Regional terms

[vilakins]

From hafren, one of those regional term quizzes which I can never resist because I'm so interested in other people's answers.

What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
We don't do that here. Not being, you know, American. Egging and tagging are more the NZ vandal style, but that's not restricted to one day.

What is the bug that when you touch it, curls into a ball?
Slater or woodlouse

What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
Soft drink or fizzy drink

What do you call gym shoes?
They were sandshoes to my parents, but I call them running shoes or trainers. Or sneakers if they're more for casual wear. To me, Vila wears sneakers.

What do you say to address a group of people?
Guys. I think that's what this question means.

What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
Daddy-long-legs

What do you call your grandparents?
Grandma, Grandpa (my father's family was not close), maternal grandmother died when I was three, and Da. Everyone called him Da after I "named" him with a baby syllable and he thought it was my word for him. And he was a wonderful Da.

What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
A trolley.

What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
A sun shower. They happen a lot here.

What is the thing you change the TV channel with?
A remote

What do you call the area between the two sides of a boulevard?
A street? Does boulevard have a different meaning in the US?
[Edit] OK, someone told me what this means. They're asking:
What do you call the central strip in a multi-lane street?
Answer: A median strip

Main seating furniture in the living room?
A couch.

Comments

[vandonovan.livejournal.com]

What do you call the area between the two sides of a boulevard?
A street? Does boulevard have a different meaning in the US?

I'm... going to guess this question means "sidewalk" or whatever you call it. I could be wrong. We have things like center dividers between streets sometimes too, which can have different names as well. Not a very explanatory sentence. This whole thing needs photos.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's not that clear. If they do mean what people walk on by a street, then its a footpath here. And the strip of grass that's often between that and the street in the suburbs is a berm.

[Edit] It turns out they meant the central strip in a multi-lane street. That's a median strip here.

[samantha-vimes.livejournal.com]

LOL! The way you answered it, I thought you meant that in NZ, the sidewalks-- footpaths-- are what's called a blvd.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I should have said "beside a street" not "by a street".

[samantha-vimes.livejournal.com]

It's referring to the center divider. A boulevard in the US is a major city street.

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

They have boulevards in Nottingham, they're the new dual carriageways that were built 30s or 50s, not sure which. So they'd have a central reservation.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a boulevard? To me it's just a wide street, usually in France. OK, the middle bit dividing it is a median strip.

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a boulevard?

Only in Nottingham. They decided to be a bit pretentious when naming their new roads.

[samantha-vimes.livejournal.com]

Woodlouse? You guys use the correct term for it! They were potato bugs or pill bugs until I grew up and started reading about biology.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

A lot of people also call them slaters, I have no idea why.

[samantha-vimes.livejournal.com]

because they are slate-colored, maybe?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Dunno. We don't even have slate roofs.

[samantha-vimes.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking of the basic metamorphic rock, but if you don't have much of that in NZ, then that is odd. Maybe someone named Slater did a big study of them?

[elmey.livejournal.com]

I was going to answer this, then I realized I'm completely useless on some of these questions. I have no idea on the toilet paper, I've never seen it done; I can't say I've ever had to talk about bugs that curl into a ball.
OK, soft drink--we use that.
We say running shoes or sneakers
Ladies and Gentlemen? I'm not sure where we're addressing these people. Hey, guys! People, please!
We say daddy long legs also.
Grandparents: mine were German so we used the German versions which doesn't count I think? Mr. elmey used grandma and grandpa for both sets. No imagination ;)
Grocery cart
I think we say sun shower--happens once in a blue moon where I am.
Remote is the same
If it's the divider in the middle of the street, we also say median. Sometimes we'll say street divider.
Couch or Sofa, if there's a reason we'd use one rather than the other I don't know it :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oma and Opa? Or Grossi? :-)

We're more alike that I thought, but I know terms differ across the US. I'd guess you're in NY which is where those tests put me--yep! :-D

[elmey.livejournal.com]

My father's parents were Oma and Opa. My mother's mother was Großmutti, her father died when she was nine, but in theory he would have been Großvati. I have no idea how they decided who got what.

