jersey where we had "Traffic Circles". These were very large at the intersection of sometimes 5 highways coming together, and sometimes it took 30 minutes or more to get thru. The small roundabouts at intersections to me are called roundabouts, but I never saw any till I moved away from New Jersey.
No Mary, marry, merry pronunciation? That is my favorite. I say them all the same. I can hear the difference when people pronounce them differently, but have difficulty reproducing the different pronunciations
There is an entire song by the band. Yes, called Roundabout, it's fairly popular in the rock and roll group of people, maybe not the young kids, but anyone older than 30 years old knows this song and can sing it.
Speaking of progressive rock music, was Jon Anderson of Yes singing about a traffic circle? I know that Annie Haslam of the band Renaissance sang "...even the roundabout's still turning round" on "Trip to the Fair," meaning a carousel.
Hey, shopping cart is what you showed in the picture, a trolley or a buggy is any kind of push along basket that you can push things in and it has four wheels, so generally not a grocery cart, even a child's wagon, some people would call a. Trolley... Buggies are generally enclosed so if it rains the things inside do not get wet.
Originally from the Pittsburgh area, but grew up all over as dad was in the Air Force. Pop, tennis shoes, peekahn, you guys (not yinz like my cousins), crayawn, pajamas, carmel,offen, lover, roundabout, grosseree, shopping cart, lightning bug, drive-thru
Hi Feli, New Jersey here. For me, it's Sneakers, soda, pajamas or PJs, God bless you or Bless you, and once in a while Gesundheit, Cot, and Caught was interesting because Cot is a small portable bed but was not mentioned as such. That was fun to listen to...
I am from Western NC .... a sweetened carbonated beverage is a soft drink, sometimes a coke, and my grandparents would have referred to them as a dope, or RC cola..... A large truck with a detachable trailer meant to move goods is a transfer truck, or occasionally a tractor-trailer.... a smaller version without the detachable trailer but a box shaped cargo area.... is a straight truck.
In the textile producing areas of Virginia and North Carolina. soft drinks were called dopes. Workers in the cotton mills would buy them from dope wagons, which also dispensed snacks and were wheeled through the plants so the workers did not have to leave their machines.
Growing up in Detroit in the 60's, we had soda, pop, and soda pop - I used all three. Tennis Shoes were the canvas tops with rubber soles. We never had the quality of Adidas nor Nike. Since then I've never settled on any one term. I use of-en, my wife (Iowa) is of-Ten - hitting the T fairly hard Never say car-a-mel, it's either car-mel or care-mel. Go figger. Water or Drinking fountain -- either or. Both fireflies and lightning bugs, depending on mood.
I see for pecan peak-in sometimes but it depends on whether it's like pie or pralines and praline I say two different ways, depending on whether is first, depending on the order of the word, whether it's pecan pralines or praline pecans i'm from Maryland so any word can have 10 million different ways of saying it because we are literally smacked up in the middle of every state because everybody from all over the country comes here because we have DC, and we have more military from all over the country than any other state in the country. We are building new bases when the rest of the country is shutting down military basis, we are the epicenter of military from across the country and around the world people from all over the world come to DC and DC is part of Maryland. The closest thing is New York and they're coming here. We don't come there as much more of them are coming here and then we have a unique way of saying water would-er and the uniquely Maryland specifically Baltimore hon and you have to kinda have a squeak before the N I don't even know how to phonetically do it watch John Walters like crybaby and hairspray. Good morning Baltimore we are unique probably some of West Virginia in there because my grandmother was from West Virginia and she sounded so classic Baltimore she was in school when she moved to Baltimore, but she had more Baltimore than my mom who was born and raised and lived there her whole life, I'm more straight no accent and my accent changes as a Maryland native from the suburbs. Sometimes I'll sound like I'm from anywhere in the world. It's like that disorder where your accent changes only it's more the fact that when I was growing up I was around all of that being Maryland and a very high way type place in the middle of everything so we had people from all over the world because of the bases military
This was a fun one. I grew up in western Washington State, so west coast roughly 20 years. I have spent about 36 years in the Gulf South....Louisiana and, for 6 years, Alabama. So I have lived two very different regional dialects. You example of pronunciation differences "caught" my attention, especially as the West Coast guy could not hear a difference between "cot" and "caught." I have changed my speech a bit over time, but yeah; we West Coasters tend toward broad. Open vowels. Two more examples of them, which you did not include are the words "our" and "roof." "Our can be said as identical either to "hour" or "are." West Coasters say the latter. "Roof" we tend(ed) to pronounce like the more dull "oo" in "foot," whereas many other regions, I suspect most of them, pronounce the "oo" like "oo" in "food," so more closed. Finally, we pronounce "route" like "ow" in "out." Others say it like "root."
Sneakers for me are a more general category where running shoe is a sneaker with rounded tread on the front and back for running and a tennis(or gym) shoe is a flat bottom sneaker for tennis (or basketball).
The map says my area (Middle Tennessee) is a coke for everything zone, but I have lived here all my life and have mostly only ever heard older people say that. I think soft drink is way more common now. As for shoes, when I was a kid in the 80s, we used “tennis shoes” a lot, but that’s morphed into more of sneakers or, if you are specifically wanting to wear them for sports or working out, either “athletic shoes” or “(running/basketball/gym) shoes,” referring to the specific use you have in mind.
"Semi" refers to the vehicle being in two parts: a tractor with an attached trailer. Some folks refer to the tractor = "truck" = "semi". In actuality, trailers are made as generic as possible so that pretty much any tractor can be coupled to them.
Drive-Thru liquor stores are common on the west side of Cincinnati and in outlying areas, such as Hamilton. In those places, these stores are called " pony kegs," due to the size of the beer kegs that were sold there. these places sold quarter-sized kegs, which were commonly called "pony kegs."
In Massachusetts, sneakers had rubber soles and fabric tops. Also a milk shake with ice cream in it is called a frappe and in Rhode Island it is called a cabinet.
I’ve seen a book similar to the one that was mentioned and also there was a quiz that based on how you say certain words, it would show the area where you grew up.,this link to that quiz may still be out there. I couldn’t catch a break. I was born and grew up in NY state. After my 1st year in college, family moved to the eastern end of Pa., after 3 years, I joined the Navy and since then been in several states. 6 or 7 years later, mostly settled for over 10 years in Maryland and now WV (over 10 years). I I got the pop, then soda then after quizzical looks from the northern friends and family, I just compromised and called it soda pop. Mostly say you guys, but on occasion, you all. Water fountain. When I hear people say bubblers, I think of those cumbersome jugs that you have to flip upside down to get on to those pedestals. They would make a gurgle or bubbly noise every so often.
Thanks for this content I found it interesting. Living between Indy and Chicago, I grew up saying tennis shoes and still do sometimes, and sometimes say sneaker or court shoes. My ex was from Wisconsin and converted me from saying drinking fountain to bubbler. Definitely Lightning bugs and yes we collected as kids and put in jars. Growing up all soda pop was a coke, as I got older i've mostly said Soda, sometimes Pop unless I was actually getting a coke.
