[calm wind synth music]
KRISTINA: Do you say sub or hoagie?
VARIOUS VOICES: Sub. Sub. Hoagie. Sub. Sub.
KRISTINA: What about maple sir-up or maple seer-up?
VARIOUS VOICES: Maple seer-up. Seer-up. Maple seer-up. Seer-up. Maple sir-up.
KRISTINA: Crayon? Crayan?
VARIOUS VOICES: Crayon. Crayan. Crayon. Crayan. Crayon.
KRISTINA: People will go to war defending these words and how they’re pronounced. Most people know that the south says “y’all” and that the Midwest says “pop.” But how did the English language within the United States become so varied? How did it get to the point that within the same state, there’s almost a direct line between those who say Taylor ham and those who say pork roll.
SARAH: Oh I say Taylor Ham all the way.
KRISTINA: Sarah’s from northern New Jersey, so that’s why she says Taylor Ham. If she were from southern New Jersey she would probably say pork roll. But if you google each name individually, the same pictures come up. Because they are the same thing, they just have different names depending on whether you’re from northern or southern New Jersey. It just looks like ham to me, or maybe sausage? Breakfast ham? I don’t know.
[deep synth music]
KRISTINA: Welcome to Subs VS Hoagies, an episode of ME/US/U. I’m Kristina.
MARISSA: I’m Marissa.
BRYN: And I’m Bryn.
KRISTINA: We’re going to delve into the linguistics of the United States, the jargon that makes regions uniquely their own, and what it means to sound different from someone else.
MARISSA: I’ll be discussing how language and identity go hand in hand, and also emphasizing the regional language differences in Pennsylvania.
BRYN: I’m covering the origins, history, and life spans of the ever-changing internet slang.
KRISTINA: I’m from Nottingham, New Hampshire, and I say sub. A lot of people do. And a lot of people also say hoagie. And grinder. Or even hero. It all depends on where you grew up and what you were taught. It becomes our language, our way of speaking, and the way we speak is very much a part of our identity.
[cheerful mandolin music]
KRISTINA: No shoes, no shirts, no service. Everyone knows those signs. But in Frisco, North Carolina, those signs don’t apply. You can walk into a store barefoot, leaving sand in your wake, and nobody cares if you don’t have a shirt on. Locals are tan and weathered and proud of it. Frisco is a small community on Hatteras Island—a barrier island part of the Outer Banks.
[sound of ocean waves and seagulls in background]
KRISTINA: Island life is what the locals know and it’s what the locals are good at. There are only 4000 year-round residents on the island, but as soon as that warm weather hits—
[abrupt car horn]
KRISTINA: The tourists arrive. They come from everywhere. Families with screaming children, couples on romantic beach retreats, surfer dudes—
VOICE: [faintly in the background] Cowabunga…!
KRISTINA: They all descend upon the islands of the Outer Banks. The once quiet, hurricane-ravaged islands are suddenly bustling vacation destinations. And it’s windy.
[gust of wind]
KRISTINA: All the time. It’s what the Outer Banks is known for, and it’s what Katherine and Gordon had visited Hatteras for back when they were just tourists. A couple from New Hampshire, they frequented the island for years, falling in love with its quiet community and raging weather. They loved it so much, in fact, that they moved down there.
I had the chance to visit Katherine on the island and talk to her about her experiences and why she left New Hampshire for such a drastically different place.
KATHERINE: The primary reason was our water sport activity, and at the time it was wind surfing. And we decided to vacation here and loved it and kept coming back and that went on for maybe 8 or 10 years of just vacationing. And then in 1998 we decided to move here full-time. We had an opportunity for jobs. So that’s how it started.
KRISTINA: But, of course, it wasn’t so simple. It’s about 800 miles by car, which is only about 13 hours—if everybody around you drove like a decent human being and not like they were straight out of Mario Kart.
[sound of a car crash and a car horn whizzing by]
KRISTINA: And it wasn’t smooth sailing after Katherine and Gordon became island residents. New Englanders and southerners are about as different as they can get.
KATHERINE: The island is very laid back. It was interesting to see the slower pace, being from the north where things move very fast and people’s work ethic is driven, and that’s one of the first things that I noticed that is different here. Part of it is because they’ve developed a way of life that is based on the hot weather. They have to move slower, and they have to pace themselves and take breaks. I look back on it as an adventure.
