Where do you stay??
 

I've never heard that phrase until I moved her to Metrolina. To me, I "stay" at a hotel, or when I was little I "stayed" over at a friend's house for the night. To me, it implies a short term arrangement. Whenever anyone asks me here where I "stay", I reply that I LIVE in Indian Trail, where do you live?

Two other things I've only heard here in Carolina:
"Plug up" your cell phone...I plug my cell phone IN

"Call out" from work....when I'm not going to be at work, I "Call in" to work.

Is this one of those 'pop' or 'soda' things???

The girls I used to work with would always say "call out" instead of "calling in"...I always thought it was kind of weird, too.

One thing I kept hearing that I thought sounded funny was when I moved to town, everybody kept saying stuff like, "What are you trying to do tonight?" or "I'm not trying to hear you." I'd be like, "Um...I'm not trying to do anything...I am doing something." It was like they used "trying" to mean what you were definitely doing. Took me a while to figure that one out.

Re: Where do you stay??
 

I also plug IN my cell phone-- you plug UP a leak (or a toilet!)

I also call IN to work, I calling OUT when i am trying to pick up an outside line from the office.

The "where do you stay" thing- I agree, it seems to be a temporary arrangement. I LIVE at 123 main street.
And the live/stay thing (around here) is more of a suburb vs. inner city thing.

One of the girls in my World History class always says "I'm not tryin' to be here" and it confused me for the longest time, until I finally realized she meant "I can't be here today." (as in, in class) I always thought to myself "You're here - you're not trying very hard" :p

That's like my students saying "cut off the lights" meaning turn them off, but also saying "cut on the lights" to turn them back on.

I worked with a woman who always said she was going to "call off" sick from work, rather than call in or call out.

I'm used to "where do you stay?" since I hear that - always thought it was regional.

When I moved to Georgia, my future mother-in-law asked me, "Do you want me to carry you to the other side of campus?" I didn't know she meant "drive"!

Another thing they say here that I'd never heard--getting "shut" of someone is getting rid of them.

Also, in Texas we say sucker, purse, and grocery store but here you hear lollipop, pocketbook, and supermarket.

I say purse;pocket book really confuses me because I think of the check book sized wallet or writslet when someone says that, and most of my purses wouldn't come close to fitting in my pocket.

I just started a new job that says "called out" sick... which I found odd.

'cut out the lights" I've heard... but I think it's odd.


When I went to New York to be a counselor the children made fun of me for calling all athletic shoes "tennis" shoes instead of "sneakers" like they did.

OMG, To Funny!

:)

WennieB We in the Middle Part of The Country Talk Sense!

Turn Off The Light.

Drive Me over.

Can I get a Ride.

I am going to Stay=at a hotel or a friends house.

Billfold for guys.

Purses (Large) for Women or a Pocketbook just a little smaller. Clutch is like carry small things, Check Book, Credit Cards, and Money!

RH Macy Training!:D

Hee hee...my boyfriend gets on me all the time for this one! I can't help saying "buggy," because that's what I've always called it. He thinks it's weird when I call the vacuum a "sweeper," too, but again, that's just what I grew up calling it!

It's a purse to me too.

I wear gym shoes, not sneakers.

In Chicago, you don't go TO a place, you go BY it. Example: "I'm going to go by the store to get some milk."

Here is a good Chicago vocabulary page. :)

That gets me too! I work in Bellingham, WA and we get a lot of British Columbia, Canada shoppers.
They call the grocery cart "buggy" I call it a cart or basket
They call sneakers "runners"
They call bathroom is the "washroom"
When I asked my Canadian mother in law to "hand me my pocketbook" she looked at me like I was nuts
They call yarn (for knitting) "wool" (the stuff is made of acrylic!) :D

Oh my God. Y'all would not want to be friends with me. I say most of this shit.

"Plug up", "call out", "cut on/off the lights", "carry", AND I say "buggy".

I hadn't realized I was that country, but I suppose I am.

I don't think I've ever had a more heated debate than the one my freshman year roommate and I had over gum bands vs. rubber bands.

The biggest argument I ever got into was when I told some girl that I was good looking, while she thought I was ridiculously good looking.