This was a fun video. I'm from Massachusetts so I agree with the guy from Rhode Island on a lot. Packies & bubblers, baby! We create our own language sometimes. And I guess we're the only state that calls a shopping cart a carriage.
The Carmel/caramel line in NJ is funny, matching the State’s divide in so many things. Quite contentious, as can only happen in The Garden State! BTW, North Jersey has it right, always. 😉
This reminds me of a video I saw where ppl from the US, UK and Australia call different things. Some things you’d expect, some are completely different across all of them, if that makes sense. You should definitely give it a watch! From the channel Billyonaire
I loved watching this video. I'm from Indiana, originally from the far southern suburbs of Chicago. This just rang home for me. I've always said "wife beater", the other name for it was not appropriate. I say "pop", and lightning bug. For the last thing I always say tennis shoes or tennies. Plus, sunny days with a sprinkle from the clouds I was always told it was a sun shower. 😊
Hi Feli ... I'm from WNY (Buffalo area) and was born and grew up there too. I'll comment on a few of your items. ALL my friends and I use the word "pop" as the umbrella term for ALL sweetened carbonated beverages. ALWAYS !!! "Coke" is specific to Coke/Coca-Cola, "Pepsi" is Pepsi, "Dr Pepper" is Dr Pepper, "Root Beer" or "A&W" or "Dad's'" is Root Beer, "7Up" is 7Up, etc., etc." Ironically, my sister (who is older and who was born near the NY-MA border, yet who grew up in Buffalo from the time she was 1 year old) refuses to use the term "pop" at all even though we grew up in the same household (I don't know if she's tapping into her "Eastern airs" or what her problem is :) because she USED TO call it "pop" when we were kids -- but NOW she always calls it "soda" like the far Easterners in this country). That drives me nuts because I automatically think of unsweetened carbonated water to be used with scotch (as in "Scotch & soda") whenever I hear someone say they are going to get some soda to drink! Finally, the FIRST time I ever heard anybody call it anything OTHER than simply "pop" was when I went to college in the Midwest. A classmate from California (NOT the South of the U.S.) went to the snack counter in the student center and asked "What kind of cokes do you have" -- and he wasn't talking about "regular" versus "diet" !!!!!! To me, "Coke" meant COKE; it was incredibly odd for somebody to consider 7Up, root beer, Pepsi, etc. as a type of "Coke" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I pronounce "pecan" as PEA-can, but my sister taps into the aristocratic Old South and pronounces it pe-KAHN (she's always the contrarian :)) "Caramel" is a different and hybrid/dual role matter. If we're talking about a piece of candy or a coating on an apple or popcorn (e.g. carmelcorn or a carmel apple), I use "CAR-MEL." But if we're talking about a sauce/topping on an ice cream sundae, I pronounce it "CARE-A-MEL." As for sneakers, they are a very specific type. They MUST be non-"running shoes" and they MUST also NOT be above the ankle. The latter are called "high-tops" or "Basketball shoes/sneakers." We use "drinking fountain" and "water fountain" interchangeably. A "bubbler," by contrast, is a component of a water DRAINAGE system from a house or other building structure !! The word "often" has a SILENT "T" It's either a "semi" (sem-EYE -- NOT a sem-EEE) ... or an "18-wheeler." It's primarily called a TRAFFIC CIRCLE ... or to a lesser extent maybe a "roundabout" -- and although I don't use the term "rotary," I have on rare occasion heard it used (BUT NEVER by itself; the term "rotary" was ALWAYS PAIRED with the word "traffic" ... as in "traffic rotary"). Either firefly or lightning bug -- but primarily "firefly." Sun shower. Finally, I think it would have been hilarious if you spoke a little bit in German to the American expats you were hosting for the video -- but only briefly because many of uys wouldn't have understood the conversation :)
Re: your sis. Maybe someone called her out on using some of those words. So now the terminology where she’s currently living is what she’s sticking with. Even tho she visits, she still has to go back. You get some people that have never visited other areas and think that the way things are said/done are like the Gospel, it can be tough for people moving there from an entirely different part of the states.
For liquor stores it is interesting in the south (Tennessee). Hard liquor is sold in Package Stores, and they don't sell beer. There are separate stores for beer. During prohibition, beer was the draw to brothels, so beer was banned in order to assist in shutting down the brothels. In a dry county, you can get beer, but not liquor. In Burford Pusser's County there is a bar that straddlesthe County line. When the police come in you have to scurry to the appropriate side depending on your drink, because one side is in a dry County. Weird.
Boston /New Hampshire here. Pretty on point with the Rhode island dude. Soda = tonic Shopping cart = carriage Liquor store= packie Convenience store = spa I grew up saying lightning bug and then somehow switched to firefly!
How do you say these words??
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Adapt. Improvise, in order to overcome. Those are wise words I learned in military boot camp. First year of service was deployed to Japan. Interesting culture, met Japanese that studied in universities in the USA. A whole new level. Was stationed in several States in the Union, learned the local expressions, a quick way to “smooth in” into the culture. Lots of fun. Especially, for someone that immigrated to the USA from South America 5 years earlier. Pidgin English in Hawaii, Southern California “dude” languages, Southern drawl from Tennessee, Alabama, Bostonian accent, big mix. Love interacting with people, from all over the USA, and the world. Down here in Florida, I use “flip flops” for my sandals, most of the time, while enjoying an ice cold Coke, in hot sunny weather, while watching….falling snow….on tv…..in Ohio😎 Thanks for your latest, Sparky! Be well. Post Tenebras Lux.
Drive-thru Firearm store is indeed a thing. In Texas, of course. 🤣
Hello Feli, I don't know if you knew this already, but Cincinnati, your adopted city, is named after the Ancient Roman politician, Cincinnatus, who himself acquired that cognomen by dint of his curly hair, since that's what it means in Latin. Furthermore, when you factor in the original Latin pronunciation which uses neither the "soft c" (so like "s") - nor the Italianate "ch" - but the "hard c" in both cases - and is thus rendered as kin-kin-AH-toos. So from that, you can easily see where the English word "kink" or "kinky" comes from😏
Again, you probably knew that but as someone interested in linguistics, thought i d write in, just in case you didn't🙂
I don’t call it that anymore because no one ever understood me. But I used to call pop tonic. I grew up in Massachusetts but left in the 70’s when I went into the army. Since then I have lived in several parts of the country (Florida, California, Texas, Kentucky and Ohio) so my accent and what I call things has evolved. Tonic changed pretty quick because people thought I was talking about tonic water that is used for mixed drinks. I switched to pop, soda or saying what type I wanted to drink. Less confusion that way.
27:17 We call fireflies "Szent János bogár" in Hungarian --> Saint John bug
The look on Feli's face when they said drive-thru gun store.
You beat me to it !!!😂😂😂😂
I would do that too. It’s insane to me the idea of something like this to exist.
I am sure there is one somewhere. I remember in high school, kids at school would have guns in their gun racks in their trucks. I can remember seeing people driving with them around the bigger cities and small towns. That is back before you had lunatics shooting up schools, malls, concerts, parks and such. @@andreimircea2254
I'd have the same reaction. I was disturbed when i heard it.
