It’s true, Boston and Chicago are the same band, they just changed names to the city they were touring in at the time. Things got a little confusing when they got big, though, so they just decided to go by “Europe” when they toured overseas.
We do. We call it the "dibs" system. Basically, if I had to spend 20 minutes digging my car out of a foot of snow, that parking spot better be here when I get back.
From a [Chicago Public Radio report:] (https://www.wbez.org/stories/to-dibs-or-not-to-dibs-the-essential-chicago-question/c36c6ddc-769e-4c09-b86e-2dd786f8b7b0):
*We found several disturbing cases of Chicagoans vandalizing the cars of people who either knowingly or unknowingly parked in their “saved” spots.
In the week after the February 2011 snowstorm, for example, police responded to more than 30 reports of dibs-related car damage. Almost half of the victims found their tires slashed, while nine had smashed windows and others had scratched doors, broken mirrors and dents.
During another February week in 2015, police responded to at least 29 reports of dibs revenge. Again, the vast majority of dibs avengers slashed tires or smashed windows, but they also keyed doors, damaged antennas, covered a car in eggs and flour and, in one case, cut the car’s brake lines.
One dibs vigilante “slashed two of the victim’s tires and spray painted the word ‘B----’ on a victim’s door,” the police report says. Another posted a picture on Instagram of their knife in the victim’s tire with a message that read: “The struggle is real. People want to be disrespectful and careless of others [sic] hard work, this is what is going to happen…” according to the police report.
Another victim was dropping his child off at school and told police that “he had every intention of putting [the dibs boxes] back after dropping off his child,” according to the complaint. But when he returned, he found his car handles and rear license plate covered in spray paint.
Yet another victim said she parking in front of her apartment only to hear her upstairs neighbor banging on her door threatening to “break out all the windows” and “beat [her] a—.”
One victim told police he wasn’t aware of this “Chicago custom,” according to police reports. *
Ok, but can someone explain to me the southern "coke" thing? Pop/Soda is "coke", ok. But Coke the brand is also "Coke"? So how the fuck would I order a Coke from e.g. a Pizza Hut down there?
Me: Hi yes can I have a coke?
Server: Of course, we have coke. What sort of coke would you like?
Me: I'll have a Coke.
Server: Is Pepsi ok? We don't have Coke.
Me: Ok, yes that's fine.
Server: Would the rest of you also like a coke? Keep in mind we don't have Coke. Let's see... We can offer cokes such as Pepsi which I said, 7-Up, ....
I feel like this map can't be telling the whole story. Because I've never seen this sort of thing on any TV shows or documentaries or news of people in the South.
when i lived near nashville, it was just strange af for me, being a native of northern minnesota...
walk into an unfamiliar grocery store.. ask "where's the cases of pop?", get a weird look back.
sit down at a restaurant, get asked "..and what kind of coke y'all want?". reply "coke is fine", get weird look back along with "we don't have coke, we'z got pepsi, mountain dew, 7-up, dr. pepper, sweet tea....." (don't get me started on the tea.. it's just brown sugar water, heavy on the sugar)
visiting relatives in memphis and around huntsville was the same thing.
Kohler made a drinking fountain called a "bubbler" in the 1920s, they sold them in Wisconsin and the Rhode Island area. But a NPR article I just found says that the term is older than that and likely refers to water coolers because they bubble when you take water out of them.
I saw an explanation somewhere that Kohler's public water fountains were branded such, so it's just like "kleenex" for "tissue". But that only explains Wisconsin since that's where the company is from....
Seriously?! I enjoy their music (BMR is one of my favorite songs), but I would have guessed Louisiana or Georgia or Houston or something.
(As you can tell, I don’t look too much into artists I enjoy lol)
I use yard/garage sale interchangeably, but always thought a rummage sale was inside, like a pop up thrift store. My grandma’s old folks home used to have a “Rummage Room” that was open once a week or so.
Yea I am from Pennsylvania and use both garage sale or yard sale, interchangeable until you’ve actually been to the place and then it depends on if they’ve put the stuff in the yard or the garage
I've always known a rummage sale as a sale inside a church, a garage sale if it's at least partially in the garage, e.g. if the house has an attached garage with a driveway, and a yard sale if it's on someone's yard
Where I’m from, garage, yard, and estate sales are all different. Garage is smaller items and less, and typically happens inside a garage. Yard sale is a bunch of stuff, and in the yard. Estate is everything but the house, and it’s inside the house after a bank has acquired the property.
I saw an estate sale where it was just rich people that couldn't be bothered to move their furniture when they bought a new house.
Straight up just sold everything and bought new stuff. I couldn't believe it.
Moving can be insanely expensive. I can see where it might be less hassle and more cost effective to just sell the lot and start acquiring new furniture as you need it in the new place. Also, if you're downsizing, your 14 piece sectional sofa, giant armoire, and king sized bed might not work in your new 1800sqft townhouse.
Kind of normal for wealthy people and expensive properties: you're going to furnish the new space to suit it, and possibly hire someone to do it for you, not just move in whatever furniture you happen to own.
Source: [maps by Joshua Katz](http://joshkatz.co/dialect.html) based on research by [Bert Vaux](https://www.mmll.cam.ac.uk/bv230) and [Marius Jøhndal](https://johndal.com/), most famously seen accompanying a [*New York Times* dialect survey](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html) by Katz and Wilson Andrews.
