22 maps that show how americans speak

If you go to the link at the very end of the article ( http://spark-1590165977.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/jkatz/SurveyMaps/ ) you can see many more results as well as results by individual city.

It is SLOOOOW, so be ready for that.

^Get faster internetz.

Woody wrote: You people have drive-through liquor stores?!

My favorite thing about Wyoming.

You'll see a billboard about "Don't Drink and Drive", while in the parking lot at the drive-through liquor store.

I agree with Texas, it's a BOO-EE.

z31maniac wrote: ^Get faster internetz.

I have a pretty fast connection. Maps are taking more than 2 seconds to load.

Unacceptable.

mad_machine wrote: growing up in the shadow of Philly, I still refer to subs as "Hoagies" the Wawas around here even have "hoagiefest" in the summer

Grew up within an hour or so of Philly, and I use hoagie and sub interchangeably. Nobody outside of NYC calls it a hero.

And very few people anywhere know what a grinder is.

Duke wrote:

mad_machine wrote: growing up in the shadow of Philly, I still refer to subs as "Hoagies" the Wawas around here even have "hoagiefest" in the summer

Grew up within an hour or so of Philly, and I use hoagie and sub interchangeably. Nobody outside of NYC calls it a hero. And very few people anywhere know what a grinder is.

Odlly enough I grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida, calling them grinders because out house was near the only pizza place apparently in several thousand miles that called them grinders. Not sure what the background of the owners was, but that was my verbal standard growing up.

But I love stuff like this. Apparently my dialect puts me somewhere squarely between Toronto and Macon. Seeing as how I was raised in the south by a Canadian I suppose it all makes sense.

Perhaps one day I'll enter a situation where I can combine my knowledge of what pop and a chesterfield is with crawdad's and "y'all" and really hit it big.

jg

Gym class here in Connecticut. Subs and Grinders are used interchangeably. In Maine, they're called Italians.

Brett_Murphy wrote:

z31maniac wrote: ^Get faster internetz.

I have a pretty fast connection. Maps are taking more than 2 seconds to load. Unacceptable.

RealMiniDriver wrote: Oh, they missed one for a group of two or more people: "youse"

They missed pittsburgh with yinz.

JG Pasterjak wrote: But I love stuff like this. Apparently my dialect puts me somewhere squarely between Toronto and Macon. Seeing as how I was raised in the south by a Canadian I suppose it all makes sense. Perhaps one day I'll enter a situation where I can combine my knowledge of what pop and a chesterfield is with crawdad's and "y'all" and really hit it big. jg

I know by Toronto, what you really mean is Burford, and Chesterfield is a smoke. What you sit on is a couch, and never a sofa.

We called it Gym, then Phys ed, and wore runners.

I remember when I was a kid, seeing commercials on western NY TV for Heros, and Hoagies and wondering WTF they were.

I should add, in Georgia ("jaw-ja") it was PE.

By the way, I'm blaming Raising Arizona for my use of the word crawdads. Truth be told, I don't think I ever saw one until I went to school in Georgia.

Zomby Woof wrote: wore runners.

I was trying to figure out what we call "shoes" (because the defacto "shoe" 75% of people wear casually is a sneaker but we don't call them that).

Yep, they are runners up here.

And gym and phys-ed were interchangeable.

It's pop. Soda makes me laugh (its a running joke to ask for a soda up here, people know what you mean but you always get a strange look).

And its cel-EE-ka, not selika. People would look at you sideways if you called them that up here.

Here's another one: When we go grocery shopping, my wife says that everything goes into a sack. She's also from one of the pop states.

We called it gym, mostly. The alternative was fie (rhymes with pie)-ed. Coincidentally, in high school, our fie-ed instructor's name was Edward Haeger. We affectionately called him Physical Ed. He recently passed away and a memorial service is this weekend.

Racer1ab wrote:

Woody wrote: You people have drive-through liquor stores?!

They're worth it for the novelty if nothing else. There's also supposed to be a drive thru strip club in PA somewhere...

Climax, Rt. 22 in Delmont

Duke wrote: Nobody outside of NYC calls it a hero.

Zomby Woof wrote:

JG Pasterjak wrote: But I love stuff like this. Apparently my dialect puts me somewhere squarely between Toronto and Macon. Seeing as how I was raised in the south by a Canadian I suppose it all makes sense. Perhaps one day I'll enter a situation where I can combine my knowledge of what pop and a chesterfield is with crawdad's and "y'all" and really hit it big. jg

I know by Toronto, what you really mean is Burford, and Chesterfield is a smoke. What you sit on is a couch, and never a sofa. We called it Gym, then Phys ed, and wore runners. I remember when I was a kid, seeing commercials on western NY TV for Heros, and Hoagies and wondering WTF they were.

Not for my people. Smokes were smokes, and you enjoyed them sitting on the Chesterfield while you "looked at" television. Although I think that last one may have been more generational than regional. Transferring a beverage from a large contained to a drinking container was known as "spilling," as in "spill me a drink." Although that may have been from a lack of English as a native language.

My grandparents also loved "Diff'rent Strokes." Whenever it would come on my grandfather would say to my grandmother "Pearl, time to watch 'Black Boy.'" My grandpa was a machinist, but I always thought he would have done fine as a network programming exec.

Also, the Gym/PE thing seemed to be school based for me. Middle school we had PE, high school we had gym. I bet if I looked hard enough I could trace that shift to a popular tv show or movie that came out around 1983-1985 that used the term "gym" a lot.

Aren't there some specific regional terms for liquor stores or convenience stores? Maybe in the northeast?

jg

JG Pasterjak wrote: Aren't there some specific regional terms for liquor stores or convenience stores? Maybe in the northeast? jg

I never heard the term package store until moving to Georgia. In New York, we called them liquor stores--not that I was old enough to purchase anything, of course.

It's not a sub, or a hoagie, or a poboy, it's a GRINDER.

Brew Thru is the proprietary name of a chain of stores on the Outer Banks, which explains the isolated pocket of usage.

Link to website

The term Package Store derives from laws against on-site consumption - merchandise had to be taken from the store in a package.

To what do you attach your garden hose?

Spigot? Tap? Hose bib?

Would you use that same hose to fill a bucket or a pail?

foxtrapper wrote: It's not a sub, or a hoagie, or a poboy, it's a GRINDER.

Unless it isn't.

There was (presumably still is) a chain of sub shops up in Cleveland called "Mr. Hero." One of them was right next to a military recruiter so their signs ran together - "Mr. Hero Armed Forces Recruiting Center." And both signs were in individual letters, the exact same color.

One other regional sandwich thing - in Cleveland, a "panini" means a type of sub with coleslaw and french fries on it. I've seen that word used elsewhere, but never for a sandwich with those ingredients.

Woody wrote: Subs and Grinders are used interchangeably.

Then you don't know what a grinder is. JG, or Foxtrapper, what's a grinder to you?

David S. Wallens wrote:

JG Pasterjak wrote: Aren't there some specific regional terms for liquor stores or convenience stores? Maybe in the northeast? jg

I never heard the term package store until moving to Georgia. In New York, we called them liquor stores--not that I was old enough to purchase anything, of course.

Because in the bible belt liquor is of the devil and saying you're going to the liquor store would make you the scorn of the local bittys.

EDIT: someone else posted saying it is derived from consumption laws. That's probably the case, buy my answer makes more funny.