Words for grandparents: was: Pittsburgh Dialect

[Arnold Zwicky]

lynne murphy reports "nana" in WASP families, in response to larry
horn's speculation that it's a jewish thing.

from my teenage days, in the '50s in eastern pennsylvania: "nana"
used, in my experience, *only* by two WASP families (good
episcopalians all).  each family had two living grandmothers but no
living grandfathers, so i can't report on the male counterpart to
"nana".

in any case, at the time i thought it must be an upper-middle-class
thing.  i did notice it, though - probably because i became close to
these families not long after reading zola's novel Nana, which gave
all this talk of "nana greene" etc. an odd flavor to me.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)