Oh, boy. Ohio accents. Here we go.
"POO-sh" in place of 'push' is from eastern Ohio. Just like "BOO-sh" in
place of 'bush'. Actually, saying it's an "Eastern Ohio" pronunciation is a
euphamism for saying it's Appalachian-hill-jack-ignorant. Ooops.
In fact, in central Ohio, we mis-pronounced Appalachian as "Apa-LAY-chan".
It was only later that a painfully correct social work major took me aside
and explained how deeply I must be offended those "who didn't have the same
ACCESS to education that I had."
As I recall, I said something like, "Oh. I thought they just hated school
and wanted to get home to drink apple wine and neck with their cousins."
My father, who was raised on Long Island. He always says "lie-LACK" in
place of "LI-lock" for lilac. Anyway, when transplanted into Ohio, he
already knew that the top of a building is a "r-ooo-f" and was appalled by
the [eastern Ohio] "ruff". As in, "Clem, take these here shingles, an' a
hammer, an' go-an' that there ruff but be careful so'es ya don't fall in the
booshes." That's Apa-LAY-chan.
My favorite local pronunciation though was an odd combination explaining a
labor dispute at a place of business where they mix coal and iron. The
Cleveland broadcaster explained, "Negotiations continue today at the Armco
STILL MEAL." I swear as G*d is my witness I heard it as plainly as I am
breathing. It made a big impression as I'm still talking about it more than
20 years on..........
I am my mother's son, for better or worse. I'm just lucky that she taught
me to be a bigot toward undereducated folks rather than some other bigotry I
could name. It's okay to make fun of stupid people, right?....... No?
One more story: This week someone broke a window in my car and stole one
thing: a bookshelf speaker from the backseat. That's stupid enough but the
really stupid part is that the woofer was blown out. I bought it for the
BOX alone at Goodwill for $5. The next night someone broke into the
inner-city barber shop and got about $200 worth of quarters. The barber
charges $9.50 so when someone gives him $10, he makes change and drops 50
cents into a can. Well, someone stole the inner-city barber's collection of
spare change for a rainy day. That's a stupid and desperate person. I
figure someone just got out of jail and will soon be back among his friends,
"on the inside" as they say. "Oooh, baby, baby, it's a wild world."
Lama
>>that is what my 7th grade English teacher told me. She said that the
American spoken around Cleveland was the purest dialect of the language.
7th
grade English teachers do not lie.
Hmmmm??? I'll have to look up "dialect" to see exactly what it means, but I
believe this Cleveland reference refers to language usage (lack of odd local
colloquialisms) and not to accent. I remember quite clearly Clevelanders
having distinct accents. To the south, locals in Columbus and central Ohio
have their own oddities ("pushe" rather than "push"). Anyway, that's more
info than any of you needed I guess.
