"slang" and "informal" as dict labels [WAS: shirty?]

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:58 AM -0800 2/17/03, Peter A. McGraw wrote:
>I lived in New Jersey (metro NYC) in the mid-'80s, and though I never heard
>anyone there overtly eschew the use of "Jersey," my unscientific
>observation was that the only people I ever heard say it were New Yorkers.
>I don't recall ever hearing a New Jerseyan drop the "New.".  When we moved
>to Oregon (in our car with NJ plates), my new next-door neighbor introduced
>himself with the words, "So you're from Jersey, huh?"  (Guess where he was
>from!)
>
>But it's quite possible I just never happened to run into anyone from a
>social group or a part of the state where "Jersey" was used.
>
>Peter Mc.
>
Springsteen uses it, at least in the nominal compound "Jersey girl",
and it's definitely not a pejorative.  Of course it might be claimed
that meter is a consideration here (as in "Frisco Bay"), and/or that
compounds and phrases don't count (cf. *"NY" vs. "NYPD").  The use of
"SF" in speech as a disambiguator reported by Michael Israel
postdates my years in the Bay Area, but so do a lot of other things,
unfortunately for me.  As for "Philly", I've heard it from
Philadelphians, but it's true that they weren't natives to Filuffia.
Still, that's a wider distribution than "Frisco", which even
newcomers and tourists soon learn to shun.

Larry