dickman45885 said:I know this is off thread.
I am in the south right now, AL to be exact. I am from the north, and some of the southernisms are quite funny. The first time I heard, "I'm a fixin....", I asked the guy if it was broken. Another one I like is, "I'm gonna carry him to the store." I also like the plural of y'all, all y'all. I have also discovered folks down south do not push buttons, they mash them. They do not go to Wal-mart, but instead go to
Wal-marts.
I do enjoy the pace of life here....do the police issue speeding tickets? It seems to me as if there is no hurry to get anyplace, and gosh if the store clerk asks how you are doing....they want to really know.
I love the cute southern girls with the accents too, even if they are difficult to sometimes understand.
I'm a native New Mexican and would like to share some of our local ways of talking. In New Mexico we don't go to Wal-Mart, we go to Wal-Mark! Same thing for K-Mart holds true, we shop at K-Mark!:redface: We also use "coke" as a generic word for any kind of California "soda":wink:, I like Texans a little better now that I know we have that in common!:tongue: We mispronounce many words and say things the wrong way here, as well. We don't take a shower, we "throw" a shower! Sometimes our bilingualism comes through and we "throw" a "chower!":biggrin1: We also misstate things we are going to do. An example is: "I'm going to throw something at you", in our lexicon it becomes "I'm gonna throw you with something!" Spanglish or "Mexicanisms" always abound here. We have an affinity for switching from english to espanol several times in one sentence--que no?, yes, hijola man! One of my favorite local phrases is "a la vay", I use it all the time! It began as "a la verga", but that is a spanish swear word! In elementary school here we used to use it all the time. Our teachers (being mostly bilingual) knew what it meant and would warn us not to use it. Eventually we began changing it and it now has many variants. I'll list the ones I know of, and use myself, for you guys.:wink:
1. "a la verga" (the original spanish version)
2. "a la vay" (my favorite and the one I use most)
3. "a la vagers" (sounds like pagers and the long version of #2)
4. "a la maquina" (maquina means machine or device in spanish)?
5. "a la mowdies" (I think my family came up with this one)
6. "a la dick" (a more literal spanglish version of the original spanish
meaning)
7. "a la, man!" (used to indicate disgust, surprise, or amazement with
someone)
8. "a la" (shortest and most universally used version)
9. "ooh a la" (used when you're really pissed off or fed up with someone's
actions or deeds)
Some more examples of the meaning of "a la verga" are: "a la chingada" (made famous by Cheech and Chong) and "que va", which basically mean "too much" of, or amazement (disgusted amazement as well) with something or someone. More examples of our mispronunciations are: "installation" for insulation, "winchilled" for windshield and "brrohway" for broadway. We also mispronounce city names. Chicago sounds like "Cheecahgo", Grand Rapids is "Grain Wrappie", and Wichita is "Weeshitah" or "Wishitah"!:redface: It's amazing that we can switch the pronunciations for Wichita and shower isn't it!:biggrin1: We just can't pronounce "sh" and "ch" sounds for the right words, I guess! I'm a Hispanic (Mexican-American) and I've forgotten most of the spanish I grew up with, but these things about New Mexico always amaze me and make me happy with our bilingualism!:smile:
On point, I'd say to all of you, please have mercy on those of us who aren't yet on your level of understanding the english language and it's grammar! I am fluent in english and am a third generation American, but I still don't know all the intricacies of these things!:redface: I got straight D's in almost all of my English classes throughout my life.:biggrin1::redface: Give us a bit of a break. OK? Please!:smile: