Many of those were not specifically Appalachian. Some were generally Southern, and others were pretty true across the United States.
Yes, and I was surprised to see that the announcement that I scored 100% was accompanied by a picture of Olivia de Haviland as Melanie Wilkes, neither of whom were from Appalachia.
Speaking of which, that’s another regional marker in the US—whether one says Appa-LAY-sha/Appa-LAY-shun (or cha/chun for the final syllable) or Appa-LATCH-a/Appa-LATCH-an.
It’s the latter here (North Carolina).
Yes, I was surprised to see Miss Melanie, too. I'm from West Virginia, which is in the Appa-LAY-shuns* and I never considered myself a southerner. We fought with the North during the Civil War!
*I think Nick's pronunciation is become the universal standard though. I hear it his way in all the Ken Burns documentaries.
I'm from West Virginia, which is in the Appa-LAY-shuns* and I never considered myself a southerner. We fought with the North during the Civil War!
*I think Nick's pronunciation is become the universal standard though. I hear it his way in all the Ken Burns documentaries.
I’m not sure it’s the universal standard. I still hear AppaLAYshun a lot from people from “away”—places like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York or Ohio.
I’m not sure how it’s pronounced in Virginia. Maybe @Moo can say?
Lifebuoy (as it was also spelled in the U.S) was pulled from the American market in 2009, I think. It is still being produced in Cyprus for the EU and UK market.
One I came across today for random reasons is that licorice is also liquorice.
Apparently the first is American and the second is British. But while I as an Australian would tend to lean British in my English, I'm not personally inclined to use a 'q'. A couple of articles I just came across say that Australia and NZ tend to accept either version.
One I came across today for random reasons is that licorice is also liquorice.
Apparently the first is American and the second is British. But while I as an Australian would tend to lean British in my English, I'm not personally inclined to use a 'q'. A couple of articles I just came across say that Australia and NZ tend to accept either version.
Interesting. I don't think I've ever seen liquorice spelt without a 'qu'. I wasn't aware there was an alternative.
Also, apparently Australia is one of the few places where we prefer 'barbeque' to 'barbecue'.
Only ever seen the former in the UK.
We don't tend to use barbie though, unless deliberately appropriating 'Strine terminology. It would then be found near tinny and sanger and a serious risk of Crocodile Dundee quotes.
Heh, as a lover of liquorice, I've long been aware of the alternative American spelling. I guess from talking about it online and sometimes googling it to buy some from specialty liquorice shops online. I've also found that most (possibly all) of my American friends on Facebook think black liquorice is horrible, which astonished me, because I've loved it since I was a kid, and thought everyone loved it!
Here in the UK, the 'correct' spelling (as in what the dictionaries give) is 'barbecue,' but in reality a lot of people spell it barbeque, I guess because the shortened form 'bbq' confuses things - I remember it confusing me one time, and I had to check the dictionary to remind myself of the full spelling.
It seems odd to talk about 'the' Canadian accent. Like any other large country, there are many. The peculiar pronunciation of 'out' seems to me to be an urban Ontario-ism. Not far from here there's a large Mennonite population, many of whom speak with what sounds like a German accent, even if they don't speak German. In other rural areas near here there's a strange accent that I've never heard anywhere else, and I've no idea where it comes from, though many of the people are of Dutch descent. Then there's Newfoundland with its own lovely speech that (to my ear) is closer to the Irish accent than any other. The town nearest us was developed by the Scots, and now has large first generation Portuguese and Dutch populations too - they've all added to the sounds you hear. 'The' Canadian accent is very much a work in progress, so be careful with generalisations!
Also, apparently Australia is one of the few places where we prefer 'barbeque' to 'barbecue'.
It’s spelled “barbecue” here, though on signage it’s sometimes shortened to “BBQ.”
And as I think I’ve mentioned before, here (North Carolina), “barbecue” used on its own never means the apparatus on which food is cooked; it only means a specific style of barbecued pork.
BTW, one of the oldest churches in these parts is Barbecue Presbyterian, so named because of its location near Barbecue Creek, from which the mists rose like smoke from a barbecue pit. The church was founded by Scottish Highlanders in the mid-18th Century; Flora MacDonald had connections to/relatives in the congregation.
It seems odd to talk about 'the' Canadian accent. Like any other large country, there are many. The peculiar pronunciation of 'out' seems to me to be an urban Ontario-ism. Not far from here there's a large Mennonite population, many of whom speak with what sounds like a German accent, even if they don't speak German. In other rural areas near here there's a strange accent that I've never heard anywhere else, and I've no idea where it comes from, though many of the people are of Dutch descent. Then there's Newfoundland with its own lovely speech that (to my ear) is closer to the Irish accent than any other. The town nearest us was developed by the Scots, and now has large first generation Portuguese and Dutch populations too - they've all added to the sounds you hear. 'The' Canadian accent is very much a work in progress, so be careful with generalisations!