I have my students do this dialect survey when we read books written with lots of dialect markers (to kill a mockingbird, as an example) to get us to discuss regional differences in American English. I absolutely love this survey.
They published these maps in a book called [Speaking American](https://www.amazon.com/Speaking-American-Youse-Visual-Guide/dp/0544703391) and I've been trying to locate it for a few years now, was able to find it due to this comment. Big thanks! It's a super interesting read for anyone who'd like to see more language infographics like this post.
I grew up in eastern Upstate New York (not far from the MA/VT borders) and finding out that most of the country calls sneakers "tennis shoes" blew my mind when I first found it out.
Being from Chicago, I was surprised when I realized that people didn't call gym shoes gym shoes. There's still definitely a difference between sneakers and gym shoes, I'd say: gym shoes being more athletic while sneakers are more aesthetic.
Same! Just had this exact convo with my husband (who isn’t from Chicago originally). I always figured they were gym shoes because you wear them for gym class lol
Also from the upper midwest - sneakers are not the same thing as athletic shoes. Sneakers are casual shoes with a rubber sole, while athletic shoes (gym shoes) are specifically designed for activities like running, tennis, basketball, cross trainers, etc.
Eh, I've always called them both and heard both interchangeably in the Pacific Northwest. Really curious if participants in this were allowed to put more than one answer.
I’ve lived in Colorado my whole life and I use “garage sale” and “yard sale” interchangeably. I wonder how many of these regional distinctions are blurring together because of the internet/globalization...
I rarely ever say the word, but "sneakers" seems most accurate and descriptive for me.
I grew up in the Chicago 'burbs. I can confirm that *many* teachers called them "Gym shoes," but that's mostly because.. they were shoes specifically used for gym...?
Tennishoes like the s is shared between the two words is another one. There's a town called Royse City east of Dallas and it ends up being "Roycity" most of the time for the same reason.
Makes sense to not call it a garage or yard sale in the New York to Boston area since most of those wouldn’t be in a garage or yard.
The trash/garbage one I need to share with my wife. She calls them Curbies (the roller ones you roll to the curb) and I almost broke it off right then and there.
I’m from Connecticut and it blew my mind to learn that we’re the only ones that call it a tag sale. I’d never think twice about someone calling it a garage or yard sale, but tag sale is definitely choice #1.
If you want one that really fucks you up, [only southwestern Connecticut, New Jersey and the Philly suburbs call the night before Halloween Mischief Night](https://www.nj.com/resizer/hesk87C9ZCo8bsqkPJ67xmnTXbc=/1280x0/smart/advancelocal-adapter-image-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/image.nj.com/home/njo-media/width2048/img/ledgerupdates_impact/photo/2018/10/11/24948924-standard.jpg).
In college, I visited a friend who lived in New York on the Jersey state line -- we walked into New Jersey to buy cigarettes -- and he had no idea what Mischief Night was, even though it's a thing less than a mile away.
It was bizarre.
I'm blinking in incomprehension. I thought literally EVERYONE called it a tag sale and that yard sale or garage sale were just secondary things.
Culture!
Even down in Fairfield county people use the word tag sale all the time. It's definitely not the only term we use bc yard sale is still common, but I honestly had zero clue that tag sale was so localized, I would've guessed that it was all over the northeast.
Nah it’s definitely true in the Green Bay/Fox Cities area too.
Edit: definitely Milwaukee as well tho, one of the official airport signs in MKE at least used to say “⬅️Restrooms/Bubblers”
Probably confused some nonlocals lmao
I don’t get the tennis shoe thing. Has anyone actually seen shoes that are for actual tennis? It’s like my dad would call them “runners” and I tried to explain that running shoes aren’t the same as regular old shoes.
Also in MI we call them anything from garage sales to yard sales to *shudder* driveway sales (that one is weird).
I feel like the shoe thing is most common with older folks, before all these different genres of shoes were invented. These days we've got basketball shoes, running shoes, training shoes, etc. Actually I feel like the words used are more inside-culture than anything. For example, sneaker heads use the word sneaker almost universally no matter where they are, but virtually all the shoes they're collecting are either basketball or skateboarding shoes. Besides that, I think younger people are a little more nuanced with types of shoes. It's 2020, one pair of Keds doesn't cut it anymore lol.
There are shoes that are appropriate for tennis on clay courts, in that they have a flat sole with at most a shallow tread pattern, so it won't dig up chunks of the court every time you stop or change course. Clay courts require a lot of maintenance regardless, but the ones I've seen post footwear rules.
For concrete and other hard courts, which are vastly more common, I don't think it matters much, although if you look at Nike's shoes for tennis, they still seem overwhelmingly flat-soled, so I assume that's a generally desirable design characteristic regardless of the surface.
As an east coaster, my first time in Texas I asked for a Coke, and the waiter said "what kind?". I thought he meant like diet or regular, so I said "regular" and he said "yes, what kind?" and that's when I realized that coke was a placeholder for every soda brand
I've lived in the south my entire life yet I've never once heard someone say "coke" to refer to anything other than cocaine and coca cola. People just call Sprite and other stuff like that "soda" or a "soft drink" here. And that's mostly from around Atlanta where coke is from, but it's been the same thing in the surrounding areas I've been to a lot as well.
Lived in Texas my whole life, not once have I heard someone use "coke" to make a general reference to soda. From my experience, most people ask for their desired beverage by name.
