Can You Speak American? Don't Be So Sure!

 

SPEAKING AMERICAN (2016)

By Josh Katz

Houghton Mifflin, 224 pages.

★★★★

 

 

 

I have been asked if there is anything I wanted to do in my academic years that didn’t happen. Leaving aside the fact that anybody in any career could answer “yes” to that question, there is one very cool thing I wish I had done. I wish I had been a field researcher for the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE).

 

It’s no longer PC to quote Bill Cosby, but he once wryly observed that he never had any regret about not knowing lots of languages like cheek-by-jowl Europeans. The punchline: “I’m from Philadelphia, but I can speak Cleveland.” That’s a funny line, but it’s not a very accurate one. The reality is that where you live in America determines how you speak about, consider, and negotiate daily life. Want a long sandwich stuffed with vegetables and cold cuts? Is it a sub(marine), a grinder, a hero, a hoagie, or a po’(or) boy?

 

You might protest there is a difference between several of these; grinders and poor boys are usually hot sandwiches, for instance. Or not! It really depends on where you live. Want a milk- or ice cream-based drink to go with it? Do you order a milk shake, a malt(ed), a frappe, or a cabinet? The last of those is seldom used outside of Rhode Island and it is coffee-flavored–unless you’re in bordering parts of southern Massachusetts where you should specify the flavor. And don’t assume a frappe will have an egg in it, or that it won’t.

 

The DARE is a massive six volumes that were released over a 38-year period. Josh Katz’s Speaking American is a sampling in a compact 224 pages with maps and illustrations. It’s more of a coffee table book than a serious read, but it’s a delight nonetheless. It’s the kind of book that you and a friend or partner can read together on the sofa. Or is it a couch? Or a davenport? Maybe a divan. Furniture people will tell you those terms differ as well, but ignore them because whatever they say won’t wash in vast sections of the nation.

 

In the southcentral Pennsylvania of my youth, we used the term you’uns as a collective noun. In much of the South, it’s y’all; in sections of New York youse. But if you live in the greater Pittsburgh area it’s yins, which is almost never used anywhere else! What do you call the strip of vegetation that divides lanes of a highway? A median strip? A verge? A parkway? A lawn? Something else entirely? When you slip a pair of denim trousers, are they jeans, dungarees, chaps, overalls, or perhaps Levi’s in a non-copyrighted sense? Is a swirly frozen treat from a machine a creemee or soft serve? Do you ask for sprinkles or jimmies on it? And where do you keep the money for pay for it, in your wallet or your billfold? When your younger self wanted to raise Cain the night of October 30, did you call it Cabbage Night, Devil’s Night, or simply Mischief Night?

 

You get the picture. Cosby joked about it, but in many ways, speaking Philadelphia isn’t at all the same as speaking Cleveland, and it surely isn’t the same as speaking Birmingham, Houston, Little Rock, or San Francisco. And for heaven’s sake, never bring a casserole to a potluck in Minnesota; it’s a hotdish, thank you very much.

 

I’ve not even touched on the book’s discussion of pronunciations and accents. Sometimes it’s a wonder that Americans manage to talk with each other at all. Speaking American is, simply, a fun book. Grab a soda, pop, tonic, or (generic) coke and leaf through it. Or, if you’d rather, grab something alcoholic, if you can decide whether to purchase it at a packie, a beer barn, a party barn, a beverage barn, or a brew thru. Get good and soused, shit-faced, fried, blitzed, or tipsy and you can be outraged that the terms Katz identifies don’t match what you think. Whaddya want from 224 pages? You can always read all six volumes of the DARE, if you’d rather.

 

Rob Weir