YOU’RE NOT FROM AROUND HERE, SO LET ME TRANSLATE
George Bernard Shaw reportedly quipped that Britain and America are two great nations divided by a common language. We’d take it one step further and say that America is made of 50 great states divided by a common language. Don’t believe us? See if you can figure out what the following regional slang words mean.
1) going outside (Alaska)
A. To leave the state
B. To skinny-dip in winter
C. To relieve oneself, the way a bear in the woods does
2) whoopensocker (Wisconsin)
A. A football riot (common during games against Minnesota)
B. Something extraordinary or large; a whopper
C. Regional sport that involves throwing cheese through a hoop
3) Arkansas toothpick (Arkansas)
A. Slang for tobacco
B. A branch from a fallen pine tree
C. A single-edged hunting dagger, also called a bowie knife
4) potato drop (Idaho)
A. Heavy rain
B. New Year’s Eve festivities
C. When the price of a potato falls below the price of gold
5) Yooper (Michigan)
A. Anyone from the state’s Upper Peninsula
B. A youth pastor (derogatory)
C. Slang for “yep”
6) holler (West Virginia)
A. A remote backcountry area
B. A prizewinning pig
C. Grits laced with growth hormones (eaten chiefly by prizewinning pigs)
7) mom’n’em (New Orleans)
A. Any bite-sized candy
B. A contraction of “mom and them,” meaning “family”
C. When a mom uses a homonym
8) yinz (Pittsburgh)
A. Slang for “y’all”
B. Old steel coins that are still accepted as currency
C. Breath mints
9) baggin’ up (Delaware)
A. To move to Maryland
B. To stand in the Delaware River with bags over one’s shoes
C. To laugh, or crack up
THE POWER OF A SINGLE WORD
One needn’t be a blabbermouth to get a point across. When a Macedonian general threatened to attack Sparta in the fourth century BC, he warned the Spartan generals, “You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army on your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city.” The Spartans replied with one word: “If.”
Whoa! The Macedonians suddenly remembered they had to wash their hair that day and never attacked.
Similarly, in 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, German troops surrounded Americans at Bastogne and ordered them to surrender or face being wiped out. Brig. Gen. Anthony Mcauliffe sent back this pithy reply: “Nuts!” And, no, he wasn’t requesting snacks for his troops. Today, we’d use something a little spicier and almost as short, but the point got across and the Americans eventually fought their way out.
Another benefit of brevity? It saves you on telegram fees. French author Victor Hugo understood this in 1862 when asking his publishers how sales of his new book, Les Misérables, were going. Too low on francs to send a lengthy message, he instead telegraphed a single question mark. Having sold all 7,000 copies of the book’s first printing in less than 24 hours,
Hugo’s publishers responded in kind—with a single exclamation point.
Sometimes even masters of brevity need to employ a second word to make their point. Take America’s 30th president, Calvin Coolidge—a man so tightlipped that his friends nicknamed him Silent Cal. A popular story told by his wife, Grace, recalls Cal sitting next to a young woman at a Capitol Hill dinner party. The woman turned to Cal and said, “I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you.”
His reply? “You lose.”
WE CAN’T STRESS THIS ENOUGH
Take a moment to admire this sentence: “She told him that she loved him.” It’s a simple, straightforward profession of adoration. Or is it? It doesn’t take much to change its meaning. Just place the word only anywhere in the sentence. Similarly, the sentence “I didn’t say she stole my money” is uncomplicated, until you realize it has seven meanings depending on which word is emphasized.
A TRIP TO THE WORD BUFFET
Synesthesia is a fancy name for experiencing one of our senses through another of our senses. For example, someone might hear the word chair and see the color green. James Wannerton, on the other hand, tastes words. As he told the BBC, “The word college tastes like sausage. Karen tastes like yogurt. Yogurt tastes, foully, of hair spray. Most tastes like crisp, cold toast with hardly any butter on it.” Scientists aren’t sure what causes synesthesia, though the genomes of synesthetes (those who have it) seem different from typical genomes. The result for Wannerton is that reading and writing can be an adventure, what with his taste buds in overdrive with every sentence. But sometimes, it’s not so bad. “I get tremendous joy,” he says, “out of writing the blandest e-mail.”
NOW, THAT’S BETTER!
This gem, which we found on guidetogrammar.org, has been attributed to both Mark Twain and to a letter written to the journal The Economist. It’s called “A plan for the improvement of the English language,” and it just may resolve many of the issues we have regarding our fickle language.
In Year 1 that useless letter c would be dropped to be replased either by k or
s, and likewise x would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which c would be retained would be the ch formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform w spelling, so that which and one would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish y, replasing it with i, and Iear 4 might fiks the g/j anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6 to 12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez c, y, and x—bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez—tu riplais ch, sh, and th rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.