So I saw this guy wearing his thongs the other day

[twyrch]

Well, my uncle lives in MO and my dad was visiting him one day and asked for a Wash Cloth... my uncle told him he didn't have any wash cloths, but he had some worsh rags...

And don't even get me started on the difference between a creek and a crick....

[chrystalized]

hinata said:

And what is ginger beer? I don't know if it's close to root beer or not. . .

Wow I didnt realize ppl didnt know about that, It is my favourite type of pop (yes i call it pop, 99.9% of canadains do) but i call it ginger ale
what i love about canada's dialect is how they borrow form both the states and britan. in our writing in school teachers will accept both spellings (color and colour)
I tend to favour the canadian spellings myself.
Something very canadian is to add Eh? to every sentence we can, I didnt think it was true untill i went to the states and my billets laughed at me for doing it all the time, can't help it, eh?
A pretty funny thing happened in the sidney summer olympics, Canada usually has its olympic apparall made by a very canadian company named roots, well apparently roots isnt a very clean word so people found it funny to see canadians wearing shirts embalzoned with "roots", you'll have to ask our aussie members what it means.

[Margim]

chrystalized said:

Something very canadian is to add Eh? to every sentence we can, I didnt think it was true untill i went to the states and my billets laughed at me for doing it all the time, can't help it, eh?

Its funny... that same thing is something Australians tend to associate with Kiwis, or New Zealanders for those not common with that kind of terminology.

That's somkething else that could be discussed... what nicknames do you use for people of other countries? We generally use 'Pom' for Englishman and Yank for American, although historically speaking I understand this is not technically correct for all Americans.

[dgan]

chrystalized said:

Wow I didnt realize ppl didnt know about that, It is my favourite type of pop (yes i call it pop, 99.9% of canadains do) but i call it ginger ale

After extensive research at reference.com, I have determined that Ginger Ale is almost perfectly clear, made of ginger and carbon dioxide (for carbonation). Ginger Beer is almost identical, but has much stronger flavors added, such as vanilla, which makes it stronger tasting and a cloudy/clear concoction and can be made in a manner which causes it to contain a small percentage of alcohol. Root Beer is altogether different - it uses a similar manufacturing process but completely different ingredients. Roots and barks of all kinds of different plants. This is why Root Beer is usually dark, like a cola.

Technically speaking, a soft drink is the opposite of a hard drink - anything without alcohol. However, common reference to soft drink means an nonalcoholic carbonated drink. The German word Limonade essentially means "soft drink" and that is where the word lemonade comes from. It is used in many parts of the world (including Australia, apparently) instead of the term "soft drink". However, in America we use the word lemonade only to refer to the drink made of lemon and sugar.

Of course, carbonated soft drinks come bottled or as a "fountain drink." Way back when, the fountain soda was known as a Phosphate. (Watch the Music Man - when they are at the candy kitchen, "Madam Librarian" asks for a phosphate.) Since this type of drink has nothing to do with phosphorus compounds or phosphoric acid, I have no idea where this term came from. But unless you're in Galveston, Texas (which is the only place I've been where a "phosphate" is still on the menu), you can just call it soda, pop, soda pop, soft drink, coke, or nonalcoholic carbonated beverage...oh yeah, or a "lemonade".

Hope that helps!

[Margim]

chrystalized said:

well apparently roots isnt a very clean word so people found it funny to see canadians wearing shirts embalzoned with "roots", you'll have to ask our aussie members what it means.

Ah yes, how could I miss that. Aside from the obvious standard meaning of the word ie tree roots, there were some interesting reactions when a group of American Basketball-playing evangelists were encouraging guys to 'root' for the girls playing on court at a particular school over here...

[pink3elephant]

my brother just returned from australia and absolutly loves ginger beer. . . funny. . . so he just bought some down at the world market store cuz he was craving it. . i guess I should try it now!

[Daae]

Here in rural PA softdrinks are either soda or pop, depending on which area you come from, and creeks are criks. Streams are streams, criks are criks, er, creeks.

"Yins" is something I hear quite a bit, especially from my cousin, and I love the way my grandpa says "worshh". At least around here, the "sh" in worsh is longer than the one in wash.

P.S. I took the dialect test. 39% Yankee, which means I am definately a Yankee. No surprise there, although when it came to the question about how you address a group, and you'ns or yins (which much of my family says) was only Pennsylvania, I didn't know whether to feel proud or break down and cry. Surely we aren't the only state with that phrase.

[Hinata]

Somehow, I feel like we should be making an Outsider's joke with all this Soda Pop. . .

[twyrch]

hinata said:

My Dad sent me this cool link about dialects. . .

Test your dialect

I took my test....

52% (Dixie). Right on the Mason-Dixon Line

I guess that comes from spending my formitive years in Kentucky and Southern Indiana....

[dgan]

39% (Yankee). You are definitely a Yankee.

I've never really thought of what that means, exactly...but I suppose it is true??

[chrystalized]

That's somkething else that could be discussed... what nicknames do you use for people of other countries? We generally use 'Pom' for Englishman and Yank for American, although historically speaking I understand this is not technically correct for all Americans.

Yeah us canucks (what canadians call themselves) also call americans yanks.
another thing which could be discussed is types of foods which are found mainly in your country or area,
for instance, poutine is a very canadian food and had got to be the best tasting unhealthy thing for you. Poutine is french fries drenched in gravy and cheese curds, yum!

[tinidril]

Well, I'm "41% (Yankee). Barely in the Yankee category."

When I was growing up "thongs" was what we now call "flip-flops"... in fact, until just a few years ago, I didn't know what a "flip-flop" was! My grandparents (all of them) are from the mid-western US, so there are many little quirks of speech which I inherited from them aside from "thongs"... like pronouncing "envelope" with the first syllable sounding like the word "on", or calling my mother's sister "Aunt Tanya" (both 'a's sound like the a in "want").

Here in the NW we don't have eggs, we have "ayggs". When I was teaching kindergarten and first grade phonics the curriculum (produced by A-Beka Books in Florida) used the clue word "eggs" to teach the short sound of 'e'. In order to use the curriculum I had to first teach all the children how to pronounce "eggs" with the correct vowel sound before I could teach them to remember that sound with the clue word!

It is perhaps a common childhood mis-conjugation to say "I seen" or "I gots", but the use of these malformed verbs is so pervasive around here I often here them coming out of the mouths of adults!

Which reminds me, how do you pronounce "often"? with a silent 't' or a sounded 't'?

[Margim]

chrystalized said:

another thing which could be discussed is types of foods which are found mainly in your country or area,
for instance, poutine is a very canadian food and had got to be the best tasting unhealthy thing for you. Poutine is french fries drenched in gravy and cheese curds, yum!

See any food that involves the term 'cheese curds' just doesn't do it for me. Although we do have the Aussie meat pie - I doubt anyone really wants to know what goes into that. The term 'meat' generally means some part of a sheep or cow.

[kg00ds]

Ok, where is this accent, dialect, vocab test thing or is there one? I keep reading yall say well I'm 38% yank etc. Where are these percentages coming from.

[Margim]

Its a link on the first page put up by Hinata.

Of course, its only relevant if you are American to begin with.