I would like Burger and a Gun.😉
Thanks again for inviting us on 😊 We ended up learning so much!
Feli's facial expression when she goes 'DAMN!' 🤭 on the wife beater explanation is hilarious. 🤣 Well done, girl. 👍
The explanation I always understood for wife-beater was from watching Cops on TV. Dude comes home after a long day at work, takes of their shirt, cracks a few beers, wife makes tuna casserole, and dude loses his shit and starts swinging then ends up in cuffs outside his trailer wearing his jeans/shorts/sweats and his tank top under shirt, aka wife-beater.
"Youse" is common in the NYC boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.
As a linguist I love this video in its entirety, but I particularly I love the moment at 21:20 where Geoff doesn't even perceive the difference between the sounds! That's such an elegant example of categorical perception! Basically the idea is that there are no hard boundaries between sounds - they're like colors, they're on a gradient, so you can't draw any clear demarking point. So, our brains/ears have evolved to perceive sounds that are similar as the same sound. The kicker is that not every language has the same inventory, and what we see here is exactly as you described it, evidence an active vowel merger in American English, where Alex still has the different vowels in cot and caught, and so perceives them as different sounds, whereas for Geoff the sounds have merged so they perceive them as the same thing.
Also, where I'm from in Texas, we basically don't have them, which is why I think the "traffic circle" one shows up there because that's what they're called in driver's ed which is probably the last time many Texans saw one. In person most people I know in Central Texas actually call them roundabouts or don't know what to call them at all. I've definitely heard Beer Barn though - I remember there was one on Richmond in Houston when I was growing up. Probably still there! And my father was from New Orleans, so I grew up hearing "the devil's beating his wife" whenever it rained while the sun was shining. It's a folksy saying, and I was never sure whether it was just supposed to be contrasting the rain/storm (the devil, representing bad) with the sun (his wife, representing good), or whether the rain was supposed to be the tears of the devil's wife and the devil was the sun because it was hot? Beats me, I'm sure there may be some research into it but I'm not familiar with it.
The kicker for me is that I actually hear Geoff using different sounds for cot and caught, it's like cot and co-ot.
@@EdwinHofstraSo basically he says "caught" with a New York accent because that's the only way I can say those words differently in an American way?
Some of these differences hold a lexical distinction for me. Example: /'pıka:n/ is the nut but /'pikæ:n/ is its flavor, hence /'pikæ:n pai/ vs. /'but(^h)ər pıka:n/. Same thing for caramel vs carmel, only in this case the latter is the flavor while the formal is the substance.
Additionally I've only ever called them athletic shoes
I'm from new york city originally and I moved to texas and I found that the people here born and raised have a hard time distinguishing between pin, pen, and pan sounds. They run e/i/a sound together so much that it's sounds like 2 syllables. Pee'-an, so the don't hear the diff.
As a New York transplant to Texas you can hear my diff between cot and caught. I still pronounce caught like cawt (you hear the w sound for sure and the aw like a cat's paw).
Cot sounds like not.
Growing up in Nashua, NH. we used the word "tonic" as a generic term for soft drinks. If you wanted a particular type, you asked for a Coke, a Pepsi, a Ginger Ale, etc. "Caramel" (3 syllables) is a sweet, while "Caramel" (2 syllables) is a place. A Semi truck is called that because it pulls a semi-trailer. All rubber soled footwear are "Sneakers"; I first heard them referred to as "Tennis Shoes" in Marine Corps bootcamp. They can also be called Deck Shoes for those fortunate enough to afford a yacht. "You" is either singular or plural, depending. I occasionally use "You Guys", and very occasionally "Y'all" (pronounced "yawl"). I say "Gesundheit" when someone sneezes. A "water bubbler" I call a scuttlebut (a Navy and Marine term for a ship's drinking water, kept in a barrel called a scuttle (Fun Facts to know and tell!). "Lightning Bugs" and "Fireflies" are one and the same here (getting rare, I'm not sure why. BTW, "Firefly" was a fantastic TV series, but only lasted one season. Check it out!!) 'Bye now!"
We used "boat shoes" for Sperry Topsiders in CT.
@@stevetalkstoomuch I wore "boat shoes" in high school eastern Nebraska. No socks. Only pull out socks if it is around freezing or less outside.
"Tonic" is something you got that didn't work, usually with some claimed medicinal value, sold by fraudsters from the back of their van. Could also have been added to alcoholic drinks to make them fizzy, but that was always "tonic water".
This is all interesting. Ben does have a charm.
Feli might want to cover accents before they all homogenize away due to relocation and mass marketing.
Re: firefly’s getter rarer. Do you think all those crazy bugs (stink bugs and lantern flies) that are coming in from China (mostly) are maybe eating the fireflies?
Plymouth county Mass here. Yes on drinking tonic, but tennis shoes have a flat sole while sneakers are usually ridged
I'm coastal MA Cape Cod and we say boat shoes too for those or sneakers for others. Also we say bubbler and we also say Carriage for the cart at the grocery (S NOT SH) store. Actually we usually call the store the 'market' and depending on where in MA you may say the MAH-kit ;)@@stevetalkstoomuch
In Chicago we call them gym shoes because most school districts around here make you change into them for gym class, or physical education. For example, it's against district policy to wear sandals to gym class, so you have to change into your tennis shoes, hence "gym shoes"
Coming from Feli‘s hometown, we were all trained in changing footwear several times in school. You would arrive in one pair of shoes, then change into „house shoes“ (slippers) when entering classrooms, then change again into „gym shoes“ for P.Ed. and… just in case it’s raining or wet, have a pair of rubber boots, in case the teachers want us to go outside to play in the mud. Yes, elementary school in Munich was fun.
Facts 💯
I moved to Nashville area Tn when I retired n 2017 n my 1st time at a restaurant I wanted to use the restroom ….and I asked the waitress “where is the washroom”….she had a puzzled look and asked me what I wanted to wash…
Yes, I remember that too. I questioned someone, perhaps our gym teacher, they said it had to do with some of the dress shoes scuffing up the gym floor. So like someone here said already, gym class = gym shoes.
@@catw6998 Coach yelling no street shoes on the gym floor.
Loved this. My dad grew up in Ann Arbor, MI and moved to CA in the late 50s to do graduate work. He called tennis shoes ‘gym shoes’. I had a roommate in college who was originally from Indiana where drive through liquor stores were popular, but I never saw one in CA in my whole life. To me a ‘bubbler’ is British or Australian (lived in AZ for a year in grade school). Never saw lightening bugs (interchangeable with firefly) in CA, but saw them a lot in rural western PA where I moved to in the late 90s. They live where it is humid in the summer, and it is anything but humid in my part of CA growing up.
It's great to see you with Ben, especially for this type of video and cool having invited Alex and Jeff of AGDW to collaborate for this type of video as well.
