Something silly for our crazy days

The beginning of the school year has been nuts for us and work is busy, so I could use some silliness. Somebody on Facebook posted about where she's from and it led to a funny conversation, so I thought I'd do the same thing here.

What's a colloquialism or fact or other funny thing about where you live or where you grew up?

Here in the south, we say "Bless your heart" as both an insult and as a sympathy. You have to figure out which.

We have a town called Conetoe near by- locals know that it's pronounced Cun-ee-tah.

Your turn!

 

Hell, Michigan. Every year there were lots of jokes about it freezing over.

 

I grew up in  a "unincorporated area" near the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World.  Plant City, Florida.  The redneck runs deep.  Surprisingly though, while the city is straight up farming community, it's not named after plants.  It's named after Henry B. Plant, the guy who brought the railroad to Tampa and Plant City. 
 
Aside from "Bless your heart" we also say the typical Southern sayings, "Kiss my grits" is one of my favorites that I don't use often enough.  I said something really Southern the other day and I the person I was talking to looked at me like I had two heads.  I don't remember what it was.  Probably used "cattywumpus" in a sentence. 
 
Some facts about Florida.  I come from Cracker lineage, both Florida versions.  My family can be traced back to ranching in Florida in the 1800's (crackers cracked the whip to move cattle instead of using dogs to herd.) and I'm a 3rd generation (on all sides) Central Floridian.  The Fountain of Youth is thought to be in St. Augustine, Ponce de Leon was looking for it when he discovered Florida sometime after Columbus before Jamestown.  It doesn't really exist though.  The state bird is the Roseatte Spoonbill, a neat flamingo pink bird and flamingo sized that also stands on one foot in the water, but instead of using it's beak as a spear, it's shaped like a spoon and they use it to shuffle through the silt.  They're pink because they eat shrimp.

 

I'm all too familiar with all our crazy southernisms. LOL 
 
But for the past 5 years I've lived in south Louisiana, and 4 of those in one of the southern most parishes. The accent is thick and there's still some cajun-french slang. And my husband has rubbed off on me a little. Ha! One term that we use nearly daily is "boude" (boo-day) and means to pout. I also like coo-yun which means something like idiot. 
 
The last names took a little bit to get used to and I still mispronounce many! One that really threw me at first was Authement, pronounced o-dee-mon. And then there's Simoneaux, Chaisson, Chauvin, etc. (Those on my Facebook, how do you think my last name is pronounced? )

 

O-conn?

 

My dad is from the Mississippi delta area of Arkansas where they refer to people as living "on the wrong side of the levy" instead of wrong side if the tracks because the poorer population lives in the Mississippi flood plain. Thanks to the Mississippi Flood back in the 90s, they were reminded that there's no *right* side of the levy!

 

I grew up in Delaware, we have a lot of the pronunciation issues.  Lewes, Del. is pronounced by the old locals as "Lewz."  There's the town of Houston, which is pronounced "house-ton" but has a Houston Street, pronounced like Houston, TX.   There's a lot of old Dutch names around Philly too.  Conshohocken, Wilkes Barre (Wilkes Berry), Bryn Mawr (Brin Mar), the Schuylkill (Schoolkul) River.  Apparently the Dutch word for 'river' is 'kill' so we have the Broadkill River, the Murderkill River...  yikes!
 
In Delaware, there's a big rivalry between the 'above the canal' and 'below the canal' folks.  The canal being the C & D canal that runs cuts the bottom 2/3 of Delaware off.  The below the canal being referred to as 'slower lower Delaware.'    Luckily we move a lot and not a lot of people outside of the area have even heard of Delaware. :laughing: 

 

I live near Port Dalhousie which is pronounced dal-lou-ie. There is a Dalhousie university out east that is pronounced dal-house-ie

I live in Welland which people always add a ton to the end of. We're just well and.

For those who dont know, how would you say my last name Millar. I can tell where people are from by how they say it.

 

Close. 
 
It actually depends a little on where you are. In New Orleans most people say it like you O'Quinn. But "down the bayou" people say it with more of a French accent and don't pronounce the n at the end. 
 
 
I grew up just outside the Mississippi Delta in Mississippi. One thing we heard growing up was if someone was in "high cotton" and it meant that they were doing well financially. 

 

Having grown up between DC, Baltimore & Philly, the way we could tell where someone was from was how they referred to going to the beach.
 
"We're going to the beach"  - From Delaware, Eastern shore of Maryland, referring to Rehoboth, Dewey, Fenwick Island, DE 
"We're goin' down ne'ocean" - Baltimore (Or Bal'more), referring to Ocean City, MD
"We're going to the shore" - Philly, referring to the Jersey beaches
 
I have a last name that's different depending on where the speaker is from. 

 

Mill-ARE?

 

Up here we use the french pronunciation for things, so I remember being laughed at by Americans for prouncing Montevideo "monte-vid-AY-oh" and stuff like that. For Calgary, you can always tell people who are from here.. outsiders say "Cal-gary" but Calgarians say "Cal-gree". There's a lot of place names here that have a very Alberta pronunciation. Kris notices when I go back to my hometown I start using things like "i seen that!" or "do you want a sammich?"

 

I'm with Stephanie for Kendra's pronunciation.  Mill-ARE. 
 
Gina - we have some French roads in Plant City - Beauxchamp.  "Bee-sham"  is one I can remember right off hand.  I can totally see Authement. 

 

Kansas-
I'm not sure if we have an accent??
We grow a lot of wheat.
If you follow college basketball you'll know about the KU Jayhawks.
The sunsets here are AMAZING!
 
Unfortunately there just isnt really much else to say about this flyover state.  We move a little slower and generally people are pretty considerate and helpful and fairly open minded. 
I live in Topeka (the state capitol, pronounced To' Pee Kuh) nicknames are Top-City or T-town.  Apparently Topeka is Native American for 'a good place to grow potatoes. I'm not sure that is confirmed.
 Topeka is probably best know for the US Supreme Court case Brown Vs Board of Education.

 

If you ask me where I'm from I will say New York, but then people think the city and I have to follow-up with Long Island.  Oh and if you live here you don't call NYC "New York City" or "Manhattan," its just "the city."  
 
I don't have much of a new yawk accent, but my parents do and because I grew up with that I can tawk like a new yawkah... which cracks up my mid-western husband (he grew up in northern minnesota). I think its a common misconception that new yorkers are rude... I think we are actually quite helpful when asked.  But we live in a tiny place with SOOO many people that we are always rushing around trying to carve out our little space.  We talk fast and walk fast, but if you are a tourist and need help and ask someone, I bet that person is very helpful (if you can stop them!).  
 
We have great pizza places, delis, bagels, and diners around me.  You can't go a mile without running into all of these things!  Our traffic is atrocious (again small place with lots of people), so you have to drive more aggressively to get where you are going.  I always have to take it down a notch when we visit my in laws and I'm driving around in MN/ND.    We also have gorgeous beaches and one of the best things about living on this island is that I can drive 2 minutes and be on my boat or at a beach... and yes I will drive and not walk.  Thats another thing about Long Island- we drive A LOT.  Even if its not far and you could probably walk, we drive.  Bad I know, but we are in a hurry!  

 

Here's another silly- we have a town nearby called Washington. The locals refer to it as Little Washington (lest you confuse it with, you know, the Big Washington). There was a huge campaign by the Washington Historical Society years ago to do away with the "Little" moniker and get people to refer to it as "The Original Washington." It didn't stick.

 

I'm going with Mill-ARE too. 
 
 

 
 
Down here anything with the "eaux" ending is pronounced with the long o, so it would be "BO-sham" down here. 
 
There's a street in New Orleans called Calliope. Most would think it's ka-LIE-a-pee. But it's actually like CAL-lee-ope. Go figure. LOL

 

Just got a text from Chris. It says, "Bout to get da wet a$$" (Only not edited, lol)
Which means it's about to rain obviously. But seriously, between Chris and my BIL, I don't think I've ever heard one of them say, "Oh, it looks like it's about to rain." 

 

 
Leighann
Long Island has nothing on Staten Island for diners.  In fact that was was I missed the most when I moved from Staten Island (aka the garbage dump of NYC) to Long Island.

 

I grew up in the Lower Mainland in BC. A common mispronunciation is for a nearby small town Chilliwack - it's pronounced Chil-luh-whack but people who've never heard it said out loud usually say Chilly-whack, which always makes me giggle. I also rarely come clean about my home town (Surrey) because it's pretty much considered the ghetto of Vancouver and "Surrey girls" have a bit of a reputation.

