While writing this blog I realize that I may use phrases and terms that may not be a part of the regional terminology or language of the reader, many times this is due to my inclusion of phrases which are so ingrained into my vocabulary from childhood that I often don’t think twice when using them. Words like ya’ll, folks, aughta, and others. As I find these I’ll try to give definitions so that I’m not speaking/writing gibberish.
Lets start with Southern 101
ya’ll= you all, or simply you
all ya’ll= all of you, means more than one person usually addresses the whole group
aughta= aught to, or probably should do something depending on the subject matter.
gonna= going to
folks= friends, family, generally people you trust ad can be yourself around.
fixin ta= like gonna but more of an action word like “I’m fixin ta go to the store, wanna go with?”
On up= I use this a lot when driving and giving directions. As in “It’s on up the street about three blocks on the right.”
Different rules for women vs. men: a woman can call anyone honey, darlin, sweety, snookums, sugar britches, practically anything she can think of; but a man who uses such words must be conjugally bound and on good terms with the recipient or else be considered a miserable wretch of a skumbag human being.
My partner is Canadian and I’ve been learning new ways to use old words that don’t always make sense to me.
For instance:
Canadians will go stand in a line (queue) regardless of whats the lines for; went to the ferry terminal yesterday and my partner jumps in line even though there were 4 automated ticket dispensers available for use. I got our tickets and was ready to leave, and the line had moved by 2 people, out of 50 in line waiting for the ticket counter person to take their money via internet transaction. What’s with that?
I was recently asked “How did you find the hotel on Galiano Island?” My response (which was not correct) was “I found it on line, and took the ferry from Tsawwassen.” Don’t ask me how to pronounce that last word, I can’t for the life of me wrap my tongue around it. Just know that it’s the terminal that takes you to the islands from mainland B.C.
The intended question wasn’t how did I find the hotel, but what did I think of the hotel. I wanted to say, well why didn’t you just ask me what I thought, but thought better of it. No sense in pissing off the locals, besides they might find me mentally unstable and my reputation is already on shaky ground.
Then there’s the weird words like toque, which is a winter knit hat, REI calls them ski hats, Mountain Equipment co-op calls them togue’s, then there’s gaunch, which is underwear (not sure of what variety), I’ve not been brazen enough to ask yet.
There’s also alternate spellings of perfectly good words like:
chequeing= as in checking account
Then there’s the add a U rule so that regular every day words like labor and flavor, become labour, flavour, which just feels like a lotta work and somehow less savory with the extra letter. That and my spell checker goes blitzo on me and marks everything as misspelled.
Chuffed means really stoked and happy, or fucked, depending on context. Everything is in the context with this one.
Rain in Blaine 