The population of Hatteras Island is 4000 people. Of course, that just explodes in the spring, summer, and the fall when the tourists are all here. That shifts your priorities when the tourists are here. It’s interesting to shift gears and have to push yourself and work longer hours and faster and things like that. But it’s easy to fall into the slower pace because everybody else is doing that.
KRISTINA: She goes on to talk about southern social norms and behaviors.
KATHERINE: They’re very polite, they show their respect by addressing people miss or ma’am or sir, and that’s not an indication of the age of the person that they’re talking with. It’s more respect. So people call me “Miss Katherine” or if they’re answering you they’ll say, “Yes ma’am!” So that’s just common for them. People that aren’t used to it, if they say “ma’am,” they think that they’re passing judgement on the person’s age. And it’s not that at all, and sometimes people get offended.
KRISTINA: And then there’s the accent. The regional jargon. The slang and expressions. It’s impossible to overlook the differences. Katherine had lived in New Hampshire for 46 years. Born and raised. She says pee-can. She calls it maple sir-up. Her roots are in New England, so obviously her grammar and enunciation reflects that. So even after living in North Carolina for 20 years, she’s still not used to the word “y’all.”
KATHERINE: Oh I know, I can’t say “y’all.”
KRISTINA: No?
KATHERINE: No. [laughs] It just does not flow out of my mouth. It is ironic though because I do have a little—a little tick. But it’s how they speak. That’s second nature.
KRISTINA: The same way “you guys” is second nature for most of the U.S., excluding the deep south. Sometimes you’ll hear “yous” in Boston or Philadelphia or parts of southern New Jersey. Even “yinz” if you happen to find yourself in southwestern PA. It all depends on what you grew up with.
Jargon best explains the differences in speech among certain regions of the country, but even within these regions, there are specific colloquialisms and slang that groups pick up on and adopt as their own. The foundation for the way we speak is established by our parents, family, and caretakers as we grow and absorb as much as we can. As we get older, we’re influenced by our peers and teachers and whoever else. This is when we might start to adopt jargon unlike what’s used in our household.
Like me, for example. I’m from southern New Hampshire, and people apparently say “bubbler” instead of “water fountain.”
KATHERINE: “Water fountain?”
KRISTINA: See sometimes I say “bubbler.”
KATHERINE: Oh, bubbler. No.
KRISTINA: Katherine is from central, almost northern New Hampshire—not quite part of the region where bubbler is more commonly used. So she didn’t really agree with me on that.
My parents don’t say it. My friends don’t say it. I don’t know where I picked up on it. There must’ve been some kid in elementary school or an impressionable teacher who said it often enough that my brain latched on to it. I honestly don’t know where it came from. Bubbler. Sometimes, if I’m conscious about it, I’ll say “water fountain.” But when my guard’s down, well—
[pouring water]
KRISTINA: Jargon relies upon context and location, which is why people from different areas seem a bit out of place when they travel outside of their region. Northerners will say that southerners are hard to understand, but southerners will say the same thing about northerners.
KATHERINE: Their enunciation can be hard to understand. So you have to hear it for a while, then you understand like “ten” to us—t-e-n—they pronounce “tin.” And their expressions are different. One of the things that also sticks in my mind is when they’re talking about turning a light switch on or off. They don’t say “turn on.” They say “cut on” or “cut the light off.”
KRISTINA: So who’s right? Which way is easier to understand? Well, the language you best understand is the language you grew up with. It’s part of who you are. It’s comforting, almost like a sense of home. It shouldn’t matter if someone says car-a-mel instead of car-mel, or roundabout instead of traffic circle. The beauty of the United States is its diversity. Whether you’re from the frigid north or the deep south, the mid-West, the West coast, or kinda from all over. We’re all human. No state, region, or country borders can change that.
[calm wind synth music]
MARISSA: Hey I’m Marissa, and as Kristina mentioned earlier I’m going to discuss how language and identity go hand in hand.
