Pittsburgh Dialect

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 03:17 PM 10/18/00 -0400, Douglas Wilson wrote:

>Another lexical item (I don't know how widespread, but I've heard it only
>in Pittsburgh): commonly "pap" (rhymes with "cap") = "grandfather" (and
>absolutely not "father"). This apparently is a contraction of "grandpap",
>which is heard also (but less often). Much less frequently, I've heard
>"gram" [I think that's what I heard] for "grandmother": thus "Gram and Pap"
>= "Grandma and Grandpa". "Pap" is used in address: "Hi, Pap!" = "Hi,
>Grandpa!" [Seems very odd to me: 'pap' ought to mean 'father'.]
         Do Pittsburghers also use "mamaw" and "papaw" for grandmother and
grandfather?  These are common in SE Ohio (in all age groups), and I'm
curious to know how far east/northeast they go.


>Of course, many Pittsburghers show varying tendencies toward a more
>standard US English -- many of them in all registers. My children --
>schooled entirely in the Pittsburgh area -- seem to be virtually
>Pittsburghism-free: they won't even let me get away with "This needs fixed"!
         "Needs fixed/cleaned/done" is common in southern Ohio but also
stretches westward at least to Kansas; see several articles on related
forms in _American Speech_.

_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm