The Tangent of the Year - To Spry Up

[JTeagarden]

This one has zero to do with trombones.

Where I grew up, it was common for parents to tell their children to "spry up," does anyone else in the English-speaking world use this expression, and if so, where, and what is its sense?

Sorry for going so far afield, but this seemed like a good mix of native English-speakers.

[Posaunus]

Never heard it out here in California.

[AtomicClock]

I never heard it. (I grew up in WV; parents were from Queens and the Midwest.)

[harrisonreed]

Never heard of that growing up in Massachusetts. We were just told to "*shut* up". It probably means the same thing.

[ghmerrill]

Likewise, never heard it -- either growing up in the northeast, several years in St. Louis area,spending a decade (with family and small children) in Chicago, or for over 4 decades now in the southeast. My first speculation is that it's some sort of "regionalism". But I think it would have to be somewhere I've never been. My only other guess would be a much narrower demographic (possibly church/denomination-based, or just a small community thing). Let us know.

(I'm assuming this is some variant of "spruce up"? Dictionaries seem to regard "spry up" as a mis-writing of "spruce up".)

[JTeagarden]

I grew up in the Pittsburgh area, which has a lot of regional expressions, many from the early flood of Scots-Irish settlers, the expression basically means to "wise up," or "improve your behavior."

I had to hear it a lot growing up.

[ghmerrill]

That's pretty weird. On the other hand, until I was about 19, I pronounced "wash" as "warsh" -- owing to my mother's mid-western mode of speech, even though I grew up in upstate NY where nobody talked like that.

Speech mannerisms can be peculiar. For most of our lives (including even now) if you heard both me and my sister speak, you'd think we were from completely different regions of the country. She's always had a New York twang kind of thing (though the rural and not the NYC version). Somehow, I just never developed that, although she did from an early age -- and has retained it despite living in Arizona for about 50 years now.

[JTeagarden]

I once shrieked in pain at work, explaining to a work colleague (from Ohio) that I "stove my finger" ("jammed" everywhere else): That's another Pittsburgh oddity that does not seem to carry outside the Ohio River valley, and every native knew it, and no non-native had ever heard it.

[ghmerrill]

This is starting to give the impression that the Pittsburgh area should be studied along the lines of Jared Diamond's work on New Guinea dialects.

[fsgazda]

Grew up in Western PA. "Red-up the room" was one from my aunt. Of course "Yinz" (western PA for y'all).

[JTeagarden]

Yep! I was told to "redd up my room" quite frequently, and that something "needs cleaned."

[JTeagarden]

This is starting to give the impression that the Pittsburgh area should be studied along the lines of Jared Diamond's work on New Guinea dialects.

You're jagging my wires!

[ghmerrill]

Well, My first guess about your use of "spry up" was that it sounded like maybe some sort of Appalachian dialect, but I couldn't square that with your being so far north. However, it turns out that this was just due to my ignorance.

There also appears to be a recognized "Western Pennsylvania regional dialect" of "Appalachian English" that "has become predominant in central and northern Appalachia". I guess I never spent enough time in Pennsylvania to notice this.

[Posaunus]

Should not be surprising, but regional dialects such as Pittsburghese, have been broadly studied.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_P ... ia_English

https://www.pghcitypaper.com/specials-g ... -19623370/

https://pittsburghspeech.pitt.edu/Pitts ... rview.html

etc.

[hyperbolica]

Grew up in Western PA. "Red-up the room" was one from my aunt. Of course "Yinz" (western PA for y'all).

Part of my family is from the Clearfield PA area, and both of those were in standard use.

Now I live in the south with another set of phrases all its own.

[ghmerrill]

Now I live in the south with another set of phrases all its own.

Bless your heart, sugar.

[harrisonreed]

This is all wicked cool.

[JTeagarden]

Pittsburgh was kind of the point of departure for populating Appalachia, due to the rivers, it was easier to travel hundreds of miles on the Ohio that was to go 4 miles through the Allegheny mountains.


One of my ancestors was a sawmiller in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, which, because of all the hardwood forests nearby of the varieties needed, was a big shipyard, back in the day.