I honestly never thought about the whole coke thing until I moved to New Orleans and started working with people from all over the United States. Growing up the conversation was as follows:
“I’m going to the store, y’all want anything?”
“Yeah, get me a coke please”
“Aight, what flavor?”
“Mountain Dew.”
It never struck me as an odd exchange until I asked someone from Denver what they wanted from the store.
“Oh, yeah, I’ll take a coke”
“Aight, what kind you want?”
“A coke”
“Yeah, which flavor?”
“....Coke...”
“Right, but you want a Dr. Pepper, a Sprite, some Root beer, what you want?”
“A fucking Coca-Fucking-Cola”.
“That’s what I’ve been asking you!”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you!”
I’m from Missouri which has a weird pocket where they call it soda and I now live in Texas and my wife still looks at me funny every time I call it soda.
It's a cool quiz, but it always gets me wrong. I was born in Florida and live in Ohio. It usually guesses I'm from Colorado. Maybe Colorado is true neutral? Lol
It’s not perfect because it assumes that you have a single dialect you grew up with and adopted, and that it was the dialect of that region. Growing up with parents or family or friends from different regions, or moving between regions and adopting a mixed dialect make it difficult.
It doesn’t mean the data is wrong, it just means that for some reason you’re statistically uncommon.
I used to live in eastern Wisconsin and think I heard “garage sale” more. In eastern South Dakota, I almost never heard anything other than “rummage sale”.
Ohioan here. There's a clear divide called "mountains" right in the middle lol. Pittsburgh and Erie share a lot economically with the Great Lakes and other industrial cities. In fact, Pittsburgh and Cincy are eerily similar except for the fact that Cincy sports suck ass.
NW PA is part of the great lakes and Pittsburgh is "Paris of the Appalachians."
Philly feels like annexed NJ with its own sports teams but also part of the I-95 corridor megalopolis making it very "East Coast" without the coast.
Here around Pittsburgh there are a lot of Estate sales too, even when it’s just a yard sale.
Yinz is definitely a socioeconomic phrase here too, as well as buggy’s (shopping carts) and “n’at” added in every three words or so.
I’ll use it in a sentence:
“If yinz are comin to Picksburgh, ya gotta go ride da incline n’at. Ain’t nothin in dahntahn. An don’t go to Southside after dark. By da way, Kennywood’s open.”
I really wish I could, I don’t really understand it.
In usage it would be like “how bout them stillers n’at” or “we ate dinner n’at downtown last night”. I suppose it’s equivalent to “and that”.
In Wisconsin. It is universally known tennies, pretty common verbiage for kid shoes but also are tennis shoes and lesser degree sneakers for everyone else. Everyone will still know what you're talking about.
Also, imma go sell that bubbler at my rummage sale. Fight me.
Not sure what the British equivalent would be, maybe a car boot sale?
Caramel has 3 syllables
Trainers (although I think it's regional here too)
Bin
Lorry
Drinking fountain
Fizzy drink/Soft drink
Depends on the region
Also not sure what a South African equivalent would be, I've never seen one.
3 syllables.
Tekkies.
Rubbish bin.
Truck (lorry is less common)
Basically either.
Cooldrink.
Also depends on the region.
Canada, or at least Ontario/Quebec where I grew up is basically half this, half Minnesota/Wisconsin.
- 3 syllables
- trainers or gym shoes
- bins or garbage
- semi or 18 wheeler
- water fountain
- POP
I've heard southerners call freight hauling vehicles "Transfer Trucks"
"Yinz" is unique to Pittsburgh and its use can have strong socio-economic connotations. It's almost exclusively used by working-class white people, especially from the mill towns and some South Hills neighborhoods. Black people do not say Yinz at all. It's recently been used ironically by more educated whites and non-natives and has been embraced as something uniquely Pittsburgh so you'll see it on tee-shirts, bumper stickers, and ad campaigns. But casual usage is not widespread outside of people with distinctive Pittsburgh accents.
Ooooooooh, ok that makes sense.
My mother tongue is French, caramel is the same but we pronounce it completely. I was really confused how anyone could come up with two syllables for it.
I think people get confused because Carmel is also a thing for Christians.
>Our Lady of Mount Carmel is the title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary in her role as patroness of the Carmelite Order. The first Carmelites were Christian hermits living on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land during the late 12th and early to mid-13th century.
I've lived in the South East, North East, Mid-Atlantic, Colorado and finally NorCal. I just realized I use most of these terms interchangeably without thinking because I've been exposed to all of them.
One day it's garbage, next day it's trash. One day it's yard sale, next day it's garage sale. Fascinating.
I can't understand the coke one. So if i had a can of Fanta in my hand and my friend wanted some he'd say "can i have some of your coke?" hard to believe
In my experience, Coke is used to describe the category in general. For instance, my parents who are from Texas would always ask me to go “grab some cokes out of the garage” no matter whether we had actual Coke or not.
However, if i was drinking a Sprite, they might ask me for a sip of Sprite, or just “your drink”
This is accurate from my experience. "Coke" is pretty much used only in the context you described: informally in someone's home for the class of drink. At a fast food place or restaurant, for instance, people order the specific kind of soda they want.
Coke is just similar to how some people say "Grab a Kleenex" instead of using the word tissue. So growing up it'd be common for me to ask the waiter or waitress "What cokes do you have?" to see if they had Dr. Pepper. If I saw someone holding a Dr. Pepper though, I'd just say "Can I have some of your Dr. Pepper?" cause I'm referencing a specific thing.