We were happy to join 😊
Very interesting. I'm from New jersey. (South Jersey) We have both Roteries and Traffic Circles. Rotaries' are fairly new. They are smaller than Circles. ( we normally drop Traffic). Also I have one for you Route? I use both pronunciations 1) Root 2) Rout. Example Take root Y to rout z.
I remember sometimes hearing Gesundheit from cartoons. I knew overtime that it was a foreign word. Then in my first German class in Junior High, I started hearing Thea her say that when any member of the class sneezed - a fun clarification.
I am from Michigan. So of the ones I can recall off the top of my head: POP. Tennis Shoes. “ SIRUP”. Shopping Cart. You Guys. I watched the whole video and pretty much stay within the boundaries of my home state on which form of the word I use. On a slightly different take , most of Michigan is standard upper Midwest pronunciations. However when you get to the WESTERN half of the Upper Peninsula you start to run into what is called the Yooper accent. Yooper is a colloquial way to refer to the U. P. ( Upper Peninsula) Hard to describe the Yooper accent. You just know it when you hear it. I think it might come partially from the large amount of people that have Finnish and Cornish ancestry. Also it has a resemblance to a Canadian accent . Great video. I enjoyed it.
I absolutely LIVE for this type of content! So entertaining, so fun! I’m from North Carolina, and while I grew up saying things a certain way, somehow as I got older, there was a change. Thank you for your super fun and well produced content 🤟
I'm born and raised in San Francisco and I am still living there. The following list is how I say each things that are covered in this video according to how I was taught in school and grew up speaking that way:
Tennis Shoes
Soda
Caramel as "carra-mell"
Pajamas as "pa-jommas"
You guys or you all (y'all is also sometimes used)
Crayons as "cray-ons"
Pecan as "PEE-cawn" despite being born/raised/living in the red zone (e.g. Pecan Pralines as "PEE-cawn PRALL-leens")
Syrup as "sir-rup"
I had to run but will view the rest of this video later when I can. Cheers! :)
I really enjoyed this episode, Feli, as I do all of your vlogs. I've always have been interested in the different words people in the U.S. use to say the same thing. BTW, if you want to hear people from Philadelphia talk and use the word "yous" watch the first "Rocky" movie. And being born and raised in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, area I can attest that most of us don't say "yinz." We say "yunze." This colloquial word extends into the little piece of West Virginia that sticks up between Pennsylvania and Ohio and a little ways south into the part of West Virginia around Morgantown along Interstate 79. Keep up the great work with your TH-cam channel . I started watching you after I visited Mainz, Germany for two weeks in 2015 and had the best time. The people were so friendly and helpful to this non-German speaker. Take care.
I grew up just north of Scranton, and we said "yooz" which seems like a version of what is said in the Philly area.
Mostly the big truck is called a tractor trailer or an 18-wheeler named after the number of wheels. Both become a semi when they attach a second trailer in the back. So you have the tractor in the front pulling along two boxed shape trailers...
Something to think about the farm tractor came before the "semi tractor" and they hauled wagons "trailers" hence the phrase semi truck and trailer when combined. For me a truck has a bed to haul things and the original "semi tractor" did not have a sleeper
As an American, calling a pecan a pee-can is a jailable offence.
Very enjoyable video. One of your best.
I was raised in Philly, and now live in NE PA and I say "caramel" but when I say it fast, the second "a" is elided so it comes out "carmel". Also, the "yo" is elided in "crayon" so, try as I may, it comes out "cran" (and I live 5 miles from Crayola’s headquarters!) I also say "seerup".
For those who think "traffic circle" is a weird way to say "roundabout", I guess you’ve never been to New York City (Columbus Circle), Philly (Logan Circle) or Washington, D.C. (DuPont Circle) or anywhere in Jersey, where every intersection seems to be a circle.
And it’s definitely "soda" in Philly, "I went to the Iggles game and ate a hoagie, cheesesteak wit’, two Tastycakes and a soda." (Philadelphians have hearty appetites). If someone sneezes we say, "yo, could ya turn your ugly face away from me when you do that!"
In New Mexico (that's in the US), we used to call these drive-thru liquors or drive-up liquors. But all have been outlawed in the state since the 90's, so a lot of people don't even know the term. Most that I have seen are like the example in your video - a drive-thru window, but at a liquor store. I have seen some in Texas that were truly drive-THRU. Imagine a warehouse style building with a garage door at the front and back, and you drive through the building to buy your beer. You don't drive up and down the isles (at least not in the ones I’ve seen), but in a line that goes through the building . Most of the "barn" names you list seemed to be centered in Texas, and I think this is why. I think the reason for these barns is that there are a lot of “dry” counties in Texas, so the liquor stores in “wet” counties have to stock so much more to fulfill the demand. You can tell where some of the “dry” county borders are, because that’s where a bunch of liquor stores and beer barns are located.
Oh Feli, there are regions in Germany where Glühwürmchen are more than common. For example in Odenwald, on warm early summer nights, they are abundant, and yes, I did that „catch them in a jar“ activity when I was younger. ;)
After three years in Germany in the US Army, I came home and my mother said, I sound like I was from Tennessee, because most of the guy I was with were from the South. Thank you Feli, love your reports
Interesting. @33:59 if you pause this, these 2 are so in sync with one another, they close their eyes at the same time! lol Great content Feli. Great to see Ben again. Instead of blowing up this topic with all the different pronunciations for each, I will just address the 1 you put on the tag line. When I was a kid(many decades ago) being as far West as I am, (not Cali)we would say Pop. Coke, pepsi, sprite, etc. were definitely referenced specifically by name. But the beverages in general were pop. I had east coast relatives move out here for awhile and 1 of my cousins and I actually did get in a bit of a cultural debate/argument over this topic. She called them Sodas. Which at the time, I had never heard used before. Now, ironically, I don't call them pop, I call them sodas. I have since the kid days heard all the terms used here. Except the very last. And your 2 guests today, amplified what I was saying about how your videos educate so many, even Americans. From 1 region to another, if you never leave home, you may never know differently. My vocabulary also includes a lot of words from other nations depending on who I am speaking too and the topic at hand. So long, pardners.
I was born in a suburb of Chicago, but right now I live in Florida. I say gym shoes, but say some other things the Floridian way I must have picked it up from my family who also born in Chicago area also.
In Hungary, we also use the term "The Devil is beating his wife" when the sun is shining and raining at the same time ( az ördög veri a feleségét) and we also have the same name for the tank top - wifebeater - (asszonyverő). Never would have thought about a connection like this. 😅
Actually, wife beater comes from the 1951 Marlon Brando film, "A Streetcar Named Desire." Brando's character in the film wears one and beats his wife. The film was famous in America and in Europe.
Interesting!
I love your videos! I was wondering if you did a video where you talk about the differences between Munich and Berlin. Just thinking about how in the US, people sometimes "east coast v west coast". LA vs NYC, that kind of thing..I wondered if there was that kind of friendly competition between Munich/Berlin or any other cities in Germany?
Canadian here
-Runners, although other terms are used, especially if they are specialty shoes, but runners is the overall name. Like all Top hats are hats, but not all hats are top hats.
