The dictionary of tahn tawk
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We've all heard of, if not ventured across, the soda/pop divide. In Pittsburgh, we're close enough that it's a day trip and doesn't even require the wagon trains of old.
From the early days of westward expansion, when restless young folks from Philadelphia and New York longed to leave all that dreary soda behind and migrate westward where the pop flowed freely, there has been no universal American English. That's still true today, despite the advent of national media and fast food chains.
Pittsburghers have been made well aware that we talk funny. Not just the highly distinctive regional accent, but the words and expressions to describe things. Nobody else redds up their gumbands or jags around on slippy floors. Much as they may want to.
But we're not the only ones with charming local turns of phrase. Until we get an American phrasebook smartphone app, we're about to have the next best thing: The Dictionary of American Regional English, or DARE.
The fifth volume, Sl-Z, is in production and will be available next month. Each volume is 1,000 pages. You may need a sturdier beach bag.
I'll hold out for the online version, coming next year. But as a word nerd, I'm truly excited about this big, geeky compendium. It's been in the works since 1962, when Fred Cassidy of the University of Wisconsin-Madison put together a 1,600-question survey about how we describe our daily lives. What do you say about someone stupid -- he hasn't got enough sense to ... what? What about someone who lives miles from any sort of civilization, way out in the ... what? In 1965, scores of field researchers set out in "word wagons" to spend six years interviewing nearly 3,000 people all over the country. The past 40 years have also been spent collecting written materials from pre-Revolutionary days to now and creating maps that show where your hoagie becomes a sub or a grinder.
Mr. Cassidy's genius was to identify the phenomena so common that in many cases, there's no "real" official term for them. The games we played as children (the ones without joysticks, screens or coaches) were often quite similar but had different names in different places. And let me draw your attention to the fluff under your bed.
What do you call it?
I was raised with "dust bunnies" (not at all like being raised by wolves), so I was surprised that the Pennsylvania term is "woolies." But I grew up in eastern Pennsylvania with a Scranton/Newark mother and a father from Chicago, both of whom had lived in New York City. Then I lived for a decade in New England before coming to Pittsburgh, so I'm a dialectical train wreck. Like my father, if something's on the fritz I futz around with it. My mom called dragonflies darning needles. The middle of nowhere used to be the boondocks but now it's the sticks. I think that happened about the same time I gave up the eensy-weensy spider for the itsy-bitsy spider.
DARE chief editor Joan Houston Hall told National Public Radio that the dictionary had even helped to solve a crime; a kidnapper's note directed that the ransom be left on the "devil's strip" of a road. That term for grass between the road and sidewalk is specific to a particular area; its use helped narrow the list of suspects.
So if you're going to commit a crime in another state, don't leave a message warning the cops not to be nebby. They'll throw the book at you. All five volumes.
First Published February 9, 2012 12:00 am
