Fun With Dialects

A Facebook friend posted the link to this group of maps that show various American dialects and I thought, "I'll have to check that out." Then I saw a bunch of different people talking about the maps on Twitter and thought, "I'm going to check that out right now."

It's pretty interesting. Some of the findings match my expectations, while others don't. For example, I pronounce "crayon" the way the map says I should based on my Delaware Valley roots. But here's the thing: I know very few people from the Delaware Valley who pronounce "crayon" the way I do - most people I knew growing up said "crown." I don't know how I learned to pronounce "crayon" the correct way, but I did; it's the same with "water." Speaking of, I'm surprised "water" didn't make the cut since I can think of three pronunciations off the top of my head.

I learned some things, too. I had no idea that so many people have no idea how to pronounce "Bowie knife." I learned how to pronounce it when I was a kid and we were driving past Bowie, MD and I pronounced it like David Bowie and my dad told me I was wrong and explained about Jim Bowie and the Bowie knife. Also, I finally understand why the creepy Morgan & Morgan guy says "law-yer;" I always thought he was being obnoxious but it turns out he was just being Southern.

As far as the hoagie map is concerned, that sandwich was invented in Philadelphia so I think the rest of the country should just accept that it's a hoagie. And that's a fairly recent stance for me. We called that sandwich a sub when I was growing up (my dad isn't from the Delaware Valley) and I always thought the word "hoagie" was dumb. But I really started to embrace "hoagie" when I moved to Florida. It will be interesting to see if I revert to calling it a sub if when I move back to Philly.

Fun With Foreign Words

Back in March I shared a link to a list of English words that are no longer used but should be. The other day I stumbled upon this list of foreign words that we could use in English at Mental Floss.

The list does not include my personal favorite foreign word that has no English equivalent, Schadenfreude, but that's okay because Schadenfreude is used an awful lot in English (particularly in the corners of the Internet that I tend to frequent).

I'm disappointed that the list didn't include pronunciation; some of the words are in languages I've never heard of and there's no way I could pronounce them. I recognized one of the words, Koi No Yokan, because it's the name of the Deftones record that came out last year, but I didn't know how to pronounce it in November and I still don't. (On the plus side, I now know what it means.)

I appreciated that the list included Schlemiel and Schlimazel; I've known those words my whole life thanks to Laverne & Shirley, but I never had any idea what they meant.

Fun With Obsolete Words

A good friend, who shares my fondness for fun vocabulary, sent me a link to this post at Death and Taxes about obsolete words. I didn't ask whether she agreed with the author's assertion that the words in question became obsolete before their time. I don't agree that we need all the words, but some of them are fantastic.

My favorite word on the list, and the one that I'd most like to start using, is resistentialism. My friend told me to check out resistentialism when she sent the link because she knows I have a habit of commanding inanimate objects to do things when they are being particularly spiteful; it would have been so great if we'd known there was a word for the spiteful behavior of inanimate objects when we were in college.

Another word on the list I really loved is Englishable, but I doubt I'll be able to use it much. It makes me wonder if there's a word for taking an English word that's one part of speech and turning it into another part of speech. My friends and I did that all the time in college, normally turning a noun into a verb (table and tea were the most commonly turned). Furthermore, I wonder if there's a word for using a proper noun as a verb (Google and Netflix spring to mind).