I banged her anytime I called her. She was what you children would call. A Boo? A Boo ....perhaps T? A Call? A Boo T Call?

Ohhhhhh a Booty Call. Got it.

!
 

I'm trying to go out tonight...untill we all make plans to meet at a certian place and time and then I am going out tonight.


I think people originaly meant "stay" as in "not really home" because sometimes places don't feel like home.

Although I did say I lived in draper hall, but that's because Radford felt like home after three weeks.

The woohoo i'm in collage part of colloge is the best. Better than when learn to spell colage...collage? University!;) :D

HAHA...this is a good site!! I have lived in and around Chicago my whole life and some of those things are new to me. Especially the nickname for Michigan Ave.

Something like this that my husband and I were talking about not to long ago is how Chicagoians measure distance. Around here we measure distance in time, while most others measure in miles. For example, when asked how far it took to get from one place to another the usual response here is 10 minutes instead of 10 miles.

Back in Boston, the really regional (think blue-collar Good Will Hunting) types use "wicked" as a term meaning very or extremely ie "That is wicked awesome!" I also remember hearing the word "tonic" which actually meant soda.

I then moved to Pittsburgh and learned to eat hoagies instead of subs.:) One thing I never heard before Pittsburgh was the word yins (sp?) which is somewhat used like y'all in the South.

Haven't come across anything regional in the DC area. Probably because everybody is a transplant!

I called a friend of mine the other day, and I caught her at a bad time. She had just come home from the grocery store and was unloading the bags from her car. She said, "Can I call you back? I was fixin' to unload my groceries, but one of the poke's broke and I've got cans all over the back of the car." Never knew a bag was also known as a "poke". ??

it's funny to me how people say "y'all" is a southern thing, because i hear it all the time in NY. or is it a black thing?

p.s. i always heard the "where you stay" vs. "where you live" was a race/class thing... that if you're poor and tend to get evicted a lot (or moved a lot b/c of a job), you always tell someone where "you stay" for you to get your mail and what not.

One of my favorite southern colloquialisms! Along with the carry versus drive, and how everything carbonated is a coke, not a soda or pop thing, unless it's a specialty beverage (like Cheerwine! or a cherry lemon Sundrop).

My dad's family (from po-dunkville, NC) called a garden hose a hosepipe. :)

Old post, but every big city does the time rather than distance thing. I did it before I spent any time in STL but it got worse there. I think it may also be a girl vs. guy thing. (Guys being more inclined to use measurement in directions in the first place, girls preferring landmarks and more general instructions, like minutes)

I've always heard that there is a difference between "y'all" and "ya'll." That southerners say "y'all" and everyone else says "ya'll"

I dont know which one i say, lol. I'm not sure if i quite understand the difference.

Here's the thing...

The rule about apostrophes, is that they EITHER replace letters OR show possession. That's it...no other function. (Technially, when we write "The ASA's did this that and the other.", it is incorrect. I'll be the first to admit that I break that rule a lot.) Since "y'all" is not possessive, then it has to be the omitting letters rule. "Y'all" is a contraction of "you all". The letters being left out are "ou", and therefore the apostrophe goes between the y and the a, and the difference between y'all and ya'll is those who know the proper usage of the apostrophe, and those who do not.

OMG...I need to go back to bed...I just wrote a dissertation on the proper gramatics of "y'all".:o:rolleyes::p

And I'm so glad you did. :p I don't know where the lady was from who complained, but I got chewed out for writing "y'all" in an email to my Family Readiness Group. She told the FRSA (the assistant in charge of the FRGs) that it wasn't "professional." Well, maybe not, but it's southern dammit, and it's the way I've talked all my life, so get. over. it.

My S's troop went to BSA camp in the Carolinas and had Cheerwine. I thought it was the the local phrase for the camp staple, bug juice!:)

God, I LOVE Cheerwine. They used to sell it here in VA, but they stopped. When my sister went to college in NC, she'd bring back cases for me. Food Lion now makes Cheerwine ice cream, which is pretty good, too.