I felt like I didn’t belong. Here I was, an hour from home, and I felt like I was in the wrong. It was freshman year of college, and I hadn’t been here long. My mom had conditioned me to be kind of a clean freak, especially when it comes to a messy floor. If there’s something that needs to be cleaned up, I had to sweep it. “Sweep,” right? That sounds correct. That’s what everyone says. I proceeded to tell my roommate, who is from New York, that I had to sweep our bedroom floor. She stopped and gave me this dumbfounded look, as if saying, “You dumb hillbilly from the-middle-of-nowhere-PA, what the heck do you mean you have to ‘sweep’ the floor?” When she questioned me on my word choice for what I now know most people call “vacuuming,” I was stunned that people don’t say “sweep” everywhere else. Shocker, I know. That questioning and disbelief of how I said I was going to sweep versus vacuum changed how, I guess you could say careless, I was with my words. From there on out, the rest of the year, I made sure that I never said sweep again. It was always vacuum.
[vacuum whirring]
MARISSA: When she said that, it felt as if she was attacking me, and not where I’m from and the language I’ve spoken my entire life. I was like “Hey, I’m more from here than you are. Therefore I’m right, and you’re wrong.” Of course, I didn’t say this to her, but I was thinking it all along. When you’re as passionate about your hometown as I am, anything that somebody pokes fun at, including my language and word choice, kind of offends me. People don’t do it on purpose, but those words are a part of me and my identity. Some people don’t realize that, but if you think about how you speak, especially if you’re from Pennsylvania, it’s not hard to associate your language with your identity. The next year with a new roommate nothing was brought up about the use of the word “sweeper,” so I’m sticking to what I know. However, I have found myself saying “vacuum” more and more as I’ve adapted to others at school saying that. It just goes to show how language can change based on the area and the people you associate with.
[deep synth music]
MARISSA: In a 1988 documentary by PBS, American Tongues discusses sociolinguists by recognizing American English dialects and perceptions of them. Similarly to my anecdote about sweeper versus vacuum and how I felt attacked, American Tongues emphasizes that when people criticize the way you talk, it might also feel like they’re criticizing you because your speech is so much a part of who you are. We expect people from other countries to speak differently, but we feel unsettled when it’s another American speaking with different words. This only reinforces just how much language is a part of our inherent identity.
While language can be a defining factor of some people’s identity, it is most definitely, 100%, no questions asked, a factor when it comes to Pennsylvanians. Two cities on the opposite side of the state, a lot separates them. There’s land, miles, people, but definitely the most important: sports teams. Pennsylvania is divided. Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, Steelers or Eagles, Penguins or Flyers, Pirates or Phillies. We’re one state, however there’s so much that makes Pennsylvanians different. That includes their language quirks and regionalisms, and what makes them sounds like they’re from this part of the state or another. Pittsburgh has “yinz” while Philadelphia avoids the ‘th’ sound and swallows the ‘L’ in a lot of their words. Linguists love Pennsylvania. While most states have two or three comprehensive dialects, Pennsylvania has five, including those from Erie and Pennsylvania Dutch Country; however, the most notable are those from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Obviously, the majority of the population of PA lives outside the state’s two biggest cities, so anywhere you go within the border of the Keystone State, there’s really no telling what words or sounds are going to spew from people’s mouths. In this state, the way we talk and the words we say really define where we’re from, and everyone knows that. It’s common knowledge that people are passionate about where they come from and what make them unique. Where we come from and grow up is an identity that is truly irreplaceable.
[cheerful mandolin music]
MARISSA: I had the opportunity to talk with Patrick Durney, a junior at Susquehanna and also a Pennsylvania native. Like myself, he shares a little insight on our topic. In this we discuss regional language, differences in language across the entire state and the different comprehensive dialects the state possesses, and how language relates to a person’s identity. We found that even though just a few hours separate our hometowns, Susquehanna, and the rest of the state, there is diversity and influences from surrounding areas and bordering states. Here, PA natives take on the miscellaneous languages of the state.
MARISSA: So, where did you grow up in Pennsylvania, and what is the area like in terms of size? Is it more rural or urban?
PATRICK: I grew up in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, which is like located in the Pocono Mountains. It’s probably about 2 hours from here and probably like an hour from New York. So it was a lot of New Jersey and New York kids in the area so it was very diverse, and um, more suburban.
MARISSA: How can you compare it to the size of Selinsgrove here at Susquehanna University?