Yes, I'm in New York. I'm curious if anyone will answer the toilet paper question :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I heard it called TPing on US TV programs.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a Vulcan name. :¬D

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It does look like it! It's said tee-pee-ing.

[samantha-vimes.livejournal.com]

When my brother and I were kids, we played with pill bugs a lot.

They're a really ancient life form so they're all over the globe, but likely hard to find in an urban environment. They live under rocks and wood, anywhere that retains a little dampness.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Ah. Then I think I wrongly call them slugs, but I never played with them :)

[samantha-vimes.livejournal.com]

Slugs are slimy, like snails without shells; a pillbug/woodlouse is like a very short millipede, and as they curl up into balls when they feel threatened, it's easy for little kids to pick them up, move them around, and observe their reactions to different environments.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Now I feel like hopeless case :) But I did grow up in apartments!

[samantha-vimes.livejournal.com]

Whereas our house was very close to open fields and we had big yards with gardening parents. I enjoy a dense environment as an adult, but I wish every kid could have leisure time to poke around nature.

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

We have the wrong species of woodlouse to roll up, ours stay flat and wave their legs. We have Porcellio, the Armadilliae which can roll up need a more alkaline environment than we have round here. :~)

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I have a book about Yiddish ("Born to Kvetch") that says that in Yiddish, the standard address is "Reb Yid"--as in, "Hey, Mr. Jew, where is the Post Office?" (I don't actually speak Yiddish myself because when I was a kid I thought "we're Americans! We should speak English!" but now I regret not learning.)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I do know some Yiddish, enough to get by in Israel with the older people, and much more easily than in Hebrew. And yeah, I just finished reading The Yiddish Policeman's Union in which they call all guys yids. The only other place I came across that was in old stories from the shtetls: "A yid was travelling to town..." etc.

I've heard there are courses in the US teaching Yiddish; you could still learn. There's even a guy yid teaching it here on the North Shore (across the harbour). I can speak it OK (apparently in Polish style) but not really read it. I am intending to go to the Cafe Ivrit coffee evenings not far from here run by the Temple Shalom to keep my Hebrew up.

I though I had "Born to Kvetch" but I don't seem to. I should look. I do have "The JOys of Yiddish" and that very funny Dick and Jane one.

[san-valentine.livejournal.com]

When I was growing up here in the UK, I used to play with woodlice in the garden, and wasn't afraid to catch long-legged harvest spiders in my hands. (A daddy-long-legs is a flying insect - a cranefly) I would have a fizzy drink (more likely to say soft drink now), and then go sit on the sofa - though settee and couch were known terms for the same thing - and change channels with the remote.
My dual-carriageway roads are divided by a central reservation. I use shopping trolleys in supermarket, and used to visit my granny and grandad. And for gym at school, I wore plimsols.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

In many ways very similar to me. Plimsolls I associate with old English children's books like Swallows and Amazons (which I love). There are so many names for those things. One person said they're daps where she lives.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Some of these questions are either confusing or irrelevant to an non-american.

In Britain Loo rolls are only thrown at football matches, not at houses. Eggs or flour are the weapon of choice for a yobbish Brit, Unless you are really unlucky and then it's Bricks!

Amused to note they said bubbly carbonated drink, unless it's gone flat that's tautology.

My Grandparents were Grandad, Grandma and Nanna (From the Welsh).

In the boulevard question it's a reservation here.

The Kind of spider is a harvestman

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Nanna (or nana) is used a lot here too. So what do you call the drink? A soft one?

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

When I was younger it was "pop", now it's just a fizzy drink.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's still true, but in Maeve Binchy books about Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s, it was "minerals" which for some reason really appeals to me.