[JTeagarden]

Pittsburghese doesn’t sound very Appalachian, it’s not twangy, if you ever heard Dan Marino or Jim Kelly talk, that’s precisely the accent, it has the same Scot- Irish roots as most of Appalachia, but add in a bunch of German immigrants and eastern Europeans as well.

[harrisonreed]

They've got us all beat, I'm afraid.

[ghmerrill]

Islands are in a different league.

[JohnL]

Reminds me of Boontling.

[Posaunus]

Reminds me of Boontling.

Except that Boontling is an invented artificial jargon, whereas Tangierish seems to have evolved (and been sustained) the old-fashioned way.

[Doug Elliott]

I've been to Tangier Island. No joke, they can be very hard to understand.

[harrisonreed]

This one might be a bit tricky if you don't speak Japanese, but it's pretty easy to hear. Even within an island you will get some crazy dialects, like the Tsugaru dialect of Japanese. It sounds like French and it's almost impossible for Tokyoites to understand, let alone a foreigner like me. When I lived there we did a performance for their "Horse Burning Festival" (no horses were harmed, just large horse piñatas), and going around the town I was wondering why so many of the older people were speaking French.

You can hear it on this video, the women at the table are using the Tokyo accent, and the women at the car are speaking with the Tsugaru dialect:




This dialect happened because of mountain ranges, dense forests, and brutal winters

[JTeagarden]

Some languages were not standardized for a very long time, and others were: I am told (by my native-Russian speaking wife) that there are no real dialects in Russian, despite the size of the country (although you might make the case for Belarussian and Ukrainian being the equivalent), while German has a bunch: while living in Bavaria, two neighbors (both locals) had a roughly 10-minute conversation in front of my townhouse, and I asked a native speaker (from Cologne) who witnessed their entire conversation what they were talking about, and all she could muster was “something about his throat.”

[harrisonreed]

I am sure that Russia used to have many dialects and accents, but 80+ years of Soviet enforced relocations and standardized media goes a long way to even out a language.

This can be seen in Japan, where most of the young people will generally use the Tokyo accent or to a lesser extent the Kansai/Osaka accent, and across the country all but the oldest people can speak a passable version of the Tokyo dialect for day to day business. Mass media (and the desire to not be seen as a country "potato person") is the main cause.

China is another good example, to compare with Russia. Chinese dialects are mutually unintelligible, basically separate languages the same way French and Italian are. But now nearly everyone in China can speak Mandarin in addition to their native language.

Fun fact: somehow all these different Chinese languages are written in such a way that their written forms are mutually intelligible and often identical. In other words you could give the same written document to people from different posts of the country, ask them to read it out loud, and different languages would come out of their mouths, despite reading from the same script.

[JTeagarden]

They've got us all beat, I'm afraid.

Wow, off the charts!

I recall a vacation with my family in the early 70s (via Ford station wagon), my Father was keen on us seeing the "real America," so we took old Route 19 from Pittsburgh to Florida. We stopped somewhere in Appalachia for gas, and the attendent (yes, young'ns, you didn't pump your own gas those days) spoke to my Father, and I didn't understand a single word out of the attendant's mouth.

That and seeing an emormously obese man at a Stuckey's were among the highlights of the trip.

[robcat2075]

In the early 1980s i was teaching Band 5-12 in west Texas. One day this weathered cowboy guy comes in riled up about something. He's speaking English but I don't understand more than a couple words, it's just a low mumble.

He leaves in a huff.

A couple days later he returns with his wife. She explains their shock and bafflement that Johnny only got a "B" in Band last quarter.