PATRICK: My high school was probably bigger than Selinsgrove, or at least it feels like it. Yeah our just one town, like on one side of the bridge, was over 10,000 people, and then you have all of these other kids.
MARISSA: So what was it like having people from like other states around there since you’re close to New Jersey and New York?
PATRICK: It always kept it interesting. [laughs] There was always, um, diverse perspectives. You always had, it wasn’t just very one sided, like you all, you saw sides of all different backgrounds, everywhere where everyone came from, um and you got to know several other people too. Like you didn’t just—it wasn’t just a white-washed community. It was, it was kind of like a mini New York, like you saw everything.
MARISSA: So are there any sayings specific to your area, like are there ones that you feel are native to just like Stroudsburg, and like how do people coming from those different states that are so close to Stroudsburg? Do you like hear anything from them that, them that is different than from where you like specifically grew up, and if so could you give us a few?
PATRICK: People from the cities, they would use like um, kind of like urban slang that you could like easily find like on Urban Dictionary cause sometimes like we didn’t know what everyone was saying so they would explain it to us, but um other than that like urban slang, it travels fast. But one of the weirdest things from coming from Stroudsburg to here is the pronunciation of the grocery store Weis. Is that how we say it in Selinsgrove? “Wice?”
MARISSA: I mean that’s how I hear it being said here in Selinsgrove, but that’s not correct.
PATRICK: I…
MARISSA: Is that how you say it? Is that how you said it before you came here?
PATRICK: You say it like “wise.”
MARISSA: I say “wise.”
PATRICK: I’ve always said “wice,” so when I said that here I was grilled. That’s basically it. Other than that like everything, word travels fast with like slang terms and stuff, like it took a little slower here for some terms to catch up, but other than that like it was just like the little things. I also get grilled for using the word “wudder.” Like people say wah-ter, or water. That just doesn’t sound right to me. I’ve just said “wudder.”
MARISSA: Since coming to Susquehanna, have you noticed how different people talk here, how the students talk, whether it be like accents, or like pronunciations of words, or just different words used for different things? Like, there’s a lot of different examples, but like are there any that you can think of?
PATRICK: Well why don’t you give me an example.
MARISSA: Well, I call a vacuum cleaner a sweeper, even though normally a sweeper would be like a broom, but like the actual vacuum cleaner I call a sweeper. Have you noticed that language differs in different part of the state because Pennsylvania is a very diverse area for language. Have you visited many parts of the state?
PATRICK: Um, this is probably as central as I’ve been. Like I’m not usually in these parts of Pennsylvania.
MARISSA: Mhm-hmm.
PATRICK: So it’s kind of new to me.
MARISSA: Central PA is a lot of like “you guys” or I say “youns.”
PATRICK: Like for y’all?
MARISSA: There’s more to a state than Selinsgrove and Stroudsburg, and isoglosses affect other towns and cities. Many of my relatives live in the Berks County region of PA, which is located south easterly, closer to Philadelphia. When we’re all together, I can pick up on certain language quirks. If they want to go somewhere together, they’ll say, “Hey, do you want to come with?” or “Wanna come with?” which differs from everything else I’ve heard. Normally, you hear “Do you want to come with me?” or even something like, “Do you want to come with me to the store?” With them, it always ends in the word “with.” Where some friends live in South Central PA, there’s a big usage of the word for “crick” rather than “creek” or “ruff” rather than “roof.” In recognizing these, we can recognize that because we are not from the same places and don’t have the same influences on language, we can’t have the same inherent language-driven identities. It can be only across a single state, or across the entire United States, but even something so second nature like language feels like a part of our DNA and identity, and we can’t be carbon copies of one another with the social, physical, and natural influences we face.
One of the definitions of identity is “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.” Another definition states identity as, “condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is; the qualities, beliefs, etc. that distinguish or identify a person or thing.” If you think about language and how it relates to identity, it can easily be attributed to being a quality that makes up who you are. Although mostly inherent and learned from a young age, language also can be made and remade through our lived experiences during life as we grow up and continue to exist through routinized action that we participate in everyday. More than anything now days, we are seeing how language is being socially constructed. In “A Comparison to Linguistic Anthropology” published by UC Santa Barbara, language can be considered as an identity that is a quintessential social phenomenon. As much as we learn words and language based on where we grew up, as I did in Central Pennsylvania, we also learn from those around us.