[pebblerocker]

We've had toilet paper thrown at our house! And an egg on the same night, but that missed and broke in the grass.

We need a Latin name for the spider before we know what they're talking about. And I never ever know what type of shoes anyone is talking about when they use names more specific than "sandals" or "boots" -- I can't even answer the question because "gym shoes" mean nothing to me. People do gymnastics barefoot...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming it's those lace-up things people run in. There are a lot of terms for those, and if I heard "pumps" (which one person uses), I certainly wouldn't think of running shoes.

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

The footwear was pumps when I was at school, now I'd call them plimmies. Trainers are more supportive.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Then to me they're sneakers if they're not for exercise. I always thought of pumps as being fairly formal shows you'd wear to work. Does it just mean lace-up?

[looks it up] Ahhh, see, it can mean:
- Court shoe, a usually heeled slip-on shoe with a low-cut front (American English usage)
- Plimsoll shoe, a style of athletic shoe (regional British English usage)
- Athletic shoe with an internal inflation mechanism, e.g. Reebok Pump
- Ghillie, a soft, laced shoe worn by Scottish and Irish dancers
- Ballet pump, a flat-soled ballet shoe

I obviously went for the first meaning (just about the opposite of yours) and may well have misunderstood when I read it in novels. It's odd how we have the occasional American word in our dialect. Maybe it came from American soldiers here during the war.

[arenee1999]

1. I call it idiotic, juvenile and illegal. But yes, it's called TP-ing and it's usually done to the football coach's house on homecoming game night.

2. Roly-Poly

3. Pop or soda or soda-pop

4. Tennis shoes

5. Everyone or you all or if I'm in a hurry or pissed of the southern comes out and it's y'all

6. A spider

7. Depends on which ones. One was nana, one was grandma, one was mamaw and my grandfather (the only one I knew) was papaw.

8. shopping cart

9. A sun shower or liquid sunshine (that's the California girl in me talking)

10. A remote

11. A median

12. couch

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

5. Some people here say "youse" for second person plural. English could certainly do with one.

7. Huh! Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory talks about his meemaw. He's from Texas.

The last four are the same as mine. :-)

[pet-lunatic.livejournal.com]

Apart from couch and sneakers I think our answers are the same!

My mother, due to the influence of US TV, says couch, sneakers, closet, and pants for trousers. I've started occasionally to use some of those words myself - I clearly watch too much TV :D

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Pants to me are underpants, but I find it's used more and more here for trousers and I accept it and probably say it. I still say wardrobe for where I hand my clothes though.

I use sneakers and running shoes and trainers depending on the use to which they're being put. What would you normally call them? I've found there's a fairly wide range of terms in the UK: daps, trainers, sandshoes, plimsolls...

[pet-lunatic.livejournal.com]

The pants/underpants thing does make for some funny cross-cultural humour...that meme of 'in my pants' film titles takes on a whole new meaning, for example :D

The shoes kids wear at school in the gym, and anything similar, are plimsolls, or pumps; soft canvas casual shoes are canvas shoes, or pumps, or maybe tennis shoes; anything else comes under 'trainers', or baseball shoes/boots if they're - well, baseball boots. But that's just me! I tend to avoid the word 'pumps' though because it's also a word I was taught as a child to mean flatulence, and it seems weird to talk about wearing that on your feet.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Heinz meanz pumpz? :-D I never heard that one (so to speak)! As for pumps as shoes, I only knew the seemingly US meaning till this week: court shoes, i.e. women's fairly formal pull-on shoes with heels. That must have given me some odd images when reading British novels in the past. Most other terms except for daps I pretty much knew.

Plimsolls are quintessentially English to me, very Swallows and Amazons. Casual canvas lace-ups here were sandshoes but that seems to be obsolete. I think I just say sneakers when I'm talking about the generic item, or sports shoes. Otherwise as you say, it's the specific sport.