- Pop
-mostly three syllable for caramel, but you hear syllables sometimes
-pyjamas gets both pronunciations, but PJs and jammies get used a lot
-You, you guys get used a lot, you do hear Y’all sometimes, but mostly if it’s transplanted Americans or people they know.
-Crayon two syllables, mostly cray-on.
-Pecan- both pee can or puh khan
-Sir-up, mostly
-When someone sneezes, you never know, lots of possibilities
-water fountain, drinking fountain or just fountain, but you don’t see them much anymore overall
-cot/caught, if there’s a difference, it’s subtle, but context helps
- often: usually silent t or barely there
-lawyer- loy-yer
-Semi= sem-me, or sem-eye
-mostly traffic circle
-grocery, often two syllables with a soft c, sometimes three syllables, or 2 1/2
-cart or shopping cart
-Firefly
-no liquor store drive thus around here, so nothing.
-raining while the sun is shining? No word for it.
I’ve never called them runners. Only running shoes. I called shopping cart buggies and grocery is a three syllable Word with a SH sound
I can’t separate cot and caught without sounding British
@@antoniocasias5545 hey it keeps things interesting
@@dw7704 wot
@@antoniocasias5545 the different pronunciations and different words, they keep things interesting
I love this video! I recently spent a week traveling with my parents and I am noticing things they say now that I remember them saying when I was a kid but I forgot about when I moved out. We are from Maryland and we say soda, carra-mel, I switch between y'all and you guys, sneakers, pa-jamm-ahs, cray-yon, seer-up. My parents refer to an ATM as a "Money Mover" and I forgot about that until this past week!
I'm from the DC area and I pronounce your words the same way.
I absolutely loved this video, it had me laughing the whole time. I live in ND and have heard most of the words you guys covered in the video. There are alot of Germans in the state and they all stay stuff differently. So in up north we call it a pop. I was told that it was a pop, because when you open a can, it makes a popping noise. I don't know if that is true or not that's just what I've been told. We also call a semi-truck, a tractor trailer, eighteen wheeler, or a big rig. Anyways I really enjoyed the video, keep up the good work.
That was fun, thanks. I spent my childhood in Denver, we got a little bit of most of those there.
I was born in California and lived till the end of high school. The maps were very accurate about the words that I used and the way I pronounced them. Then I moved to Arkansas and realize that I have changed over time. I now say and pronounce these words according to the maps for my current area. Very interesting video. Thanks
The quavers or 8th notes, 16th notes, and 32nd notes have some kind of hemi, demi, or semi in some kind of order. A parallel kind of thing is also kind of like the syllables for the accentuation of the Classical Greek words, oxytone (last syllable for the acute accent), paroxytone (second to last syllable), and proparoxytone (third to last syllable). The circumflex accent is called penult (last syllable) and antepenult (second to last syllable).
Being from western Pennsylvania was surprised you mentioned yinzers there is a whole dialect around the Pittsburgh area btw I have heard the parts of the state outside Pittsburgh and Philly called pennsyltucky for what that's worth
New Englander here - fireflies/lightning bugs are plenty abundant, but probably not in more urban areas like Rhode Island. Fun fact - these bugs emit different colors depending on the species (and therefore region). Where I am, they're somewhat bluish.
Your enunciation is SO great! If only my fellow Americans were so easy to understand!
Generally, you will not see fireflies or lightning bugs in urban areas. They are mostly in more rural areas whether they be suburbs around the city or out in the country. The farther you move into the country, the more lightning bugs you will find...
Where I live in Germany we definitely get fireflies. Like, not in mass, but I definitely see a handful every summer.
Faygo is popular here in Michigan and is called pop. Berry soda is redpop. Besides, pop is more fun to say soda.
Up in the area around Boston they call soda "Tonic." The proper use of "y'all" refers to one or two people and three or more is "all y'all." For the pecan, the pronunciation for the nut is pick-AHN and the pot kept under the bed when you have an outhouse is a pee can. The bubbler was a 5 gallon jug upside down and bubbles when the water is released as you filled your cup, while a drinking or water fountain was the unit mounted on the wall that you leaned over and drank directly from it.
What you called a bubbler I would have called the water cooler. Don't see many of those anymore.
I know you're focusing on the US, but here's a few examples from Vancouver BC 🇨🇦
Syrup is Sir-up, You guys, Runners or Sneakers is most common. Bless You, Crayons is Krey-Awns. For Pecan I've used and heard/both pee-Kahn and pick-AHN. Water Fountain, Semi/Semitruck, roundabout. We definitely say POP. Occasionally you might hear someone say soda.
However it makes (no sense) to use Coke as an umbrella term for all POP beverages. Unless you don't care what someone gives you. Are you a sociopath? 😅 Sprite is completely different from Coke.
Fun video
In Poland we used to say: tenisówki (tennis shoes) but now the most common is adidasy (Adidas shoes). 😃
I use firefly and lightning bug interchangeably.
I'm from Victoria, BC, Canada, and I would say "Running Shoes", "Carra-mel", usually "Pee-can" (altho I flip-flop on this one), "Sir-up", "Water Fountain" or "Drinking Fountain", usually "Ofen" (no pronounced T), "Big Rig", "Groh-shery", "Shopping Cart". I've never seen fireflies in real life!
I say often, and I’ve seen fireflies in real life. I’m also a buggy boy. Seer up
i don't pronounce the T either, but when spelling it phonetically i would write "offen" because "ofen" may be interpreted as having a long O.
neat cap. wear it! This variation sound in speaking reminds me when you talk about German dialects.
As I mentioned in your preview post earlier, I'm originally from Columbus, where we drink pop. However, my dad was from upstate New York and, as a result, he made some important contributions to my personal dialect. For example, "youse" (with a silent "e") is indeed the plural of "you" in everyday small-group discussion. (When speaking publicly, however, I say "you".) Another example is the fact that I pronounce "route" as it's spelled (emphasizing the "out") instead of as "root". Ironically, however, I pronounce "roof" as spelled (emphasizing the "double 'O'") instead of as "ruff" (which is how I pronounce "rough"). And, again perhaps reflecting the Northeastern influence, I pronounce "cot" and "caught" the same way (with the "O" sound). I also pronounce "fought" and "fraught" that same way (with the "O" sound).
At the same time, over the years, I've noticed an increasing Canadian influence in my personal dialect as well. There are at least three reasons for this. First, at one point some ancestors on Dad's side of the family were French Canadian. Apparently, they were in Canada long enough that at least traces of the accent have made it into my DNA. (It's noticable enough that, for decades, people have asked me if I'm from Canada.) Secondly, I've lived in Florida twice over the years. And, historically, Florida has had a sizable Canadian population whether year-round or snowbirds. Thirdly, several years ago, I came across some research which indicates that people born on the Eastside of Columbus from and after 1965 have developed what's called the Canadian Shift, which refers to a definite "shift" (thus the name) to a marked Canadian accent. The indication is that, if the trend continues, people in central Ohio will sound more as though they're from Canada than from the Middle West. (Specifically, I am from the Far East Side and was born in the late '70's.)