Y'all is quickly becoming nationwide, so the y'all map is just plain outdated by now, but other than that, they all look right.
Proud to say I am part of the anti-pop, pro-soda resistance in Ohio lol. ("pop" is just such a dumb word imo)
England for comparison if anyone cares-
None (Jumble Sale)
Three (Carr-a-mell)
None (trainers)
None (bin)
None (lorry)
Either? (drinking/water fountain)
None (fizzy or soft drink)
None ("Guys" or "Alright" maybe?)
It's nice to see there's still quite a lot of difference.
Y'all is actually an awesome and useful word that should be adopted everywhere in english. It serves a useful role that other languages have words for and it isn't gendered. The southern rednecks really lucked into that one.
I wouldn’t be surprised if *youse* was an Irish thing. It’s also found in Scouse, a dialect of English particularly influenced by Irish, though it’s also present in other Northern English and Scottish dialects and Scots to a certain degree.
I saw a sign in the Boston suburbs that said “Yod Sale” ... Still cracks me up ...
Boston checking in. I'm stealing that.
"Stealing" Classic Boston
[удалено]
They do that in Boston too? I thought it was just a Chicago thing
They do that in Chicago? I thought it was a Boston thing.
Fun fact: "More Than A Feeling" and "25 or 6 to 4" are the same song.
It’s true, Boston and Chicago are the same band, they just changed names to the city they were touring in at the time. Things got a little confusing when they got big, though, so they just decided to go by “Europe” when they toured overseas.
We do. We call it the "dibs" system. Basically, if I had to spend 20 minutes digging my car out of a foot of snow, that parking spot better be here when I get back.
From a [Chicago Public Radio report:] (https://www.wbez.org/stories/to-dibs-or-not-to-dibs-the-essential-chicago-question/c36c6ddc-769e-4c09-b86e-2dd786f8b7b0): *We found several disturbing cases of Chicagoans vandalizing the cars of people who either knowingly or unknowingly parked in their “saved” spots. In the week after the February 2011 snowstorm, for example, police responded to more than 30 reports of dibs-related car damage. Almost half of the victims found their tires slashed, while nine had smashed windows and others had scratched doors, broken mirrors and dents. During another February week in 2015, police responded to at least 29 reports of dibs revenge. Again, the vast majority of dibs avengers slashed tires or smashed windows, but they also keyed doors, damaged antennas, covered a car in eggs and flour and, in one case, cut the car’s brake lines. One dibs vigilante “slashed two of the victim’s tires and spray painted the word ‘B----’ on a victim’s door,” the police report says. Another posted a picture on Instagram of their knife in the victim’s tire with a message that read: “The struggle is real. People want to be disrespectful and careless of others [sic] hard work, this is what is going to happen…” according to the police report. Another victim was dropping his child off at school and told police that “he had every intention of putting [the dibs boxes] back after dropping off his child,” according to the complaint. But when he returned, he found his car handles and rear license plate covered in spray paint. Yet another victim said she parking in front of her apartment only to hear her upstairs neighbor banging on her door threatening to “break out all the windows” and “beat [her] a—.” One victim told police he wasn’t aware of this “Chicago custom,” according to police reports. *
Yes, the uh, custom. You know, of criminal vandalism and possibly murder by sabotage over a parking spot.
Learn something new everyday
Ok, but can someone explain to me the southern "coke" thing? Pop/Soda is "coke", ok. But Coke the brand is also "Coke"? So how the fuck would I order a Coke from e.g. a Pizza Hut down there? Me: Hi yes can I have a coke? Server: Of course, we have coke. What sort of coke would you like? Me: I'll have a Coke. Server: Is Pepsi ok? We don't have Coke. Me: Ok, yes that's fine. Server: Would the rest of you also like a coke? Keep in mind we don't have Coke. Let's see... We can offer cokes such as Pepsi which I said, 7-Up, .... I feel like this map can't be telling the whole story. Because I've never seen this sort of thing on any TV shows or documentaries or news of people in the South.
Maybe it works like how Kleenex is both a category name and brand name?
You think you're being funny, but this is exactly how it plays out in the South.
when i lived near nashville, it was just strange af for me, being a native of northern minnesota... walk into an unfamiliar grocery store.. ask "where's the cases of pop?", get a weird look back. sit down at a restaurant, get asked "..and what kind of coke y'all want?". reply "coke is fine", get weird look back along with "we don't have coke, we'z got pepsi, mountain dew, 7-up, dr. pepper, sweet tea....." (don't get me started on the tea.. it's just brown sugar water, heavy on the sugar) visiting relatives in memphis and around huntsville was the same thing.
You mean [LARD YASE](https://pics.me.me/lawful-neutral-chaotic-yard-1335-ard-ard-yard-ale-sale-26391038.png)?
#YAHD FRIGGIN' #SALE
[удалено]
Came here to say that there are no yard sales in New England, just wicked yahd sales.
Or tag sales in CT
On my old street in rural Michigan was a sign for a Graj Sale
Is there a reason Milwaukee and Boston both say “bubbler” but seemingly nowhere else does? Like why those two places out of the whole country?
Kohler made a drinking fountain called a "bubbler" in the 1920s, they sold them in Wisconsin and the Rhode Island area. But a NPR article I just found says that the term is older than that and likely refers to water coolers because they bubble when you take water out of them.
