What did you say?!

From bubbler to drinking fountain and coke to Sodi-pop there are many different words for MANY different things. Each dialect of North American English (NAE) will have words that will be foreign to all the dialects of English including the subset of NAE. 

Here I am going to just through down words from various NAE dialects. Hope you enjoy (won't list the meaning).

• Faucet
• Spigot
• teeter-totter
• seesaw
• dandle
• cabinet (not what you are thinking)
• grinder
• johnnycake
• leaf peeper
• rotary
• catty corner
• kitty corner
• stoop
• breezeway
• hoagie
• jimmies
• pavement
• bubbler
• davenport
• euchre
• hot dish
• yooper
• barn-burner
• hoosier
• billfold
• chill bumps
• commode
• fix
• house shoes
• yonder
• poke
• loobery or lubery
• buggy
• anagogglin/sigogglin
• pecker wood
• sparkin'
• roly poly
• crawdad
• tchotchke
• gewgaw

Dryland Fish?

Dryland Fish?

Yesterday happened to be Black Friday and since I here in Minnesota I was unable to go down and visit my Mamaw (grandmother). Though I was able to call and chat with her.

Later that day I received a text message from my sister ... "Mamaw just said that mushrooms were dryland fish.." I asked what she meant and my sister replied "...We are watching a cooking show and the guy was chopping mushrooms and mamaw said "dryland fish." I guess that is what people from Kentucky called them."

I thought before that I knew most of "Appalachian" vocabularies but it seems that I still have a lot to learn. I decided to do some research and figure out if it is usually used as a word for mushrooms or a certain type. I discovered that the mushroom Morchella is called dryland fish colloquially down in that area. There are also other names such as Hickory Chicken etc. Though generally the word applies to one mushroom it seems my Mamaw uses it for most mushrooms!

The Appalachian dialect that my mamaw speaks is full of words and grammars that are unique. It, for me is one of the most interesting dialects in the North American English dialect.

-Нафаня-