[lg policy] On Pittsburghese...

Wed Dec 30 06:19:36 UTC 2009

Interesting article that raises a question about when something is (seen as) regional....

'Slippy' is also a good few years older than Pittsburgh. OED has examples of 'slippy' from 1548 and 'slippery' from 1548 and it looks to me as though they have coexisted ever since. I certainly grew up (in England) saying both and I would say that I regard 'slippy' as more informal. Rightly or wrongly, I don't have it flagged as regional.

My first paper on Singapore English dealt with students' response to a demand to create a 'Dictionary of Singapore English': among the words students thought were Singlish were 'bastard' and 'AWOL'.

Meanwhile, I was embarrassingly old and highly qualified in English linguistics before I discovered that 'spell' (a splinter of wood in the skin -- ow!) and 'cotter' (a tangle in the hair) WERE regional.

We don't know what we know and we know what we don't really know......

Anthea
*     *     *     *     *
Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
<www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
*     *     *     *     *

________________________________________
From: lgpolicy-list-bounces+a.f.gupta=leeds.ac.uk at groups.sas.upenn.edu [lgpolicy-list-bounces+a.f.gupta=leeds.ac.uk at groups.sas.upenn.edu] On Behalf Of Kara Brown [kara_dbrown at yahoo.com]
Sent: 29 December 2009 19:52
To: Language Policy List
Subject: [lg policy] On Pittsburghese...

"Last week's use of Pittsburghese was no slip"

Tuesday, December 29, 2009
By Brian O'Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

On slippy ground, I'll make my stand.

I don't do much else in the way of Pittsburghese. I don't often drop the verb "to be," don't "redd up" anything, have no real use for yinz and still use rubber bands rather than gum bands. Ah, but "slippy"?

I love "slippy," such a slick little word. It makes "slippery" seem downright ponderous. And there is no better way to describe the way our sidewalks can get this time of year.

Not everyone agrees.

My editor had asked me if I really wanted to use "slippy" there and I'd answered yes, knowing there would be complaints. Sure enough, one came in the following day.

"I know you're a Long Island boy and I'm a Queens [N.Y.] lady, and I just can't believe that you have become a Pittsburgher by using the expression 'slippy,' " the woman said.

She wasn't angry. She thought it funny, but couldn't just let it slide.

Well, if you can't slide on slippy, on what can you slide?

I'd gotten a similar reaction last February when I deliberately slipped in a slippy in describing the terrain at South Hills Village Mall, where the T station is 450 feet from Macy's door. A woman e-mailed to say simply that she "thought sidewalks got slippery -- not slippy."

When I answered that the American language has room for these regional quirks, she replied, "That's great to hear! I ain't got no like complaints you know with youse using like that there regional language."

That struck me as snippy, not slippy. When I noticed her e-mail ended with a quote from Winston Churchill concerning courage, I reminded her that Sir Winston had something to say on this subject. 'Twas said he went off on someone who tried to stop him from ending a sentence with a preposition by answering, "There are certain rules of grammar up with which I will not put."

Or something. (And, yes, I know that was a sentence fragment, and, yes, I know I started this sentence with a conjunction.)

My stand for slippy is more than mere preference, however. I think it is more precise than "slippery," which is more flexible.

My Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary offers these meanings for "slippery," an adjective it says is at least 500 years old, or twice as old as Pittsburgh: 1. a: causing or tending to cause something to slide or fall <~ roads> b. tending to slip from the grasp 2: not firmly fixed: UNSTABLE 3: not to be trusted: TRICKY.

That dictionary has no entry for "slippy," but I would suggest that the accepted Pittsburgh definition is consistent with the first one for "slippery" but does not apply to the latter two.

In other words, you could say the roads are slippy today but you'd have to say my logic is slippery.

I don't know why we've dropped the unnecessary extra syllable hereabouts but I know this: Language evolves.

A quarter-century ago, when I worked for a newspaper in Roanoke, Va., the great Richmond journalist Charlie McDowell lectured to a roomful of writers in his mesmerizing, cigarette-soaked drawl that our American language had broken with its British parent before we even reached the Appalachian Mountains. (That's why the British language remains a horse of a different colour.)

Three years ago in The New York Times, travel writer Tim Sultan memorably called Pittsburgh "The Galapagos Islands of American dialect." The word "slippy" didn't come up, but the rest of the usual suspects did.

In short, it's OK to be a little different. If I have not been persuasive here today, so be it. But if you don't think sidewalks can be slippy, try walking on them.

Brian O'Neill can be reached at boneill at post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09363/1024269-155.stm?cmpid=bcpanel2#ixzz0b6oZLGHy

******
Kara D Brown
University of South Carolina
Wardlaw Hall 136
Columbia SC 29208

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