A Stillers’ fan translates Arizona for Iggles’ fans

Kansas City Chiefs fans visiting our desert paradise for the Super Bowl will have no trouble getting along in Arizona. Most of our residents speak fluent Midwestern.

It won’t be as easy for youse from Philly.

Believe me, I know.

I grew up in Pittsburgh and spent most of my youth Back East, including a couple of years just across the Ben Franklin Bridge from Philadelphia in Jersey.

(Or as they say in Midwestern — “New Jersey.”)

Coming from the ’burgh and learning to speak Philly wasn’t that difficult since our dialects have some similarities.

For example, the Midwestern word “you” is pronounced “youse” (single and plural) in Philadelphia, while in Pittsburgh we prefer the more accepted formal articulation: Yinz.

When I first moved to Phoenix I was shocked to discover that so many local residents had a poor command of the English language.

Upon learning where I was born, for instance, I recall a fairly well educated gentleman telling me, “Oh, you must be a fan of the Steelers.”

How sad, I thought, that someone with a supposedly accomplished academic background was unable to enunciate the team’s name: Stillers.

Likewise, I’m sure that many Philadelphia fans have heard their Super Bowl contending team referred to as the Eagles instead of the correct appellation: Iggles.

Language barriers breed confusion. Arizona residents may not understand a visiting Philadelphian wanting to know if there are any good restaurants dahntahn. You know, that place in the center of the city where all the skyscrapers are.

Locals may not even be able to help my Philly friends who are thirsty and looking for a glass of wooder.

And Philly fans shouldn’t even think of asking where they might find Tastykakes or a breakfast joint that serves scrapple.

It took me a long time for me to figure out that when Arizona residents talk about getting a “sub” they were speaking about hoagies.

I suppose part of the confusion can be written off to Arizona’s youth.

Our state was the last of the lower 48 states to join the union. We’re the least known. The most precocious. Our stunning desert is the kid brother of America. Many of its residents are transplants from the chilly Midwest.

Still, it is the kind of place that

manufactures homegrown iconoclasts, among them national powerhouses as varied as Barry Goldwater, Cesar Chavez and Sandra Day O’Connor. It also welcomes newcomers who transform themselves into Arizona icons, like the late-Sen. John McCain.

Along with that, of course, come the kooks and cranks. (I’m guessing that even in Philly they’ve heard of Kari Lake.)

Then again, this is also where Cochise lived. It’s where Steven Spielberg grew up, and Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac.

Alice Cooper lives here. So does Nils Lofgren from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.

Charles Barkley played basketball here after his time in Philly. Pat Tillman played football for Arizona State and the Arizona Cardinals. Larry Fitzgerald went from a yinzer at the University of Pittsburgh to a career with the Cardinals.

After the Big Game, should Philly fans decide to make a side trip to San Diego, they should not expect anyone here to know what they’re talking about when they say the might go “down the shore.”

That’s a Jersey thing.

And while some of my local brothers and sisters look at visitors from Philly with a bit of trepidation, having heard about and perhaps witnessed on TV some of the enthusiastic language and behavior expressed by the Iggles fans, their misgivings are unwarranted.

Philadelphians are a warm, welcoming bunch, which I know from experience.

This is a true story.

During my first week on the job in Phoenix I stopped by a local watering hole fancied by newspaper employees who worked the late shift.

As I was standing with a group of reporters in the establishment’s parking lot (the bar’s interior was considered less than safe) one of the news editors strolled out of the taproom’s backdoor carrying a six-pack of beer.

“You one of the new reporters?” he asked me.

I said that I was.

He said he’d only been in Phoenix short time himself, having relocated from Philadelphia.

“Where you from?” he asked, handing me a cold one. “Pittsburgh,” I said.

To which he smiled and said, “Give me that f-ing beer back.”

Honestly, I’ve never felt so at home.