American English is Often Weird

TwasBrillig

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hahaha. such an interesting topic.

i grew up in iowa more than anywhere else (also lived in minnesota and new mexico). anyway...iowans use the word "at" at the end of certain sentences. for example: "where you gonna be at?"

also...i grew up saying "pop." to me, "soda" seems....fancy. hahaha! i would never say the word "soda." it feels weird coming out of my mouth.

living in louisiana now is very different. it's like living in a whole different country. people here speak so different from anything i've ever heard. sometimes the accent is so strong that i can't understand it.

i love accents. :biggrin1:

The last "at". And I thought that was only here in SW Pa. "Where is it at?" I had never heard that (that I can recall) until I moved here. Thanks, Nay-Nay.
 

gymfresh

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In college I could always tell the kids who came from out of state because they generally mispronounced city names. The way we say it is in parentheses:

Staunton (STAN-tn)
Richmond (RICH-mun)
Norfolk (NAW-fuck)
Kecoughtan (KICK-a-tan)

A family name there, Taliaferro, is pronounced "Tolliver"
 

Calboner

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In college I could always tell the kids who came from out of state because they generally mispronounced city names. The way we say it is in parentheses:

Staunton (STAN-tn)
Richmond (RICH-mun)
Norfolk (NAW-fuck)
Kecoughtan (KICK-a-tan)

A family name there, Taliaferro, is pronounced "Tolliver"

I had heard about all of those except Kecoughtan. I Googled it and found (according to this page) that the name was originally spelled the way it was pronounced, "Kikotan." Some jackass must have had the idea that it looked classier to write "Kecoughtan." Or maybe they wanted to spell it in a way that would make it easy to identify outsiders, who would inevitably mispronounce it.
 

gymfresh

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That whole area is a bit odd. Just down the road and across the river are

Poquoson (puh-KO-sin)
and
Mathews (MATH-iss)

The county around Richmond, the capital, is Henrico (hen-RYE-coh)

Further west is Narrows (Narrs) and Buena Vista (BYOO-na Vista)

Not really on the language topic, but another oddity in that state (actually not a state, one of the 4 mainland commonwealths) is that cities cannot be in counties. Cities and counties are distinct operational entities and have no power over one another. For example, in the NE corner of the state you have the City of Fairfax, which is entirely surrounded by powerful Fairfax County. However, the school, police, fire and other services are completely separate, as is the administration, board, and taxation authority. When filling out a form in Virginia, you are asked whether you live in a city or a county. They are mutually exclusive. In the SE part of the commonwealth are the powerful city-counties (Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Norfolk, VA Beach) that are merged entities, similar to Arlington in the north (formerly part of the District of Columbia).


Certain parts of the commonwealth have interesting speech or lingustic variants, too.

Many of my friends from the Lynchburg area would say "thow" instead of "throw". One stylistic oddity that I still use is "might could" or "might should". These have a very specific intent.

"What do you want to do tonight?"
"We might could go see a movie."

To a Virginian, this is rather different from "We could go see a movie", which is about listing possibilities. "We might could go see a movie" is more like "maybe we could use our time to see a movie, or maybe not"; just a shade less declarative than a simple "could" or "should".
 

Calboner

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Oh, Lord, what a land of shibboleths!
And the Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites. And when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, "Let me go over," the men of Gilead said to him, "Are you an Ephraimite?" When he said, "No," they said to him, "Then say Shibboleth," and he said, "Sibboleth," for he could not pronounce it right; then they seized him and slew him at the fords of the Jordan. (Judges 12:5–6)
I lived in Blacksburg for a year and I didn't know about the city–county business at all. The only oddly pronounced place name that I had to deal with while I was there was "Staunton."

A friend of mine from Arkansas tells me that "might could" indicates a stronger, not a weaker, possibility than simple "could."
 

invisibleman

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That whole area is a bit odd. Just down the road and across the river are

Poquoson (puh-KO-sin)
and
Mathews (MATH-iss)

My uncle lives in Tabb, Virginia. My uncle took my father and I to one of the most "ghetto" of swap meets. My uncle was going to buy me a "grille" for my mouth. :rolleyes: A grille is hip hop slang for a gold/silver jewel encrusted jewelry you hook to your teeth like a mouthpiece. :)biggrin1:). Don't worry, I didn't get a grille for my mouth. (I am not the hip hop kind of guy either.) I didn't buy anything at the swap meet either. One of the shop tenants asked us if we were from Poquoson. *(Apparently there are many very, very light skinned black folks living in that area.)
 

gymfresh

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Oh, Lord, what a land of shibboleths!
A friend of mine from Arkansas tells me that "might could" indicates a stronger, not a weaker, possibility than simple "could."​



While it's a stronger level of suggestion (or preference), it is a weaker form of certainty: equivalent to maybe could or maybe should. It's also judged to be somewhat more polite, such as the "All You Care to Eat" signs in buffets around the Old Dominion, vs. the more coarse "All You Can Eat" one sees outside of the Old South (a disturbing image, when you think about it).​
 
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Calboner

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While it's a stronger level of suggestion (or preference), it is a weaker form of certainty: equivalent to maybe could or maybe should.
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that "could" is used for making plain statements of fact, while "might could" is used for suggesting a course of action? E.g., when Cletus says to Brandine, holding up a pair of boots, "You might could wear these to your job interview" (to which she replies, "And scuff up the topless dancing runway? Naw, you best brang 'em back where from you got 'em"), he is suggesting, tentatively, that she wear the boots; whereas, if he were talking to some third party about the options available to Brandine, he would say, "She could wear these." Anyway, that's the best sense that I can make of it. It may be something that Yankees just don't get.
It's also judged to be somewhat more polite, such as the "All You Care to Eat" signs in buffets around the Old Dominion, vs. the more coarse "All You Can Eat" one sees outside of the Old South (a disturbing image, when you think about it).
Not if your name is Homer Simpson. :biggrin1: