regional Sayings

The Pub
1

I heard a feller the other day who was describing to a crowd of 6 folks how he had to remove a large rock from his garden and he said “I had to mash down like I was climbing the Saluda Grade”. The other 5 stared at him while I busted out laughing. Then I realized I was the only one that knew what he meant. The others didn’t grow up around here.

The Saluda grade is legendary around here and anyone that has travelled I-26 between Spartanburg and Asheville knows all about it. Down shifting going up, and then coming down…pray your brakes hold out. The rail line run the Pacolet River and trains had to break apart to get up the grade.

Then I got to thinking, which is usually bad for the Tubercle, I bet everyone has local sayings that an outsider would have no clue.

let us in on them.

2

We been known to say…

HOWDY… :o

Other ppl say SUP?

3

Catty-corner but maybe that’s not so regional. We use it a lot and sometime I get a Huh? but I don’t care.

I can’t think of any colloquialisms really though except ya’ll or motherfucker…

4

Da Saluda Grade is definetly da kine!

5

Oh bruddah, da grinds at your da kine broke the mouth!

6

Here in Hawaii we say, “No talk stink or bumbye you get lockjaw.”

7

Lucky ting we live Hawaii, yah?!

8

Up here in the Northeast, especially around the cities, it’s more along the lines of hand signals  ;D

9

Not sayings, but I found this regional dialect map a few years ago. Below the map are descriptions and video examples.

http://aschmann.net/AmEng/

10

In New Jersey, using the f*bomb, it’s noun, verb, adverb,pronoun,preposition,particple, and standard greeting

11

It’s not really an old standard yet but I saw a t-shirt this year that said “Urbandale- Only we know where our borders are.”

If you ever see a map of Urbandale, IA you would understand too.  We are an independent suburb of Des Moines sandwiched between 3 other suburbs.  There are places where Urbandale is only on side of a 4 lane highway and less than a block wide.  There’s one area where none of the police forces will respond because none of them believe it is in any of the towns.

Kinda crazy.

Paul

12

My favorite is ‘hard tellin, not knowing’ but I don’t know how regional it is.

But, in VT We…

Drink soda, not pop
eat subs not grinders
eat creemees not soft serve
and, in the winter, when the snow is fresh on the roads and we got a new pair of snow mobile boots we grab onto someones bumper and go skitching. (it does get to be a tab bit nippley there in the winter)

The state bird is the jeezum crow (not really actually it’s the hermit thrush but…)

Course, now I live in northern california and WE think that stuff is hella whack.

And I used to live in boston where we thought all that stuff was wicked retahhded

13

What do the cows in Jersey say?
“F*#king moo”

Or

“Yeah, I got your milk right here!”. accompanied by the appropriate hand gesture

14

Is it wiggity wack?  Is Northern California like an ironic version of 20 year old kriss kross songs?

15

northern cali has been flogging ‘hella’ for at least 20 years. At the brew club meeting a couple weeks ago a guy had a shirt with the stop sign shape on the front reading ‘Stop Hella’. I’m pretty sure northern californians have been trying to get people to STOP saying hella for at least 20 years as well.

16

I guess it could be worse  :wink:

17

Where I grew up we had a few sayings that wouldn’t make much sense to an outsider.
Eddie would go
Keep the country, country

18

Another one that I like is…“I may be some dumb but I ain’t plumb dumb”.

19

Eddie would TOW!

20

I don’t know, I never heard of “sun breaks” as a weather phenomena until I moved to the NW . . .

The weirdest thing I think, is all of the people in the south who use “coke” as a generic word for “soda”.
http://popvssoda.com/countystats/total-county.html