Slang and internet language is something, especially our generation, has found to be a growing part of millennials identities. Language is influenced from people and places. The best way to explain the connection of language and identity based on place is to discuss isoglosses. An isogloss is a geographical boundary line marking an area in which a distinctive linguistic feature commonly occurs. In other words, it can be a mountain or a river that separates areas from one another, therefore keeping language contained and not letting it spread. Isoglosses create literal and physical language barriers that contribute to language impacting identity. American Tongues talks about natural landmarks in the New England region. The Connecticut river separates those who have the Boston accent and those who don’t, even though they’re all from the same general area. Coming back to the definition of identity, the qualities that language possess are unavoidable. Whether through social construction, physical landmarks, and new internet language and slang, language is something that will always be there to define you.
[calm wind synth music]
BRYN: Hi, my name is Bryn Hanrahan, and I’m a Twitter addict.
[Twitter notification whistle]
BRYN: I absolutely love keeping up with social media trends, including the latest niche-jokes. Often these include slang terms that Twitter straight-up just creates on the spot, and they become a sensation. Not unlike our regional jargon discussions, online discussions have become integral to our identities, and I’m here to discuss my thoughts on this, and some research behind the history of internet slang and text lingo.
[deep synth music]
BRYN: So far in this discussion, we have covered the history of linguistic differences across geographical borders, and how our homes and the way we speak pertain to our identity. However, along the same lines of language and identity, an entire different realm of speaking and expression is found within the never-ending maze of the internet and text messaging, in a way that has never been seen before in history.
[text typing noise]
BRYN: In the confines of the internet and our cell phones, not only do we create and spread our own unique phrases, but we generate our own identities that completely differ from how we express ourselves face-to-face. As social media has risen to the top of our mental spheres over the past few years, our online presence has engulfed us in an unprecedented way. As college students, around ages 18-22, we have grown up surrounded by these other “worlds” found within our social media platforms. We grew up with text message signatures on our phones that would automatically send like email signatures and included embarrassing messages like “thanks for the memories” when your 6th grade boyfriend dumped you after a week of dating. We grew up with flip phones and slide-keyboard phones that we used to send hundreds of “LOLs” and “BRBs”. Some of us had MySpace. Personally I was not even aware of MySpace until after its downfall, but I knew plenty of people my age who experimented with it. Some of us made cringe-y Facebook pages, or made our own memes on the iFunny app. We all remember memes like—
“Charlie bit me…”
Bryn: —Bad Luck Bryan, and Grumpy Cat. Through these platforms, we became exposed to a completely different facet of language, that only we, as users of these social media sites and apps, would be able to connect on.
This has only become more prevalent as time goes on. Now, it seems like we cycle through phrases and memes so quickly that they die before they even reach those who don’t belong to these sites. I mean, you know once your mom starts saying “lit” that it’s no longer acceptable for you to use. Even recording this podcast, I feel like any meme or current popular twitter phrase I could use will be nonexistent by the time this is published. When I originally came up with the idea of covering this topic, one of the first popular phrases that came to mind was “let’s get this bread.” At the time, it was late September and early October, and the phrase was absolutely everywhere, and the jokes about it were funny, but now at the beginning of November, the phrase seems tired and over-used. It’s on its way out. This world is so fast paced and ever-changing, especially today, that I feel like we barely have time to process any of this language before it changes again.
That was a slight tangential conversation that really doesn’t pertain to my point, but nonetheless, if you’re hip to the memes, it’s an identity that young people, or people actively involved in social media, can immediately connect on. You never know who is going to make it viral in the next few weeks.
For example, in a tweet by internet comedian Kurtis Conner, he says: “when the tea is served but its none of your business but then sis snaps and ur a skinny legend.” He’s clearly joking by amalgamating tons of quote-on-quote “trendy” internet phrases into one tweet. A follower of Conner’s responded to the tweet, saying “imagine someone from 10 years ago reading this” and the tweets together went viral, accumulating over 200 thousand likes. This is a perfect example of the point I’m trying to make. Historically, we go through language changes frequently. Old, Shakespearean English is practically a foreign language to us now. I think 10 years is even a little generous. If those phrases had been used together two years ago, no one would have understood what it meant. However, some of those phrases that I just mentioned were actually products of African American and queer culture that have developed over time and became integrated into quote-on-quote “internet speech.” I felt that this was worth noting because while not all of us would have understood what this series of phrases meant, that doesn’t necessarily mean that these groups would not understand initially.
