Pittsburgh Dialect

GEORGE THOMPSON thompsng at ELMER4.BOBST.NYU.EDU
Wed Oct 18 15:26:02 UTC 2000


        My wife is from a small town near Pittsburgh.  Her family
was generally college educated, her mother  a (prescriptivist)
high-school english teacher.  They were ultimately of Scots
origin.  Douglas Wilson lists the following as "distinctive lexical
items" from Pittsburgh:

"You-uns" = "you-all" or "you [plural]" [pronounced /jInz/, /j at nz/, /junz/,
etc.]  (This was regarded as a typical expression as used by others.)

"Gum band" = "rubber band".  (I don't recall this specifically, but
the family did use "gum" = "rubber".)

"Rift" = "belch"/"burp" [verb]  (I don't recall encountering this.)

"Jumbo" = "bologna [sausage]"  (Nor this.)

"Rett up"/"redd up" = "clean up"/"tidy up".  (My wife remembers
"granny" particularly as saying this.)

"Nebby" = "nosy".  (The family said "neb-nose".)

"Ignorant" = "rude"/"impolite" [specifically distinct from "lacking in
knowledge"] [seems to be fully accepted without cognizance of its regional
nature!]  (I recall hearing this im Maine, in the sense of "ignorant
of the standards of proper behavior.")

The most noticeable grammatical oddity, which is absolutely usual in
Pittsburgh and freely used even in semiformal writing, is the elision of
"to be" or equivalent as in: "This needs cleaned" = "This needs to be
cleaned"  (This is very familiar.)

"My son wants laid" = "My son wants to get laid"  (I doubt that the
mother-in-law would have said this, even when it was true.)

My pronunciation of the terminal vowel in 'provolone' is absolutely
astonishing to the supermarket clerk: in Pittsburgh it seems to be
universally /prouv at loun/.  (In better salumerias in Brooklyn, too,
but there the clerks are likely to be of Italian ancestry.)

Some (IMHO) repulsive expressions which may be widespread in a certain
register seem to be particularly common here: e.g., "big-time" = "very
much", "from the get-go" = "from the start":  (The first time I heard
"big-time" was from a man from New Orleans, probably 10+ years ago.)

(My wife regards Myron Cope, who does the color commentary on
Pittsburgh Steeler radio broadcasts, as having a strong Pittsburgh
accents.  I have occasionally received Steelers broadcasts at a good
distance from Pittsburgh -- and as I recall, the query that prompted
this came from someone living in Pittsburgh.)

GAT



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