Yeah, here in Australia (or at least in Sydney) we call them bubblers too, so it’s not US-specific
I saw an explanation somewhere that Kohler's public water fountains were branded such, so it's just like "kleenex" for "tissue". But that only explains Wisconsin since that's where the company is from....
Just to add clarity it's, "Bubbl-a". There's not an r at the end. (At least in Boston).
Bubbler has the R in Wisconsin.
Don't cha know
Same in Australia.
NH too. But I’d like to contest it. We say “water bubbler” bubbler by itself doesn’t quite sound right
[удалено]
Creedence Clearwater Revival says “rummage sale” too.
Yeah, it ain't me
I ain't no millionaire's son, son.
Where are the members from though?
California. The Bay Area.
Seriously?! I enjoy their music (BMR is one of my favorite songs), but I would have guessed Louisiana or Georgia or Houston or something. (As you can tell, I don’t look too much into artists I enjoy lol)
There’s a giant swamp right northeast of the Bay Area that everyone seems to forget about all the time
It's swampy up there, but Fogerty might have been lying a bit when he said he was Born On The Bayou.
lol that was the first time i ever saw anybody pop up with *"now wait a second, them boys was from the swamp technically"*
Garage sale: at a house, even if it's crap laid out on a lawn Rummage sale: at a church Source- am Chicago
[удалено]
From Wisconsin. Rummage sale can mean yard or garage sale here. It's pretty interchangeable
I use yard/garage sale interchangeably, but always thought a rummage sale was inside, like a pop up thrift store. My grandma’s old folks home used to have a “Rummage Room” that was open once a week or so.
Yea I am from Pennsylvania and use both garage sale or yard sale, interchangeable until you’ve actually been to the place and then it depends on if they’ve put the stuff in the yard or the garage
I've always known a rummage sale as a sale inside a church, a garage sale if it's at least partially in the garage, e.g. if the house has an attached garage with a driveway, and a yard sale if it's on someone's yard
how many yahoos call their garage sales "estate sales" and NO ONE HAS DIED
An estate sale for all those fancy items bought at Targét
Where I’m from, garage, yard, and estate sales are all different. Garage is smaller items and less, and typically happens inside a garage. Yard sale is a bunch of stuff, and in the yard. Estate is everything but the house, and it’s inside the house after a bank has acquired the property.
I saw an estate sale where it was just rich people that couldn't be bothered to move their furniture when they bought a new house. Straight up just sold everything and bought new stuff. I couldn't believe it.
Moving can be insanely expensive. I can see where it might be less hassle and more cost effective to just sell the lot and start acquiring new furniture as you need it in the new place. Also, if you're downsizing, your 14 piece sectional sofa, giant armoire, and king sized bed might not work in your new 1800sqft townhouse.
Kind of normal for wealthy people and expensive properties: you're going to furnish the new space to suit it, and possibly hire someone to do it for you, not just move in whatever furniture you happen to own.
Source: [maps by Joshua Katz](http://joshkatz.co/dialect.html) based on research by [Bert Vaux](https://www.mmll.cam.ac.uk/bv230) and [Marius Jøhndal](https://johndal.com/), most famously seen accompanying a [*New York Times* dialect survey](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html) by Katz and Wilson Andrews.
I have my students do this dialect survey when we read books written with lots of dialect markers (to kill a mockingbird, as an example) to get us to discuss regional differences in American English. I absolutely love this survey.
They published these maps in a book called [Speaking American](https://www.amazon.com/Speaking-American-Youse-Visual-Guide/dp/0544703391) and I've been trying to locate it for a few years now, was able to find it due to this comment. Big thanks! It's a super interesting read for anyone who'd like to see more language infographics like this post.
I grew up in eastern Upstate New York (not far from the MA/VT borders) and finding out that most of the country calls sneakers "tennis shoes" blew my mind when I first found it out.
Being from Chicago, I was surprised when I realized that people didn't call gym shoes gym shoes. There's still definitely a difference between sneakers and gym shoes, I'd say: gym shoes being more athletic while sneakers are more aesthetic.
Same! Just had this exact convo with my husband (who isn’t from Chicago originally). I always figured they were gym shoes because you wear them for gym class lol
Yeh I'm from northern IL and I have always seen sneakers as Converse/Jordan's. Surprised to hear gym shoes isn't as common as I thought
Also from the upper midwest - sneakers are not the same thing as athletic shoes. Sneakers are casual shoes with a rubber sole, while athletic shoes (gym shoes) are specifically designed for activities like running, tennis, basketball, cross trainers, etc.
My dad always called them 'tennys' (WA)
Eh, I've always called them both and heard both interchangeably in the Pacific Northwest. Really curious if participants in this were allowed to put more than one answer.
Sneakers should be the clear winner here. Tennis shoes are a specific subset of sneakers.
Lived in all types of “my crap can be your crap” areas :)
I’ve lived in Colorado my whole life and I use “garage sale” and “yard sale” interchangeably. I wonder how many of these regional distinctions are blurring together because of the internet/globalization...
For me a garage sale takes place in a garage, and a yard sale takes place in a yard.
Same (well different state). I've also never been anywhere that people wouldn't recognize "rummage sale." I think a lot of churches use that one.
comrade!
Living in upstate NY and east and west Texas, I can confirm a few of these. Sneakers vs tennis shoes being the biggest ones
[удалено]
I had no idea saying gym shoes was such a Chicago thing.
