Words for grandparents: was: Pittsburgh Dialect

[Lynne Murphy]

>At 11:14 AM -0400 10/19/00, Alice Faber wrote:
>>I grew up in the 50s in a NY suburb. In my immediate family, we
>>distinguished between the two grandmothers as "Grandma Faber" and
>>"Grandma Greenberg". One set of cousins, however, referred to Grandma
>>Faber as "Nana"; I don't recall what they called their other
>>grandmother, though, even though I should (this other grandmother is
>>the one who taught me to knit and crochet, with European
>>yarn-handling techniques).
>>
>>Alice
>>--
>this, or a variant, does seem to be a Jewish (at least Ashkenazic)
>tradition.  Growing up in NYC and its suburbs in the late 1940's and
>early '50's, my brother and I knew our maternal grandmother only as
>"Nanny" (not "Nana", but close), and her daughter--my aunt--is
>"Nanny" to HER grandchildren.  In each case, only one of the two
>grandmothers is "Nanny", but presumably it's not always the maternal
>grandmother.
>
>larry

The families I know who use it are WASPs (one of the Pop-pops is a
deacon in the Episcopal church), so either it's spread or it was more
general to begin with.

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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