Interesting. I was in a largely Mennonite part of Canada, and still heard the close diphthongs I was describing. I knew Newfoundland people too, and they said their accent was different, though it took me a while to hear the difference. To begin with, as a Brit in Canada, the differences between Canadian speech and British speech were the only thing I heard. Then after a while I heard differences within Canadian accents, but they were in addition to the differences between Canadian and British. As an English person, I know there are many English accents, but there are certain things that enable me to identify that an accent is English and not, say, Australian, or American.
It's odd, when I first went to Canada, the accent I heard simply sounded American. Canadians themselves would tell me how their accent differed from American - they were the ones who told me about the 'out and about' thing (these were Mennonites, in Manitoba), and gradually, after living in Canada a while, if I then heard an US accent on TV, I could tell it wasn't Canadian. Now, having been back in the UK for many years, if I hear a Canadian person speak, say, on a youtube video, I can generally tell they are Canadian, and this is regardless of where in Canada they come from. I don't have a detailed phonetic grasp of the differences between Canadian accents, like I do with English accents, but there are certain close diphthongs that enable me to say 'This sounds like a Canadian accent.'
That doesn't mean that everyone in Canada has the same accent - it just means there are certain identifiable things about Canadian accents, which are perhaps noticed more by non-Canadians. People who are part of a group tend to notice all the variety of differences within it, while people outside of the groups notice the broad differences this group has from their group.
I certainly wouldn't want to over-generalise, and my experience of Canada is fairly limited (there's only an indirect connection between my Ship name and the Nova Scotian place name); but I do remember hearing the Canadian 'out' from the mouth of a friend of my family who is originally from Saskatchewan and has lived for many years in a semi-rural area just outside Vancouver.
Heh, as a lover of liquorice, I've long been aware of the alternative American spelling. I guess from talking about it online and sometimes googling it to buy some from specialty liquorice shops online. I've also found that most (possibly all) of my American friends on Facebook think black liquorice is horrible, which astonished me, because I've loved it since I was a kid, and thought everyone loved it!
From the episode of the podcast Gastropod that I listened to yesterday, it's quite possible that your American friends were eating a fairly different thing to what you were eating.
I tried licorice with chilli and cranberry in Denmark. That was a mistake.
AIUI, "rideshare" these days is used in the US for people using their own car as a taxi (Uber, Lyft, etc.). BUT they are not taxis. There's a long-standing legal, cultural, and practical infrastructure and protocol for taxis. The rideshare companies skipped over all that for some time, though there's been work to try to make them play nicely and legally.
Nothing against the rideshare drivers. But the companies have made things hard for the (taxi) cab companies, which have had to follow the existing laws and rules.
I really dislike a word that’s being used a lot at the moment ‘normalcy’ instead of ‘normality’.
It grates and I don’t know why.
Could linguists explain?
'Normalcy' is more commonly used in the US, while 'normality' is more commonly used in the UK. Both started being used in the 1800s, with 'normality' being a slightly earlier usage.
You can look this stuff up in the OED online, by the way, if you have a library card of a library that subscribes. Most UK libraries do - just type in your library card number.
Or did I misunderstand your question, and you were asking why it grates? That would be more a sociolinguistic thing, and I'm not sure the extent to which it's been analysed, but I do observe in general that people easily get irritated by word usages which are different from those they have learnt to use, particularly if those usages are associated with groups of people of which they are not part, and might look down on. Maybe a kind of possessiveness over the English language!
AIUI, "rideshare" these days is used in the US for people using their own car as a taxi (Uber, Lyft, etc.).
When I first heard of uber, it was pitched as exactly a rideshare system (I commute from X to Y at 7:30am. I have 2 spare seats in my car.) but it very swiftly reformed itself into it's current operation as a taxi/minicab service. Don't know if anyone still operates an actual rideshare system.
When I first heard of uber, it was pitched as exactly a rideshare system (I commute from X to Y at 7:30am. I have 2 spare seats in my car.) but it very swiftly reformed itself into it's current operation as a taxi/minicab service. Don't know if anyone still operates an actual rideshare system.
Ah. Now you've described it, that's got a word. It's called a 'carshare' here. It has to be done a bit informally - e.g. with friends or people you work with - otherwise it can invalidate one's insurance.
There are voluntary true rideshare programs, where you sign up and they attempt to match you with someone who has the same commute. I imagine the details of gas money etc. are left to the participants.
There are voluntary true rideshare programs, where you sign up and they attempt to match you with someone who has the same commute. I imagine the details of gas money etc. are left to the participants.
True rideshare programs can be found on college campuses too, as a way of finding rides home for the weekend or breaks, etc.
I had a Canadian friend with a strong Irish accent, and she said her local area spoke like that, can't remember where in Canada. At first, it was disconcerting, but became familiar.