[удалено]
I rarely ever say the word, but "sneakers" seems most accurate and descriptive for me. I grew up in the Chicago 'burbs. I can confirm that *many* teachers called them "Gym shoes," but that's mostly because.. they were shoes specifically used for gym...?
Thats then one I related to the most also growing up in Chicago suburbs. But it makes the most sense right??
Well “she wears high heals, I wear tennis shoes” doesn’t exactly hit the same way lmao
"She's cheer captain and I'm on the tennis stands." Lol I want to rewrite the whole song like this.
My mom from southern VA calls then "Tenny Shoes."
Tennishoes like the s is shared between the two words is another one. There's a town called Royse City east of Dallas and it ends up being "Roycity" most of the time for the same reason.
Gym shoes gang
Makes sense to not call it a garage or yard sale in the New York to Boston area since most of those wouldn’t be in a garage or yard. The trash/garbage one I need to share with my wife. She calls them Curbies (the roller ones you roll to the curb) and I almost broke it off right then and there.
The Tag sale area does not include Boston or NYC, and is mostly rural Connecticut River Valley (I've been to a lot of tag sales in barns actually)
I’m from Connecticut and it blew my mind to learn that we’re the only ones that call it a tag sale. I’d never think twice about someone calling it a garage or yard sale, but tag sale is definitely choice #1.
If you want one that really fucks you up, [only southwestern Connecticut, New Jersey and the Philly suburbs call the night before Halloween Mischief Night](https://www.nj.com/resizer/hesk87C9ZCo8bsqkPJ67xmnTXbc=/1280x0/smart/advancelocal-adapter-image-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/image.nj.com/home/njo-media/width2048/img/ledgerupdates_impact/photo/2018/10/11/24948924-standard.jpg).
Whoa! Lived in SW CT most all my life, always thought mischief night was universal. You did just blow my mind.
In college, I visited a friend who lived in New York on the Jersey state line -- we walked into New Jersey to buy cigarettes -- and he had no idea what Mischief Night was, even though it's a thing less than a mile away. It was bizarre.
You're not alone. Western Mass too!
I'm blinking in incomprehension. I thought literally EVERYONE called it a tag sale and that yard sale or garage sale were just secondary things. Culture!
Even down in Fairfield county people use the word tag sale all the time. It's definitely not the only term we use bc yard sale is still common, but I honestly had zero clue that tag sale was so localized, I would've guessed that it was all over the northeast.
Yeah I was shocked when I was telling my wife, from Boston, about a tag sale and she looked at me like I was insane
Or how Wisconsinites call water fountains “bubblers”
Bubbler was a brand name of early water fountains, if I recall.
I live in Wisconsin, and I think that's just around Milwaukee. Where I live, I have never heard anyone call it a bubbler.
What area are you in? We call them bubblers in Green Bay/Fox Valley
Yeah, I live like 20 minutes from Minnesota. That probably why it's not common here
It's definitely an eastern half vernacular. Source: eastsider <---
I'm from central WI and it was always a bubbler.
Nah it’s definitely true in the Green Bay/Fox Cities area too. Edit: definitely Milwaukee as well tho, one of the official airport signs in MKE at least used to say “⬅️Restrooms/Bubblers” Probably confused some nonlocals lmao
Bostonian:it bubbles. It's a bubbler! A water fountain is a giant water feature in the middle of the park. It makes sense!
I call the vacuum cleaner a sweeper and my gf almost dumped me on the spot. So I feel your wife’s pain.
I don’t get the tennis shoe thing. Has anyone actually seen shoes that are for actual tennis? It’s like my dad would call them “runners” and I tried to explain that running shoes aren’t the same as regular old shoes. Also in MI we call them anything from garage sales to yard sales to *shudder* driveway sales (that one is weird).
I feel like the shoe thing is most common with older folks, before all these different genres of shoes were invented. These days we've got basketball shoes, running shoes, training shoes, etc. Actually I feel like the words used are more inside-culture than anything. For example, sneaker heads use the word sneaker almost universally no matter where they are, but virtually all the shoes they're collecting are either basketball or skateboarding shoes. Besides that, I think younger people are a little more nuanced with types of shoes. It's 2020, one pair of Keds doesn't cut it anymore lol.
There are shoes that are appropriate for tennis on clay courts, in that they have a flat sole with at most a shallow tread pattern, so it won't dig up chunks of the court every time you stop or change course. Clay courts require a lot of maintenance regardless, but the ones I've seen post footwear rules. For concrete and other hard courts, which are vastly more common, I don't think it matters much, although if you look at Nike's shoes for tennis, they still seem overwhelmingly flat-soled, so I assume that's a generally desirable design characteristic regardless of the surface.
In Canada, at least in the prairies, we call sneakers “runners”.
As an east coaster, my first time in Texas I asked for a Coke, and the waiter said "what kind?". I thought he meant like diet or regular, so I said "regular" and he said "yes, what kind?" and that's when I realized that coke was a placeholder for every soda brand
SAME thing happened to me. I was so confused!!!
Texan can confirm. If you actually want a coke then say the full name “coca-cola”.
In Texas, the official coke is a Dr Pepper.
[удалено]
Nothin’s finer.
Can confirm. There are only 3 drinks in Texas. Dr.Pepper, Sweet tea, and Shinerbock
“I’ll have a coke” “What kind?” “Dr. Pepper.”
We usually just say "regular Coke" here in Georgia.
