The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2018-04-23, 17:25

Ciarán12 wrote:
linguoboy wrote:But that's the only usage of passel I know of in contemporary American English (and it's striking to me that it's not familiar to vijayjohn because I strongly associate it with a friend of mine from Oklahoma).

Isn't Vijay from Texas? Or are you just referring to Southern dialects in general?

Oklahoma and Texas share a border of more than 800 km. Most of Texas and about half of Oklahoma lie within the Southern American English dialect area, but only southeast Texas is core Southern. Slightly more than half of Oklahoma is Southern Midland, which is something of a transitional dialect with heavily Southern characteristics. (Northern Midland is the dialect closest to General American.)

vijayjohn wrote:I also think isoglosses/the distribution of features in the US is just really weird, so you can't necessarily be sure whether someone from a particular area will share a feature that everyone has just a short distance away.

I find this is mostly true (a) further east and (b) near large population centres. The West outside of the big cities (Seattle, SF, LA) is pretty homogeneous.
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby OldBoring » 2018-04-23, 21:50

Besides, Vijay said he talks unTexan.

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-04-23, 21:56

Well, also, I'm in Austin. A large proportion of the population is from outside Austin (like me since I moved here from St. Louis), and it's unusual for people to stay here from childhood until they're at least old enough to go to college.

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby OldBoring » 2018-04-23, 22:02

While I can understand that your accent (i.e. pronunciation) doesn't sound Texan, to me it's strange that your vocabulary usage doesn't match Texan habits.

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2018-04-23, 22:07

OldBoring wrote:Besides, Vijay said he talks unTexan.

He didn't say he didn't use "passel". He said, "passel doesn't mean anything to me," indicating that it's not even in his passive vocabulary.

I myself have probably only used it a couple times in my life. (I had to double-check the spelling before posting here because it's so rare to see it in print.)

(en-US) strike plate
(en-US) electric strike
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-04-23, 22:39

OldBoring wrote:While I can understand that your accent (i.e. pronunciation) doesn't sound Texan, to me it's strange that your vocabulary usage doesn't match Texan habits.

I'm not sure whether it does or not. Passel may be common in Oklahoma but not necessarily here.* Texas is a big state, so there is some variation within it at least (and I believe this extends to the vocabulary, too). But it still might not since a lot of the population in Austin specifically is from outside Texas, like me, and Austin is well-known for being a poor representative of Texas in many ways.

*Btw I'm not sure whether it makes much sense in The Big Bang Theory for Sheldon to be using crick (instead of creek) if he's from Texas. A quick Google search suggests that crick is used with this meaning much further north (e.g. in Appalachia), not down here. I've heard creek quite a few times here but never crick.

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby OldBoring » 2018-04-24, 10:15

In Milan most people are from other parts of Italy, yet there is a Milanese regional Italian.
In Shenzhen 85% of the population is not from Shenzhen, yet there is a uniform way to call things that everyone sticks with. For example, I've met a girl from Shenzhen who speaks with Northern Chinese accent yet she uses vocabulary typical of Guangdong such as 雪糕 for ice cream.
Last edited by OldBoring on 2018-04-24, 16:47, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-04-24, 12:18

Yeah, in the US (and Canada, I'm sure), these kinds of strictly defined regional varieties are rare at best. The US is a much younger country than either China or Italy, and the English language wasn't spoken there before the 17th century.

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2018-04-24, 14:20

vijayjohn wrote:*Btw I'm not sure whether it makes much sense in The Big Bang Theory for Sheldon to be using crick (instead of creek) if he's from Texas. A quick Google search suggests that crick is used with this meaning much further north (e.g. in Appalachia), not down here. I've heard creek quite a few times here but never crick.

The actor who portrays him is a native of Houston, so I would expect his accent to be pretty accurate. As you said, accents can vary even within a small space. "Crick" is found in Missouri, but it's marked as especially rural; if the same distinction holds in Texas, then it could be accurate depending on the fictional character bio. (According to this, Sheldon was raised in Galveston; have you ever met anyone with a Galveston accent?)

ETA: This map confirms that "crick" is far more common in the North, but there are scattered attestations throughout the Lowland South.
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby OldBoring » 2018-04-24, 16:46

Or maybe the directors wrote "crick" in the script and the actor followed what was written.

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2018-04-24, 16:49

OldBoring wrote:Or maybe the directors wrote "crick" in the script and the actor followed what was written.

Maybe he was possessed by the spirit of an old-timey prospector who'd died on the very spot they later built the soundstage just for the time it took to say that one word.
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-04-24, 23:33

linguoboy wrote:The actor who portrays him is a native of Houston, so I would expect his accent to be pretty accurate. As you said, accents can vary even within a small space. "Crick" is found in Missouri, but it's marked as especially rural; if the same distinction holds in Texas, then it could be accurate depending on the fictional character bio. (According to this, Sheldon was raised in Galveston; have you ever met anyone with a Galveston accent?)

