[Ads-l] Heard in an ad for a local pizzeria:

[Wilson Gray]

> a Pennsylvanianism unfamiliar to me: “tray” for a whole pizza.

When I was Googling "cut," I discovered there's a particular kind of
thick-crusted pizza - an inch thick or so, like unto Chicago-style pizza -
baked in a tray. This kind of pizza is locally claimed to be of Sicilian
origin and preference for it over the thin-crusted, round pizza is supposed
to be a mark of one's local origin. It's sliced into rectangles - also like
Chicago-style? - with each rectangle called a "cut." Not being from around
here, I vastly prefer a slice of the ordinary, thin-crusted, circular pizza.

BTW, what do your NEPA locals have to say WRT the pronunciation of, e.g.
"that's mine" as "that's Mayan"?

On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 7:47 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> > On Feb 12, 2018, at 3:30 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > "You [local pizza-heads] don't order a couple of slices! You order a
> couple
> > of _cuts_!"
> >
> > I noticed that "cut" was used at my late wife's favorite pizza joint,
> which
> > advertised "pizza by the cut" in its signage, but I didn't realize that,
> > like _heyna_, it was felt to be peculiar to the local dialect. And, in
> > fact, Googling shows that, though "cut" isn't widespread, it's not a
> local,
> > NEPA thing. It's more like positive anymore and "needs washed" than like
> > "heyna," heyna?
> >
> > —
> Just checked with our two NEPA students at Monday coffee hour; one uses it
> herself (glossing it as essentially “n’est-ce pas”), the other doesn’t but
> is quite familiar with it, and (speaking of pizzerias) they mentioned a
> Pennsylvanianism unfamiliar to me: “tray” for a whole pizza.  One of them
> mentioned ordering a tray at a pizzeria elsewhere and being puzzled when
> they brought out an actual tray (with no pizza on it).  My VPN isn’t
> working so I can’t check to see if this is a widely recognized regionalism;
> it probably is, just not one I’ve heard.
>
> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org