AIUI, "rideshare" these days is used in the US for people using their own car as a taxi (Uber, Lyft, etc.).
When I first heard of uber, it was pitched as exactly a rideshare system (I commute from X to Y at 7:30am. I have 2 spare seats in my car.) but it very swiftly reformed itself into it's current operation as a taxi/minicab service. Don't know if anyone still operates an actual rideshare system.
Yet a taxi service which skirts the regulations governing taxis. Leading to all sorts of lovely abuses, rape, etc.
I don't know if it's still active; but, for years, SF had a "casual carpooling" setup. Riders would wait at a certain place, drivers would come by and pick them up; then AIUI they could take the carpool lane on the Golden Gate Bridge, and not have to pay toll.
I don't know if anyone was expected to pitch in to help pay for gas.
As was said upthread, the Canadian 'out' tends to sound more like 'oat' than 'oot', but I imagine it may sound somewhat like 'oot' in New Foundland or Nova Scotia.
I have no idea how anything might sound in Saskatoon, but did see Michael Portillo got here by train on the telly once. Whether it ever received any other visitors, I have no idea. Timbuktu does, so I imagine Saskatoon must as well.
As was said upthread, the Canadian 'out' tends to sound more like 'oat' than 'oot', but I imagine it may sound somewhat like 'oot' in New Foundland or Nova Scotia.
I have no idea how anything might sound in Saskatoon, but did see Michael Portillo got here by train on the telly once. Whether it ever received any other visitors, I have no idea. Timbuktu does, so I imagine Saskatoon must as well.
We sound actually quite a lot like the people to the south: North Dakota and Montana, as well as to the east and west in Canada, but not too far either direction. We can always tell when people are not from Saskatchewan when they say Saskatchewan. The local pronunciation is Saskatchew'n. Very short at the end. If it rhymes with "one"/"won" or "yawn", the person is from elsewhere.
Same here. It's always washing up liquid...or fairy liquid (a popular brand). Because the activity in UK is called 'washing up' as opposed to 'doing the dishes'. We also have 'dishwasher' products, but this term always applies to detergent (etc) for a dishwasher machine, not those used to wash dishes by hand.
Interestingly why is it called DISHwasher, doing the DISHES etc when dishes are just a subset of items to be washed....more plates or cups are probably washed in most dishwashers than dishes....?!
Plates, cups, bowls are all regarded in the U.S. as "dishes," particularly in washing situations. We rarely use "dish" in the sense of "bowl" for that reason, though it is known. We're more likely to use it in the sense of "prepared food item, fancy thing my mother's cooking tonight".
I always have a kind of mental double-take when I see dish soap, both because I always think of soap as a bar or (rarely) flakes, rather than liquid, and because of its likeness to soap dish - into which I mentally expect dish soap might be put.
Now that we're all going eco-friendly, you actually can get a bar of soap for washing your dishes!
I agree with @Lamb Chopped that I'd think of dishes meaning crockery generally. However my husband's family (Yorkshire) say "washing the pots" which makes me think of cooking pans only. I keep wanting to say, "They're not pots, they're coffee cups!"
But then, pot can be used as a synonym for china, I suppose, so maybe that's the derivation.
I was surprised that the word "skank" was used by the American president. Perhaps it isn't defined the same, or perhaps it is and he meant it.
Why would anything he said surprise you? He has said much worse -- over and over again.
"Skank" is really quite an offensive word in UK slang. Perhaps it isn't in the US.
It's only applied to women and is highly derogatory. It implies very slovenly standards right across the board, not just morals but also probably personal hygiene.
Comments
Yes, I was surprised to see Miss Melanie, too. I'm from West Virginia, which is in the Appa-LAY-shuns* and I never considered myself a southerner. We fought with the North during the Civil War!
*I think Nick's pronunciation is become the universal standard though. I hear it his way in all the Ken Burns documentaries.
I’m not sure how it’s pronounced in Virginia. Maybe @Moo can say?
It used be sold here, or perhaps it was spelt Lifeboy. So long ago, I can't remember.
Apparently the first is American and the second is British. But while I as an Australian would tend to lean British in my English, I'm not personally inclined to use a 'q'. A couple of articles I just came across say that Australia and NZ tend to accept either version.
Only ever seen the former in the UK.
We don't tend to use barbie though, unless deliberately appropriating 'Strine terminology. It would then be found near tinny and sanger and a serious risk of Crocodile Dundee quotes.
Here in the UK, the 'correct' spelling (as in what the dictionaries give) is 'barbecue,' but in reality a lot of people spell it barbeque, I guess because the shortened form 'bbq' confuses things - I remember it confusing me one time, and I had to check the dictionary to remind myself of the full spelling.
And as I think I’ve mentioned before, here (North Carolina), “barbecue” used on its own never means the apparatus on which food is cooked; it only means a specific style of barbecued pork.