ETA: This map confirms that "crick" is far more common in the North, but there are scattered attestations throughout the Lowland South.

Thanks! I have met at least one person from Galveston before but haven't talked with her often enough (or recently enough) to recall any specific non-GA features of her accent.

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby Ashucky » 2018-04-29, 9:32

Well, this is a word I learnt about an hour ago ...

(sl) kalambur (kalambúr) - a pun; from French calembour, apparently.
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby OldBoring » 2018-04-30, 9:50

linguoboy wrote:
OldBoring wrote:Or maybe the directors wrote "crick" in the script and the actor followed what was written.

Maybe he was possessed by the spirit of an old-timey prospector who'd died on the very spot they later built the soundstage just for the time it took to say that one word.

Are you trolling or what? Isn't it likely that authors of a sitcom or movie directors aren't that accurate when portraying a character's dialect/accent, and so they write the script, and actors are supposed to follow the script?

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-04-30, 14:45

OldBoring wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
OldBoring wrote:Or maybe the directors wrote "crick" in the script and the actor followed what was written.

Maybe he was possessed by the spirit of an old-timey prospector who'd died on the very spot they later built the soundstage just for the time it took to say that one word.

Are you trolling or what? Isn't it likely that authors of a sitcom or movie directors aren't that accurate when portraying a character's dialect/accent, and so they write the script, and actors are supposed to follow the script?

It can be, but it's perhaps not very likely in this case since crick apparently is found in Texas, too.

To be fair, though, I'm not sure I would say Galveston is rural per se (it is the 68th biggest city in Texas), though it is much, much smaller than Austin (for example). Houston is obviously not rural, being the biggest city in the state.

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2018-05-01, 20:34

OldBoring wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
OldBoring wrote:Or maybe the directors wrote "crick" in the script and the actor followed what was written.

Maybe he was possessed by the spirit of an old-timey prospector who'd died on the very spot they later built the soundstage just for the time it took to say that one word.

Are you trolling or what?

Is a reductio ad absurdum considered "trolling" nowadays?

OldBoring wrote:Isn't it likely that authors of a sitcom or movie directors aren't that accurate when portraying a character's dialect/accent, and so they write the script, and actors are supposed to follow the script?

It's a possibility. I don't know that it's likely given that (a) they hired a Southeast Texan actor to play a Southeast Texan character (more likely: they based the character's origins on those of the actor) and (b) that actor is now rather high-profile and has lots of clout. So if Parsons told the director, "Folks don't say it that way where I'm from", I'd expect his opinion would carry the day. Why do you think otherwise?
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-05-02, 2:53

Hmm, I dunno. Given how different Austin is from the surrounding area, I would expect Houston to be pretty different from Galveston, in which case the fact that they're both in southeastern Texas seems somewhat irrelevant.

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2018-05-02, 16:16

vijayjohn wrote:Hmm, I dunno. Given how different Austin is from the surrounding area, I would expect Houston to be pretty different from Galveston, in which case the fact that they're both in southeastern Texas seems somewhat irrelevant.

I really think you can't generalise too much from Austin. As you said, it's a college town with a lot of in-migration, as well as the state capital.

I learned a number of new terms while out in New Mexico, among them:

cavate produced by excavation; a cliff dwelling formed this way
chamisa Ericameria nauseosa (common shrub)
chongo hair bun formed by twisting (traditional Southwest hairstyle)
piki bread a thin rolled bread made from cornmeal
sopaipilla fried bread
tent rock a conical type of hoodoo
virga rain which evaporates before reaching the ground

I also discovered that "wallflower" is an actual flower; previously I'd only ever heard this term used metaphorically.
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-05-02, 23:55

linguoboy wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Hmm, I dunno. Given how different Austin is from the surrounding area, I would expect Houston to be pretty different from Galveston, in which case the fact that they're both in southeastern Texas seems somewhat irrelevant.

I really think you can't generalise too much from Austin. As you said, it's a college town with a lot of in-migration, as well as the state capital.

True, but Houston is even bigger and more cosmopolitan than Austin is...and also used to be the state capital. Both before and after it changed to Austin. :P

EDIT:
sopaipilla fried bread

This is the only term I sort of recognize. I would say sopapilla. I've never been 100% certain what it is.

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby Ashucky » 2018-05-05, 18:28

(sl) letalnik - drone (unmanned aircraft)

Not that many people actually use letalnik, the most commonly used word is still, wait for it ... dron. :P
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