My family is from Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio (Cincinnati), and Missouri. I was raised in NY but I spent my summers out with family. A few things they did that drove me crazyyyyy
my great aunt says I-talian (as in I-talian dressin or I never saw an I-talian before)
I def heard buggy, pocketbook, y'all, gym shoes, go by (somewhere), calling out....
I def came across the distance thing but I agree with Drolefille that it may be a distance thing because I def say 10 minutes away vs. 10 miles (which most likely wouldn't equal in time anyway)
My grandma and a few other people in my family would also refer to themselves in the 3rd person more often then I'd like to admit... I doubt that this is a "Midwestern" thing, but it sure does drive me crazy!

I pick up the accent pretty quickly and I can imitate my grandma like no other, but I don't think I speak like a "true" new yorker... except when I'm mad... you can definitely hear it then, especially when I say things like "cawwwl" or "tawwwlk"

That drives me crazy! They are not from I-taly. And, actually if you want to be even more correct, it's actually not It-alian, it's EE-talian. I can't think of a better way to explain it, and IPA probably wouldn't make sense to any of you.

It's actually just the opposite.

Yes, I actually took an American dialects class way back in college -- one of the most fun and interesting classes I ever took -- and since then I've read and listened to a lot of Walt Wolfram, who's an expert on Southern dialect.

"Stay," historically at least, is primarily an African-American usage, although it is found in other groups as well. It simply means "live" and indicates permanence.

Because one is "cutting" the flow of electricity. :rolleyes:

Maybe it's a regional accent thing -- I've always heard it getting "shed" of someone (like shedding fur or skin).

A purse is nicer (and often smaller) than a pocket book. A women carries a pocket book when running errands; she carries a purse to church or a party.

There is, as Alpha Frog has pointed out. One has the approstrophe in the correct place, denoting a contraction of "you all," and the other has the apostrophe in a place that makes no sense.

That's all, y'all. :D

My hubby is from the south. It took a long time to get him to stop saying "I'm fixing to...". He also says "waiting on line" to mean waiting in a line. When he says "insurance", he stresses the "IN" (so do his parents).

We still fight over "shots" vs. "jimmies". For a long time he didn't know what a "grinder" was (hoagie or sub). He got used to "bubbler" (water fountain or water cooler), and now says "open" or "close" the light, like I do (turn on or turn off).

For the record, we say "pockabook" and "purse" here. Flipflop shoes are "thongs".

Dialects are funny things.

Thongs are underwear, not shoes.:p

I enjoy different accents and dialects.

Some of the "Southern" colloquialisms mentioned in this thread are "rural" as opposed to "urban."

Now there's one I've never heard. At least "cut off the light" makes some sense. :D

And yeah, thongs are underwear, and flipflops aren't shoes. They're . . . flipflops. (Sandals?)

True to a point, but since until relatively recent times, there was little that was "urban" in the South, it may be a distinction without a difference. Where it is not "urban" dialect, that may be as much due to the influx of people from, ummm, "not around here" as to a rural-urban distinction.

It amazes me that I can drive 5-10 miles from the home where I was reared in the "city" and almost not understand certain conversations by people standing in line next to me at the new Home Depot in the "country!" LOL

Yes, but I've know plenty of "cities" in the South with populations < 15K. That ain't "urban." True urban-ness is a relatively recent thing for most of the South.

I agree totally.

glad i have backup on this, as i took an Af-Am English class and have texts that support this.

My linguistics class was the most interesting class I've ever taken, bar none.
As the only black student in the class, I did my paper on Black English Dialect, AKA Ebonics. I got a B+ (because I went 10 pages over the limit).. lol.

It is definitely interesting to learn about how we talk geographically.

My dad who is from Southern Maryland calls all purses "pockabooks" too. My mom, from Alabama, calls them "pockabooks" and "purses". Purses are what she takes to work or church. Pocketbooks are what she takes to other places.

I carry a purse.

i always thought "pockabook" was just how we said it in our family! lol

my mom always said a pockabook was to "take care of business" and a purse was to go be cute in... to just take your essentials for the night.

(Illinois native)

A purse is something you carry daily with all of your normal stuff. An evening bag or handbag is for nighttime essentials.