Words for grandparents: was: Pittsburgh Dialect

[Herb Stahlke]

We get "mamaw" and "papaw" here in Central Indiana, but it seems
to be more rural and lower SEC.  Since it's also in SE Ohio and
the Central Indiana lower SEC has a strong Appalachian influence,
I wonder if that is not the source.

Herb Stahlke

>>> lynnem at COGS.SUSX.AC.UK 10/19/00 02:49AM >>>
>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'.]

Beverley Olson Flanigan wrote:

>         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.

I don't know about Pittsburgh, but I've known two families in
western
NY who call one set of Grandparents "Nana" and "Pup-up" (no idea
how
_they_ spell it!  I think it's the paternal g-parents in both
cases).
The families are completely unrelated (and the citations are 20
years
apart).  I always (as a local) found these words strange.  Are
they
imports from another area?  I'm sure 'nana' is common, but the
fact
that both families consider 'nana' and 'pup-up' to be a matched
set
in some way--that seems suspiciously precise.

(In our family, we had 2 grandmas and a papa.  If my other
grandfather were alive, he would've been 'grandpa'--there could
be
only one Papa.)

Lynne

--
M. Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 3AN    UK
phone:  +44(0)1273-678844
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