The next facet of internet speak that I was curious about was text message lingo. You know, the shorthand conglomeration of everyday phrases like “be right back,” “got to go,” and “talk to you later.” I wanted to attempt to find out just exactly where this came from, and how it became so incredibly prevalent that even when mobile phone keyboards became much easier for dexterity and typing purposes, these shorthand phrases of “LOL,” “BRB,” “GTG,” and “TTYL” still replace the long-form phrases when texting casually.
An article from the history vault indicates that while text abbreviations are a 21st century phenomenon—obviously, because text messaging was not a thing before this—humans have inherently always been looking for ways to abbreviate language and communicate as much as possible through as little as possible. As Kevin from The Office would say—
“So me think, why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?”
BRYN: The article continues to list ways that we as humans have created shorthand since the beginning of human linguistic history, like runes, medieval scribes, hieroglyphics, and telegraph operator speech. However, while I found this historical tidbit interesting, I wanted to look into actual text message language history a little bit more.
According to the guardian, text messaging was first invented on December 3, 1992, making it almost exactly 26 years old today as I record this, and text language emerged quickly after because of the 160-character constraint of the keypad—and because, to begin with, it was time-consuming to enter words on a numerical keypad. Abbreviations such as “L8R,” “GR8,” and “B4” soon had befuddled adults complaining that kids had lost the ability to spell correctly. So there you have it. Text message language originally started as a clever way to get around the fact that only a finite amount of characters were able to be used in one message. That honestly gives me more faith in humanity, because now I realize that these messages were actually just clever ways to communicate a point and work around a problem rather than a creation born of laziness. However, when I was researching this sort of early 2000s shorthand, I found it impossible to read. Referring back to my Shakespeare point, quote-on-quote “original” text message slang was a foreign language to me. I was only able to recognize the occasional “LOL,” and everything else that I looked up was complete nonsense to me. It was such a mess of characters that I don’t know how anybody could’ve understood what that meant back in the day.
Nowadays, with the rise of predictive text and the ability to talk to text as well as keyboards with much easier accessibility than the first cell phones with SMS capabilities, it seems like texting shorthand is only used, well, ironically. I know personally that I still use “LOL,” but only in a sarcastic or ironic sense. I usually will say it if I am definitely NOT laughing out loud. For example, I would use it in a sentence as “I should have studied more for this final, I totally just failed my test LOL” or, “LOL just checked my bank account.” I would say that “LOL” and all of its variants are pretty much the only text shorthand I still use regularly, and it’s not even for its intended purpose.
The internet is arguably a personality trait at this point. You hear the people around you using phrases coined by popular accounts or vloggers, and you know immediately that you two share a common interest or “come from the same place” in a sense. Just like when you hear someone call an Italian ice “wudder ice,” you know they hail from the same geographical area as you, and that concept in itself is fascinating to me. The internet, not to be completely cheesy and cliché, can almost serve as a second home to people, because they gain the support and friendships that can sometimes mimic the ones they have in real life, or the ones they are lacking in real life. Therefore, this massive, widespread community gains its own vocabulary, its own vernacular, just as any other geographical community would. Beyond that, smaller subgroups on the internet have their own vernaculars and phrasings, just as subgroups in real life would. You know you and your friends say certain things through inside jokes that other people wouldn’t necessarily understand. You even have your own gestures or expressions that are a part of your so-said “language.” Language is a never-ending continuum of variations that is always changing. The internet is a place for people to create their own identities in a safe space that cultivates humor and acceptance simultaneously.
[calm wind synth music]
KRISTINA: Thank you for listening to this episode of ME/US/U. Music came from the program GarageBand. Sound effects were recorded by the hosts, or came from Free Sound Effects.com. The audio clips of Charlie Bit My Finger and Kevin from the Office are from YouTube and were used under fair use. A special thanks to Sarah Lopez, Patrick Durney, Hannah Phillips, Stephen Naegeli, Tayla George, and Katherine for allowing us to record you. Thanks again, y’all.