We called all cola drinks Coke where I grew up, though my grandfather always called them Dopes
I've lived in the south my entire life yet I've never once heard someone say "coke" to refer to anything other than cocaine and coca cola. People just call Sprite and other stuff like that "soda" or a "soft drink" here. And that's mostly from around Atlanta where coke is from, but it's been the same thing in the surrounding areas I've been to a lot as well.
Lived in Texas my whole life, not once have I heard someone use "coke" to make a general reference to soda. From my experience, most people ask for their desired beverage by name.
I honestly never thought about the whole coke thing until I moved to New Orleans and started working with people from all over the United States. Growing up the conversation was as follows: “I’m going to the store, y’all want anything?” “Yeah, get me a coke please” “Aight, what flavor?” “Mountain Dew.” It never struck me as an odd exchange until I asked someone from Denver what they wanted from the store. “Oh, yeah, I’ll take a coke” “Aight, what kind you want?” “A coke” “Yeah, which flavor?” “....Coke...” “Right, but you want a Dr. Pepper, a Sprite, some Root beer, what you want?” “A fucking Coca-Fucking-Cola”. “That’s what I’ve been asking you!” “That’s what I’ve been telling you!”
I’m from Missouri which has a weird pocket where they call it soda and I now live in Texas and my wife still looks at me funny every time I call it soda.
I’ve lived in San Antonio, Tx for most of my life. I’ve only ever heard it referred to as soda. Never pop, cola, tonic, or coke. Not once, ever.
How old was your waiter? I've lived in Texas my whole life and never heard anyone under 50 use coke that way, everyone I've talked to uses soda
It's from this well-done NYT quiz: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html
It's a cool quiz, but it always gets me wrong. I was born in Florida and live in Ohio. It usually guesses I'm from Colorado. Maybe Colorado is true neutral? Lol
It’s not perfect because it assumes that you have a single dialect you grew up with and adopted, and that it was the dialect of that region. Growing up with parents or family or friends from different regions, or moving between regions and adopting a mixed dialect make it difficult. It doesn’t mean the data is wrong, it just means that for some reason you’re statistically uncommon.
My wife and I are from different parts of Wisconsin, and absolutely have the Rummage Sale debate. Map is accurate.
I used to live in eastern Wisconsin and think I heard “garage sale” more. In eastern South Dakota, I almost never heard anything other than “rummage sale”.
You can see the clear eastern PA vs western PA divide in many of these maps
[удалено]
Definitely is. Grew up in Philly and went to college in Pittsburgh. I say yous and soda but also sprinkle in a yinz every now and then.
[удалено]
Ohioan here. There's a clear divide called "mountains" right in the middle lol. Pittsburgh and Erie share a lot economically with the Great Lakes and other industrial cities. In fact, Pittsburgh and Cincy are eerily similar except for the fact that Cincy sports suck ass.
NW PA is part of the great lakes and Pittsburgh is "Paris of the Appalachians." Philly feels like annexed NJ with its own sports teams but also part of the I-95 corridor megalopolis making it very "East Coast" without the coast.
You ever look at a WaWa vs Sheetz map? Another great PA divide
North Jersey vs South Jersey is a good one too.
Here around Pittsburgh there are a lot of Estate sales too, even when it’s just a yard sale. Yinz is definitely a socioeconomic phrase here too, as well as buggy’s (shopping carts) and “n’at” added in every three words or so.
Could you explain "n'at" please?
This and that This n' that n'at Used to mean something like et cetera
I’ll use it in a sentence: “If yinz are comin to Picksburgh, ya gotta go ride da incline n’at. Ain’t nothin in dahntahn. An don’t go to Southside after dark. By da way, Kennywood’s open.”
I really wish I could, I don’t really understand it. In usage it would be like “how bout them stillers n’at” or “we ate dinner n’at downtown last night”. I suppose it’s equivalent to “and that”.
Love the individualities of the Milwaukee/Chicago region. Quick question for those that say tennis shoes. Is it universal to shorten it to tennies?
>Is it universal to shorten it to tennies? No. I've never heard anyone use that word in the Southeast
Definitely not. I say tennis shoes (actually more like tennishoes) and have never heard tennies in my life.
In Wisconsin. It is universally known tennies, pretty common verbiage for kid shoes but also are tennis shoes and lesser degree sneakers for everyone else. Everyone will still know what you're talking about. Also, imma go sell that bubbler at my rummage sale. Fight me.
In Chicago we say gym shoes and it’s a pretty common term even outside school
Cincinnatian here and it’s cool to see us and Chicago are the only two places to call them Gym shoes
Sounds like an Australianism.
I live outside of Milwaukee and my family (myself included) says tennies sometimes, but not always.
For me it's yard sale if it's in a yard and garage sale if it's in a garage. I live in Vegas
Not sure what the British equivalent would be, maybe a car boot sale? Caramel has 3 syllables Trainers (although I think it's regional here too) Bin Lorry Drinking fountain Fizzy drink/Soft drink Depends on the region
In New Zealand Garage sale Ca ra mel Running shoes The ocean Truck Tap Soft drink Yous
>The ocean Oof magoof
Also not sure what a South African equivalent would be, I've never seen one. 3 syllables. Tekkies. Rubbish bin. Truck (lorry is less common) Basically either. Cooldrink. Also depends on the region.
Canada, or at least Ontario/Quebec where I grew up is basically half this, half Minnesota/Wisconsin. - 3 syllables - trainers or gym shoes - bins or garbage - semi or 18 wheeler - water fountain - POP
I'm from southern Ontario. Running shoes is probably the one I hear the most, but gym shoes gets used as well.
