When I was ordering lunch the other day, I asked the server
for a tuna “sub.” She looked at me blankly. “You mean a grinder?”
Yes! A grinder! How could I forget? Just when I think I’m settling in, some little detail like that pops up to remind me that I am not in Virginia any more.
I started thinking about these differences in regional
dialect and discovered a great resource for writers who want to make sure their
characters are talking like natives.
The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) http://dare.wisc.edu has been in the works
since 1962. It was the brainchild of the American Dialect Society and the
English Department at the University of Washington-Madison. Staff at the
university has toiled for fifty years to compile a dictionary of all the
regionalisms that make people from different states incomprehensible to each
other.
DARE’s website is fun to play with, and is a valuable
resource for writers. There are dropdown menus that make it easy for you to
choose your state and explore some of the lingo that your potential characters
may speak.
So if your hero is hungry, he can order a hero in New York
City, or a po’boy in New Orleans, or a hoagie in Pennsylvania. Who knew that in
southeastern New York, such a sandwich is called a “wedge?” When he is done
eating a peach, depending on where he is from, he will toss away the seed, pit,
stone, or kernel.
The dictionary is fun to browse. Most of us know that soda
and pop mean the same thing, but who knew that a dust bunny is called a “dust
dolly” in New Jersey?
Are there any regionalisms that only folks in your neck of
the woods use?