Incidentally, but for the results of the War of 1812-14, Ohio would be one of the largest provinces in Canada today. The history, at least as taught here in the United States, is that the United States won that war. (There are reasons to doubt that claim which would be for another video.) If, though, that's the case, in certain respects Ohio lost that war. At the same time, however, the results of the War of 1812-14 ensured that Ohio was able to make important contributions to victory in the War of the Southern Rebellion (1861-65). Had the earlier conflict ended differently, that would have been a fourth reason for my accent.
As to the "traffic circle/roundabout" debate, I come down four square on the "traffic circle" side. However, I use the term derogatorily as I've never liked those things. If transportation authorities seriously want to improve the flow of traffic through busy intersections, they should build interchanges with ramps (colloquially referred to a overpasses).
As one final example, I pronounce "grocery" and "groceries" as they're spelled. On the other hand, as I get older I've developed a tendency to refer to the grocery store as a "supermarket", although when referring to the store by name I refer to "Kroger's" due to being from Ohio and the fact that the company actually owns the store where I do most of my shopping where I currently live, albeit the company itself uses a different name. While I'm on the topic, I refer to corner stores or convenient stores as "bodegas", although that again may reflect the New York influence.
great video. loved the interaction between everyone and great editing.
Feli, I'm in northern IL near WI, and I give them the name based on what their use is, such as hiking, basketball, track, gym, etc. The only brand name I use is Skechers.
I live in the pop zone; however in recent decades I'm hearing more and more often the term soda being used here.
. . . and then, there's the CA city of Carmel pronounced car-MEL.
I noticed the Miami area is a sort of pink. Is that due to the strong Spanish influence?
Buggy is the British term (I thought).
There's a nice suburb of Indianapolis called Carmel with no emphasis on either syllable..
@@gordonschultz4788, hmm! That's a challenge if you don't speak French.
When I was a child, we had lots of fireflies in Germany......... changes are everywhere, haven't seen them for ages!
wait, having lived in NYC for 9 years as a german who loves carbonated water i was taught to order soda as in soda water which does not corroborate with your map, now i am confused. but i always got carbonated water, so i guess it was alright. fun fact, you guys also call carbonated water 'Seltzer' which is a town in Germany that produces - you guessed it - carbonated water :-). being an anglophile wanting to know more about how accents develop I have GOT to get this book! thanks so much, Feli, this was fun and also educating!
I grew up in Washington state, as an adult I live(d) in Utah and Wyoming. It’s pretty accurate to the maps you showed. I call it soda, sneakers for the lower profile shoes and high tops for the taller shoes. Vans get their own category! I have caught myself saying y’all more as an adult mostly because a lot my husband’s family live in the south! Buggy was hilarious to me when my daughter dated and married a southern gentleman! They call beanies (the hats we wear in winter) toboggans which is wild because a toboggan is a sled to me! Great video! It was entertaining and fun to learn about!
1:17 "tennissues"? Yeah, I've got at least ten issues, and my sneakers ain't one! 😂
I'm a Canadian who now lives in Germany. My English speech preferences come from the GTA (the Greater Toronto Area).
- Pop
- Cara-mel
- Pa-jam-as
- You (or you guys) (but I also have started texting "y'all" for "ihr" since moving to Germany)
- Cray-on
- Pee-can
- Runners/running shoes
- Sir-up
- Bless you/Gesundheit (I didn't even know the latter was a German word until I moved here. As it's somewhat common among Southern Ontario).
- Water fountain
- Cot and caught sound the same
- I do pronounce the 'T' in often
- Loy-er
- A transport truck or just 'transport'
- A round-about
- Grow-shree
- Cart/grocery cart/shopping cart
- Firefly
- No term I am aware of for drive-thru liquor stores
- A sunshower
- And bonus: muscle shirt
A bubbler could also refer to any device that pumps air through a liquid, such as an aquarium or pond aerator.
Also used for garden irrigation.
Feli: This was a tremendously interesting video! The different regions pronouncing English words differently is an everyday occurence and usually causes little more than a few seconds of clarification at the worst.
But, go to England (or Ireland, etc.) and the differences occur frequently and often cost money. Like when phoning to reserve a Ferry spot costs like £200 more than expected. This was due to saying our vehicle was a "van" but the Brits call it a "people carrier". A people carrier is short (not tall), like an ordinary vehicle; vans are tall to carry workman supplies, etc.
Danke sehr, Feli, this has been truly interesting, as always. In fact, the expression "the devil's beating his wife" is found in Hungarian, too (it's pretty common, actually). Let me just note one thing, as a linguist: the term "accent" refers to the way you pronounce words (like in the "cot-cought" case). Choosing between different vocab items (like "soda" vs. "coke") is not a matter of accent. Thanks! :)
"The Devil beating his wife" is known as a German expression, too, in Lower Austria. "Do schlogt da Deifi sei Frau" would be the dialect expression.
I found this interesting and plan to order the book. I'm originally from Western Michigan but have lived in the Cincinnati area since the 1970's I still sometimes get accused of having a Michigan accent. There's a couple word usages I find unique to Cincinnati. First, the use of "please" instead of "what" or "pardon me". I believe this might have its roots from the German use of the word "bitte" brought over by early German settlers to Cincinnati. Second, is the use of the word "mango" for "green peppers". I know mango as a somewhat tropical sweet fruit with a big pit. Not sure how the Cincinnati mango came about. Of course, when I first moved to Cincinnati years ago, I was totally confused in a chili restaurant when I didn't know what a 3/4/5 way was. They were also confused at me,
My Grandma always called green peppers “mangos”.
Also “bag” and “sack” are interchangeable but I never heard “sack” growing up shopping in Florida but in the midwest it’s pretty common.
south coast Maine and north coast Massachusetts call soda tonic. We even have a TONIC aisle in the grocery store.
I never really noticed until watching this video, but for the pajamas question I use both depending on the sentence and in particular the age of who owns the pajamas. If its an adult, the a as in father; for a child they are a as in jam.
(Shoes depending on use: ---running shoes, high tops sneakers)
(Wash: --- pronounce with an long 'A' or with an R)
So great the way you’ve got the entire country all figured out in just a short period of time.
Grewup in Florida and it's Tennis Shoes for the shoes with the rubber soles used for athletic wear.
Great video does show how even though in the US we are speaking English, it can be so different. I especially like that you brought on two Americans now living in Berlin (which is where i lived from 86-89)
Canadian from Manitoba: Pop / Simi / Often with a T / Sir-Rup double R / Gym Shoes / Pee - Kahn / Water Fountain / Cot Caught same / Fire Flies / Sun Shower / Shopping Cart / Gro-Shury / Roundabout / Carmel / You Guys / Pa jam mas / No Drive-Thru liquor / Krey Awns - fun video!
22:33 Radio and movies have a great deal to do with the pronunciation. In America, the "preferred"(by the city-fied and wealthy class)accent is the Mid Atlantic, and in the British it's the "recieved" one. Think Katherine Hepburn and Basil Rathbone back in the 40s and 50s.