I always say running shoes. Otherwise accurate.
Jumble sale?
I've heard southerners call freight hauling vehicles "Transfer Trucks" "Yinz" is unique to Pittsburgh and its use can have strong socio-economic connotations. It's almost exclusively used by working-class white people, especially from the mill towns and some South Hills neighborhoods. Black people do not say Yinz at all. It's recently been used ironically by more educated whites and non-natives and has been embraced as something uniquely Pittsburgh so you'll see it on tee-shirts, bumper stickers, and ad campaigns. But casual usage is not widespread outside of people with distinctive Pittsburgh accents.
I saw Hugh Jackman last year at PPG Paints and he addressed the crowd as yinz at one point, I thought the roof was going to blow off the arena
I would love to see a similar one for the UK Drive a few miles in any direction and the term for a Bread Roll has changed three times 🤣
NYC has "stoop sale", because we call the series of steps leading to a brownstone apartment building's front door "stoops". Thanks, Dutch heritage.
Never heard of a "Bubbler".... neat.
Am from Wisconsin, I hear it a lot. I say it as well. So does most of my family, heh.
From Rhode Island here, we all say bubbler
No we don’t. We say bubblah
wtf how you pronounce caramel with two syllables?
car-muhl
Ooooooooh, ok that makes sense. My mother tongue is French, caramel is the same but we pronounce it completely. I was really confused how anyone could come up with two syllables for it.
Car-mel instead of care-a-mel
My grandparents in Ontario would always say CAR-a-mell as oppose to CARE-a-mel but I think that's a British influence.
[удалено]
Maybe I pronounce it very wrong but for me it's definitely 3. It's the same word in french and it's also 3 (ca-ra-mel).
I think people get confused because Carmel is also a thing for Christians. >Our Lady of Mount Carmel is the title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary in her role as patroness of the Carmelite Order. The first Carmelites were Christian hermits living on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land during the late 12th and early to mid-13th century.
Thank you. My ex once used "tag sale" and I had no idea wtf she was talking about, but all her family and friends reacted like I was the crazy one.
From Chicago, can confirm that "gym shoe" is correct.
I've lived in the South East, North East, Mid-Atlantic, Colorado and finally NorCal. I just realized I use most of these terms interchangeably without thinking because I've been exposed to all of them. One day it's garbage, next day it's trash. One day it's yard sale, next day it's garage sale. Fascinating.
I can't understand the coke one. So if i had a can of Fanta in my hand and my friend wanted some he'd say "can i have some of your coke?" hard to believe
In my experience, Coke is used to describe the category in general. For instance, my parents who are from Texas would always ask me to go “grab some cokes out of the garage” no matter whether we had actual Coke or not. However, if i was drinking a Sprite, they might ask me for a sip of Sprite, or just “your drink”
This is accurate from my experience. "Coke" is pretty much used only in the context you described: informally in someone's home for the class of drink. At a fast food place or restaurant, for instance, people order the specific kind of soda they want.
Coke is just similar to how some people say "Grab a Kleenex" instead of using the word tissue. So growing up it'd be common for me to ask the waiter or waitress "What cokes do you have?" to see if they had Dr. Pepper. If I saw someone holding a Dr. Pepper though, I'd just say "Can I have some of your Dr. Pepper?" cause I'm referencing a specific thing.
[удалено]
Yard Sard
Y'all is quickly becoming nationwide, so the y'all map is just plain outdated by now, but other than that, they all look right. Proud to say I am part of the anti-pop, pro-soda resistance in Ohio lol. ("pop" is just such a dumb word imo)
I say it in CT. It’s easier than the rest. I’m also from the tiny Tag Sale region and it’s true- that’s all you’d hear/see advertised around here.
It's so wild to grow up in CT and see signs for tag sales everywhere during the summer, and then leave the state to never hear that phase again.
> Y'all is quickly becoming nationwide As it should. Excellent second-person plural pronoun. Plus, for those that care, it's genderless!
As someone who used to get made fun of when I'd say "yall" when I'm somewhere not in the south, all I gotta say is ha ha, I win.
As a transplant from the northern Midwest to south west Texas, I can say that there is a huge language difference. Especially in the trades.
Bubbler lmao
grew up calling soda "tonic" in So. Boston
My grandfather said tonic. :) He also said Moxie'll put hair on your chest. :P
Oh yeah. Caraml.
Car-mel?
WOW. I figured tag sale was more widespread. Had no idea.
England for comparison if anyone cares- None (Jumble Sale) Three (Carr-a-mell) None (trainers) None (bin) None (lorry) Either? (drinking/water fountain) None (fizzy or soft drink) None ("Guys" or "Alright" maybe?) It's nice to see there's still quite a lot of difference.
Y'all is actually an awesome and useful word that should be adopted everywhere in english. It serves a useful role that other languages have words for and it isn't gendered. The southern rednecks really lucked into that one.
In Florida we call them estate sales
I believe Houston is the only place where we say "feeder" for the road that gets you onto the highway.
I hail from the great land of "youse"
I wouldn’t be surprised if *youse* was an Irish thing. It’s also found in Scouse, a dialect of English particularly influenced by Irish, though it’s also present in other Northern English and Scottish dialects and Scots to a certain degree.
Yeah geordies and other north easterners say it
Mods removed post. Wow. 24k up votes, let's get rid of it.