 

Now I live in Beaufort, SC - pronounced Buuu-fert
 
Not to be confused with Beaufort, NC - pronounced Bo-fort    Right Stephanie?  ;-)

 

Mill-er, like the beer. Most Canadians get it, Americans go for the ARE. Easy to screen out telemarketers too. 

 

That's what I was just about to post, Kendra. Miller. We have Millarville, which is Millerville.
 
All y'all Americans pronounce Boehmer like John Boehner. Germans pronounce it Buh-mer (with a german sort of umlaut sound in there) and telemarketers are Bo-EH-MEER?

 

 
Really!?  I love a good diner!  The flashier the better My experience with Staten Island is limited to driving through it between the verrazano and the gothels, and I took my GRE on staten island because I procrastinated registering and all the local testing locations were booked (back in the stone age of having to take these tests on paper!). Next time we pass through we may have to make a diner stop.. especially since it will be so much better than one of the NJ turnpike rest stops

 

Hmm.. I cannot really think of anything for right here where I live, but I did spend a year in Norway.  In Norway, the work "GIFT" (soft g) means both marry and poison. 
 
We camp about 15 minutes from the town of Faribault, MN.  It is pronounced Fairbo.

 

My relatives all live in a town in Saskatchewan called Bienfait; which should have a french pronunciation, but they pronounce it Bean Fate. It's very little wonder that I didn't retain much french; my french teacher was a "native speaker" from near there too.

 

yeah, I'm going to have to agree that they're saying it wrong!

 

I live in Jersey Shore....PA, which is smack dab right in the middle of Pennsylvania and no where near the shore.

 

That's so wrong!
And XACTLY, Kate!

 

Kate is right on about Delaware and Philly folk saying "going to the shore..."  And the Dutch names and the names of rivers in the area.
I grew up in a small town outside of Philadelphia...we are right on the border of Pennsylvania and Delaware (I could walk to Delaware, that's how close we are) and in my little town there is a street called Blueball Ave.  Lots of giggles at that name growing up.   The town I grew up in was a refinery town (the major one closed a few years ago) and we always said that we were surprised no one ever found three eyed fish in our area.  
I could definitely tell you, moving from a small town to the city was a HUGE change for me.  Just my concept of a busy street has changed.  

 

Nancy, I have giggled at the Blueball Ave sign on 95 many, many, many times.  :laughing: 

 

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, where we had a suburb called North Versailles. (pronounced North Ver-sails).  And yes, they teach the RIGHT way to say it, but you can't tell any Pittsburger how to pronounce that name!!
 
A big discussion we had growing up was how to pronounce Carnegie.  (I say Car-NEG-y). Other say it CAR-neg-y. Andrew Carnegie is probably rolling around in his grave!!!
 
I now live in Cleveland, Ohio, which has a suburb (neighboring town, really), called Mantua (MAN-oo-ay).  They also have Milan, Ohio (MY-lan).
 
My husband is from "the city", although he lived in New Jersey for a while. So we had the "soda or pop?" debate a lot. I once asked my niece how she pronounced this (holding up a can of pop) and she looked at me and said, "Sprite." She wasn't getting in that fight!!
 
Oh, and I agree.   New Yorkers are rumored to be rude, and to have a crusty outside, but a gooey inside.  I have come to love the NY side of my family, they are the salt of the earth!
 
Have you ever heard the expression "He's a peach!" for a good guy? A peach is like a mensch, I think.

 

 
my great grandmother is buried there!  In fact my parents go out twice a year to clean up the grave etc (they actually just found the grave this year).
 
I live in Old Forge PA - pizza capital of the world.  Its a small town of about 8000 - situated between Scranton (of "The Office") and Wilkes Barre (if anyone has heard of the Kids for Cash scandal - that would be it).  We are predominantly descendents of Italian immigrants - although there is a lot of Irish (Scranton has the 2nd or 3rd largest St Drunks Day parade (oh sorry I mean St Patricks Day) in the country behind Boston and NY.  Not too much in the way of speech but you can tell a "valley accent."  Oh and we say "sangwich" LOL.

 

That's cool! It's about 20 minutes away from Williamsport, home of the Little League World Series