[BrassSection]

My location, Blair county pa, Altoona being the closet spot to my little area you’ll probably find on a map.
Red my room up many times
Pin-near fell down…almost fell down
Toboggan…Country folks wore them on their head. Townies wore a knit cap on their head and rode a toboggan on snow in the winter
Pop vs soda vs soda pop, depends on where family came from. (Pop where I grew up)
Smaller settlements in the area, they’re more likely to earl their slides as opposed to putting oil on them
Hoagy vs sub. We ate hoagies, Baltimore relatives ate submarine sandwiches
Whoopie pie vs gobs. Mostly gobs here
Hay stacks vs no bake. About 50-50
We went from black and white TV to Keller TV in the 60s
Losing out last couple of decades, but prior to that not unusual for refrigerators to still be called an ice box
Whooshing machines warshed yer clothes
Stoved my fingers many times
We would git more than get
Sofa vs Davenport…more letters = more $$

West Virginia vs PA

Back in the early 70s I was a shanty shaker…one who delivered mobile homes. Took a 12’X70’ one to WV on a hot summer day. Delivered and all set up, ready to leave when new owner offered me a cold apple cider. Sounded good. One sip and I knew it wasn’t what people in Blair County called apple cider! Politely handed it back with the excuse “I’m driving this truck back.”

[BrassSection]

Forgot one…

I noticed the other day our chicken coop was leaning towards Fishers.

[Posaunus]

... the other day our chicken coop was leaning towards Fishers.

[harrisonreed]

Pining for the fjords

[BrassSection]

Something that wasn’t plumb was said to be leaning towards Fishers. That was a common saying in my neck of the woods growing up in the 50s and 60s.

My chicken coop is on 4 legs, it settled unevenly over the winter. I realized this morning after doing morning chores, as a lad in my 20s in the 70s, I never dreamed I’d be a chicken tender in my 70s in the 20s!

[Posaunus]

Something that wasn’t plumb was said to be leaning towards Fishers. That was a common saying in my neck of the woods growing up in the 50s and 60s.

Was the neighboring property owned by the Fisher family?

[BrassSection]

Was the neighboring property owned by the Fisher family?

Must have been hundreds of them if there was, common throughout our region. Dad’s parents local, both used it. Mom’s parents, her mom was from Baltimore, and used it, her dad was from Boston and never heard him use it. He was well travelled, Captain in the Army, his resume includes WWI,WWII, and Korea.

[Crazy4Tbone86]

The video about Tangier Island hit close to home for me. When I moved to Mid-Maryland (Frederick County) in 1991, I noticed a few language patterns that really stood out to me. One is how they would say the syllable “out.” Many locals pronounce it as two distinct syllables…..ow-uuuut (long u sound). Almost every week I hear this phrase. “I’m doing well. How a-bow-uuut you?”

The Tangier Island video also brought to mind the pronunciation of “parents” that I occasionally hear in Maryland. You can hear it clearly on that Tangier Island video. Parents is pronounced as a one syllable words without the letter T…..sounds like “pairns.”

Unfortunately, I hear less and less of these dialect things as time goes by. Frederick County has almost doubled in population since 1991. The area becomes more “worldly” every day.

Maryland had nothing on Lancaster County, PA in terms of unique phrases and sentence structure. I moved to Lancaster County as an 8-year-old and found the culture very entertaining. Since the Amish and Mennonite communities have such deep roots in German culture (they call it “Pennsylvania Dutch”), the sentences are put together in interesting ways. Here are some examples…… “Throw the cow over the fence some hay!” On my first day of school in PA, I heard this one…. “Toss that Kindergartener already, the ball!” And the phrase I heard at least ten times a day……”Is it all?” I kept asking…..”Is it all what?” “Is it all?” meant “Is it all gone?”

[PhilE]

I find it fascinating that some English speakers who come from the country where the English language originated can be quite challenging to understand.

In the office where I worked there was quite a mix of nationalities. One day an new bloke started work there. He was fresh from Manchester, UK. I couldn't understand him at all. Neither could anyone else including the well educated and well spoken Indian engineers.

There were three fellows from Yorkshire, UK also working there, all from the same town who spoke quite differently to each other. One of them had been in Australia for 40 years or so. You had to listen very carefully to pick up what he was talking about.

In Australia we like to joke about the New Zealand accent. The word six sounds like sux, check-in sounds like chicken, deck sounds like dick. They are very good about it though.

A bit of British language comedy below;

[ghmerrill]

Pining for the fjords

For some reason, to me, this seems like a perfectly natural thing to say. I'd definitely pine for the fjords if I'd grown up in/around any.