I'm English, I think I mostly speak RP, although I've spent my whole life in Oxfordshire so I think my accent must be somewhat influenced by that. One thing that comes to mind is that I pronounce either as "eether" and my mum pronounces it as "iyther".
4:31 I would say fizzy drink or soft drink.
6:49 Caramel - so three syllables, but with the last one less stressed than they said it.
7:38 With a long "are" sound. So like father to go with the map's example.
11:08 Originally I think I would have just said "you", but thanks to influence from the internet I think I would say "you guys" most often now, and sometimes even "you all" or "y'all". I don't say "yous", I would associate that as Irish, although I know people around the world say it.
14:18 Just how it's spelt: cray-on.
15:12 I'm not really very familiar with this word, so I don't know. Maybe just however I heard it most recently.
15:55 When I first heard this question I thought it meant plimsolls, but I realise it meant trainers.
17:59 I didn't hear anybody say it, but I'm pretty sure I say what the map wrote as "sih-rup"
18:49 I probably wouldn't say anything, sorry. But if I said anything it would be bless you.
19:38 Probably drinking fountain.
20:41 Definitely different, and I think even more different than the people who said it differently on here.
23:00 No, I don't pronounce the T.
23:30 Loy-u.
23:57 A really massive lorry... I guess? I've never really seen anything like that. It looks huge.
24:34 Sem"ee", like what Ben said some people in Kentucky say.
24:57 Definitely roundabout.
25:48 With an S sound.
26:16 Trolly.
26:57 Firefly.
28:13 No word.
30:26 A rainbow? I mean, it's the kind of weather that makes a rainbow likely.
31:25 I'm pretty sure he's describing a vest, although they're not just for men. Children especially wear them a lot.
The last item is a 'waistcoat'.
I grew up in New Jersey where we had "Traffic Circles". These were very large at the intersection of sometimes 5 highways coming together, and sometimes it took 30 minutes or more to get thru. The small roundabouts at intersections to me are called roundabouts, but I never saw any till I moved away from New Jersey.
No Mary, marry, merry pronunciation? That is my favorite. I say them all the same. I can hear the difference when people pronounce them differently, but have difficulty reproducing the different pronunciations
We need a second part
There is an entire song by the band. Yes, called Roundabout, it's fairly popular in the rock and roll group of people, maybe not the young kids, but anyone older than 30 years old knows this song and can sing it.
Speaking of progressive rock music, was Jon Anderson of Yes singing about a traffic circle? I know that Annie Haslam of the band Renaissance sang "...even the roundabout's still turning round" on "Trip to the Fair," meaning a carousel.
Hey, shopping cart is what you showed in the picture, a trolley or a buggy is any kind of push along basket that you can push things in and it has four wheels, so generally not a grocery cart, even a child's wagon, some people would call a. Trolley... Buggies are generally enclosed so if it rains the things inside do not get wet.
Originally from the Pittsburgh area, but grew up all over as dad was in the Air Force. Pop, tennis shoes, peekahn, you guys (not yinz like my cousins), crayawn, pajamas, carmel,offen, lover, roundabout, grosseree, shopping cart, lightning bug, drive-thru
From Milwaukee, WI originally. We drink water from a bubbler. Water fountains are landscape displays with moving water.
Hi Feli, New Jersey here. For me, it's Sneakers, soda, pajamas or PJs, God bless you or Bless you, and once in a while Gesundheit, Cot, and Caught was interesting because Cot is a small portable bed but was not mentioned as such. That was fun to listen to...
I am from Western NC .... a sweetened carbonated beverage is a soft drink, sometimes a coke, and my grandparents would have referred to them as a dope, or RC cola.....
A large truck with a detachable trailer meant to move goods is a transfer truck, or occasionally a tractor-trailer.... a smaller version without the detachable trailer but a box shaped cargo area.... is a straight truck.
Great fun! One of my favorite episodes!
In the textile producing areas of Virginia and North Carolina. soft drinks were called dopes. Workers in the cotton mills would buy them from dope wagons, which also dispensed snacks and were wheeled through the plants so the workers did not have to leave their machines.
Growing up in Detroit in the 60's, we had soda, pop, and soda pop - I used all three.
Tennis Shoes were the canvas tops with rubber soles. We never had the quality of Adidas nor Nike. Since then I've never settled on any one term.
I use of-en, my wife (Iowa) is of-Ten - hitting the T fairly hard
Never say car-a-mel, it's either car-mel or care-mel. Go figger.
Water or Drinking fountain -- either or.
Both fireflies and lightning bugs, depending on mood.
Great episode! Like Jeff, I too am from the Bay Area and we pretty much matched on everything.
They used to be called 'Muscle Shirts'
I see for pecan peak-in sometimes but it depends on whether it's like pie or pralines and praline I say two different ways, depending on whether is first, depending on the order of the word, whether it's pecan pralines or praline pecans i'm from Maryland so any word can have 10 million different ways of saying it because we are literally smacked up in the middle of every state because everybody from all over the country comes here because we have DC, and we have more military from all over the country than any other state in the country. We are building new bases when the rest of the country is shutting down military basis, we are the epicenter of military from across the country and around the world people from all over the world come to DC and DC is part of Maryland. The closest thing is New York and they're coming here. We don't come there as much more of them are coming here and then we have a unique way of saying water would-er and the uniquely Maryland specifically Baltimore hon and you have to kinda have a squeak before the N I don't even know how to phonetically do it watch John Walters like crybaby and hairspray. Good morning Baltimore we are unique probably some of West Virginia in there because my grandmother was from West Virginia and she sounded so classic Baltimore she was in school when she moved to Baltimore, but she had more Baltimore than my mom who was born and raised and lived there her whole life, I'm more straight no accent and my accent changes as a Maryland native from the suburbs. Sometimes I'll sound like I'm from anywhere in the world. It's like that disorder where your accent changes only it's more the fact that when I was growing up I was around all of that being Maryland and a very high way type place in the middle of everything so we had people from all over the world because of the bases military
This was a fun one. I grew up in western Washington State, so west coast roughly 20 years.
I have spent about 36 years in the Gulf South....Louisiana and, for 6 years, Alabama. So I have lived two very different regional dialects.
You example of pronunciation differences "caught" my attention, especially as the West Coast guy could not hear a difference between "cot" and "caught." I have changed my speech a bit over time, but yeah; we West Coasters tend toward broad. Open vowels.
Two more examples of them, which you did not include are the words "our" and "roof." "Our can be said as identical either to "hour" or "are." West Coasters say the latter.
"Roof" we tend(ed) to pronounce like the more dull "oo" in "foot," whereas many other regions, I suspect most of them, pronounce the "oo" like "oo" in "food," so more closed. Finally, we pronounce "route" like "ow" in "out." Others say it like "root."
your videos are sooooo interesting and entertaining, thank you
Sneakers for me are a more general category where running shoe is a sneaker with rounded tread on the front and back for running and a tennis(or gym) shoe is a flat bottom sneaker for tennis (or basketball).