BTW, one of the oldest churches in these parts is Barbecue Presbyterian, so named because of its location near Barbecue Creek, from which the mists rose like smoke from a barbecue pit. The church was founded by Scottish Highlanders in the mid-18th Century; Flora MacDonald had connections to/relatives in the congregation.
Interesting. I was in a largely Mennonite part of Canada, and still heard the close diphthongs I was describing. I knew Newfoundland people too, and they said their accent was different, though it took me a while to hear the difference. To begin with, as a Brit in Canada, the differences between Canadian speech and British speech were the only thing I heard. Then after a while I heard differences within Canadian accents, but they were in addition to the differences between Canadian and British. As an English person, I know there are many English accents, but there are certain things that enable me to identify that an accent is English and not, say, Australian, or American.
It's odd, when I first went to Canada, the accent I heard simply sounded American. Canadians themselves would tell me how their accent differed from American - they were the ones who told me about the 'out and about' thing (these were Mennonites, in Manitoba), and gradually, after living in Canada a while, if I then heard an US accent on TV, I could tell it wasn't Canadian. Now, having been back in the UK for many years, if I hear a Canadian person speak, say, on a youtube video, I can generally tell they are Canadian, and this is regardless of where in Canada they come from. I don't have a detailed phonetic grasp of the differences between Canadian accents, like I do with English accents, but there are certain close diphthongs that enable me to say 'This sounds like a Canadian accent.'
That doesn't mean that everyone in Canada has the same accent - it just means there are certain identifiable things about Canadian accents, which are perhaps noticed more by non-Canadians. People who are part of a group tend to notice all the variety of differences within it, while people outside of the groups notice the broad differences this group has from their group.
From the episode of the podcast Gastropod that I listened to yesterday, it's quite possible that your American friends were eating a fairly different thing to what you were eating.
I tried licorice with chilli and cranberry in Denmark. That was a mistake.
It grates and I don’t know why.
Could linguists explain?
No, that's a term I've never heard (I'm glad to say). Is that another alternative to taxi?
Nothing against the rideshare drivers. But the companies have made things hard for the (taxi) cab companies, which have had to follow the existing laws and rules.
'Normalcy' is more commonly used in the US, while 'normality' is more commonly used in the UK. Both started being used in the 1800s, with 'normality' being a slightly earlier usage.
You can look this stuff up in the OED online, by the way, if you have a library card of a library that subscribes. Most UK libraries do - just type in your library card number.
When I first heard of uber, it was pitched as exactly a rideshare system (I commute from X to Y at 7:30am. I have 2 spare seats in my car.) but it very swiftly reformed itself into it's current operation as a taxi/minicab service. Don't know if anyone still operates an actual rideshare system.
I don't get and never have, the "out" thing. I don't hear it. Dog is one that often sounds quite long and drawn out in American speak to my ears.
Dishwashing soap. Which I believe is washing up liquid for UK.
Yet a taxi service which skirts the regulations governing taxis. Leading to all sorts of lovely abuses, rape, etc.
You mean dish detergent?
To me, it ought to be "acclimatise".
Apparently the American version is older!
I don't know if it's still active; but, for years, SF had a "casual carpooling" setup. Riders would wait at a certain place, drivers would come by and pick them up; then AIUI they could take the carpool lane on the Golden Gate Bridge, and not have to pay toll.
I don't know if anyone was expected to pitch in to help pay for gas.
I have no idea how anything might sound in Saskatoon, but did see Michael Portillo got here by train on the telly once. Whether it ever received any other visitors, I have no idea. Timbuktu does, so I imagine Saskatoon must as well.
We sound actually quite a lot like the people to the south: North Dakota and Montana, as well as to the east and west in Canada, but not too far either direction. We can always tell when people are not from Saskatchewan when they say Saskatchewan. The local pronunciation is Saskatchew'n. Very short at the end. If it rhymes with "one"/"won" or "yawn", the person is from elsewhere.
"Kitchen squirt" is a new term for me. Is it something your family says, or is it more widespread?
It sounds like it ought to mean "scullery maid"...
Interestingly why is it called DISHwasher, doing the DISHES etc when dishes are just a subset of items to be washed....more plates or cups are probably washed in most dishwashers than dishes....?!
I was surprised that the word "skank" was used by the American president. Perhaps it isn't defined the same, or perhaps it is and he meant it.
I agree with @Lamb Chopped that I'd think of dishes meaning crockery generally. However my husband's family (Yorkshire) say "washing the pots" which makes me think of cooking pans only. I keep wanting to say, "They're not pots, they're coffee cups!"
But then, pot can be used as a synonym for china, I suppose, so maybe that's the derivation.
It's only applied to women and is highly derogatory. It implies very slovenly standards right across the board, not just morals but also probably personal hygiene.