The map says my area (Middle Tennessee) is a coke for everything zone, but I have lived here all my life and have mostly only ever heard older people say that. I think soft drink is way more common now.
As for shoes, when I was a kid in the 80s, we used “tennis shoes” a lot, but that’s morphed into more of sneakers or, if you are specifically wanting to wear them for sports or working out, either “athletic shoes” or “(running/basketball/gym) shoes,” referring to the specific use you have in mind.
we get the raining while sunny here and I have heard sunshower, granted we also call the rain here liquid sunshine
"Semi" refers to the vehicle being in two parts: a tractor with an attached trailer. Some folks refer to the tractor = "truck" = "semi". In actuality, trailers are made as generic as possible so that pretty much any tractor can be coupled to them.
I’m from Chicago, I grew up calling them the gym shoes.
Drive-Thru liquor stores are common on the west side of Cincinnati and in outlying areas, such as Hamilton. In those places, these stores are called " pony kegs," due to the size of the beer kegs that were sold there. these places sold quarter-sized kegs, which were commonly called "pony kegs."
In Massachusetts, sneakers had rubber soles and fabric tops. Also a milk shake with ice cream in it is called a frappe and in Rhode Island it is called a cabinet.
I’ve seen a book similar to the one that was mentioned and also there was a quiz that based on how you say certain words, it would show the area where you grew up.,this link to that quiz may still be out there. I couldn’t catch a break. I was born and grew up in NY state. After my 1st year in college, family moved to the eastern end of Pa., after 3 years, I joined the Navy and since then been in several states. 6 or 7 years later, mostly settled for over 10 years in Maryland and now WV (over 10 years). I
I got the pop, then soda then after quizzical looks from the northern friends and family, I just compromised and called it soda pop.
Mostly say you guys, but on occasion, you all.
Water fountain.
When I hear people say bubblers, I think of those cumbersome jugs that you have to flip upside down to get on to those pedestals. They would make a gurgle or bubbly noise every so often.
Thanks for this content I found it interesting. Living between Indy and Chicago, I grew up saying tennis shoes and still do sometimes, and sometimes say sneaker or court shoes. My ex was from Wisconsin and converted me from saying drinking fountain to bubbler. Definitely Lightning bugs and yes we collected as kids and put in jars. Growing up all soda pop was a coke, as I got older i've mostly said Soda, sometimes Pop unless I was actually getting a coke.
This was a fun video. I'm from Massachusetts so I agree with the guy from Rhode Island on a lot. Packies & bubblers, baby! We create our own language sometimes. And I guess we're the only state that calls a shopping cart a carriage.
The Carmel/caramel line in NJ is funny, matching the State’s divide in so many things. Quite contentious, as can only happen in The Garden State! BTW, North Jersey has it right, always. 😉
This reminds me of a video I saw where ppl from the US, UK and Australia call different things. Some things you’d expect, some are completely different across all of them, if that makes sense. You should definitely give it a watch! From the channel Billyonaire
I loved watching this video. I'm from Indiana, originally from the far southern suburbs of Chicago. This just rang home for me. I've always said "wife beater", the other name for it was not appropriate. I say "pop", and lightning bug. For the last thing I always say tennis shoes or tennies. Plus, sunny days with a sprinkle from the clouds I was always told it was a sun shower. 😊
Hi Feli ...
I'm from WNY (Buffalo area) and was born and grew up there too. I'll comment on a few of your items. ALL my friends and I use the word "pop" as the umbrella term for ALL sweetened carbonated beverages. ALWAYS !!! "Coke" is specific to Coke/Coca-Cola, "Pepsi" is Pepsi, "Dr Pepper" is Dr Pepper, "Root Beer" or "A&W" or "Dad's'" is Root Beer, "7Up" is 7Up, etc., etc." Ironically, my sister (who is older and who was born near the NY-MA border, yet who grew up in Buffalo from the time she was 1 year old) refuses to use the term "pop" at all even though we grew up in the same household (I don't know if she's tapping into her "Eastern airs" or what her problem is :) because she USED TO call it "pop" when we were kids -- but NOW she always calls it "soda" like the far Easterners in this country). That drives me nuts because I automatically think of unsweetened carbonated water to be used with scotch (as in "Scotch & soda") whenever I hear someone say they are going to get some soda to drink! Finally, the FIRST time I ever heard anybody call it anything OTHER than simply "pop" was when I went to college in the Midwest. A classmate from California (NOT the South of the U.S.) went to the snack counter in the student center and asked "What kind of cokes do you have" -- and he wasn't talking about "regular" versus "diet" !!!!!! To me, "Coke" meant COKE; it was incredibly odd for somebody to consider 7Up, root beer, Pepsi, etc. as a type of "Coke" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I pronounce "pecan" as PEA-can, but my sister taps into the aristocratic Old South and pronounces it pe-KAHN (she's always the contrarian :))
"Caramel" is a different and hybrid/dual role matter. If we're talking about a piece of candy or a coating on an apple or popcorn (e.g. carmelcorn or a carmel apple), I use "CAR-MEL." But if we're talking about a sauce/topping on an ice cream sundae, I pronounce it "CARE-A-MEL."
As for sneakers, they are a very specific type. They MUST be non-"running shoes" and they MUST also NOT be above the ankle. The latter are called "high-tops" or "Basketball shoes/sneakers."
We use "drinking fountain" and "water fountain" interchangeably. A "bubbler," by contrast, is a component of a water DRAINAGE system from a house or other building structure !!
The word "often" has a SILENT "T"
It's either a "semi" (sem-EYE -- NOT a sem-EEE) ... or an "18-wheeler."
It's primarily called a TRAFFIC CIRCLE ... or to a lesser extent maybe a "roundabout" -- and although I don't use the term "rotary," I have on rare occasion heard it used (BUT NEVER by itself; the term "rotary" was ALWAYS PAIRED with the word "traffic" ... as in "traffic rotary").
Either firefly or lightning bug -- but primarily "firefly."
Sun shower.
Finally, I think it would have been hilarious if you spoke a little bit in German to the American expats you were hosting for the video -- but only briefly because many of uys wouldn't have understood the conversation :)
Re: your sis. Maybe someone called her out on using some of those words. So now the terminology where she’s currently living is what she’s sticking with. Even tho she visits, she still has to go back. You get some people that have never visited other areas and think that the way things are said/done are like the Gospel, it can be tough for people moving there from an entirely different part of the states.
For liquor stores it is interesting in the south (Tennessee). Hard liquor is sold in Package Stores, and they don't sell beer. There are separate stores for beer.
During prohibition, beer was the draw to brothels, so beer was banned in order to assist in shutting down the brothels.
In a dry county, you can get beer, but not liquor.
In Burford Pusser's County there is a bar that straddlesthe County line. When the police come in you have to scurry to the appropriate side depending on your drink, because one side is in a dry County. Weird.
Boston /New Hampshire here. Pretty on point with the Rhode island dude.
Soda = tonic
Shopping cart = carriage
Liquor store= packie
Convenience store = spa
I grew up saying lightning bug and then somehow switched to firefly!