V is for Vocabulary

POP QUIZ! Name these items:

  SODA? POP? COKE?

Image courtesy of Alessandro Paiva, rgbstock.com

                                  

BAG? SACK?

Image courtesy of Sanja Gjenero, rgbstock.com

SNEAKERS? TENNIS SHOES?

Image courtesy of Sanja Gjenero, rgbstock.com

FAUCET? SPIGOT? SOMETHING ELSE?

Image courtesy of Zsuzsanna Kilian, rgbstock.com

Your answers to the questions above will likely depend a lot upon where you grew up or where you now live. For example, according to the The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy, "pop" seems to be the word of choice in the Northern, Midwestern, and Western states, while "soda" is more prevalent in the Northeast and parts of California. Many Southerners, on the other hand, seem to prefer to use the word "coke."

As far as the quiz above goes, no answer is wrong. However, that doesn't mean that we won't ever run into awkward language situations here in the United States.

One of the first things I noticed when I moved from my home state of Michigan (Upper Michigan, to be exact) to western Nebraska in 1994 was that the names I'd always associated with certain objects suddenly didn't fit them anymore. I felt like I had walked into a different world when I went to the local grocery store one afternoon soon after I had arrived in town. The clerk rang up my purchases, then asked me a question I'd never heard before in the context of a store: "Would you like a sack for that?"

This is what I looked like when I heard her question:

Photo by Robert Kraft
Courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

(Just look at the eyes. Ignore the dog around them.)

"What?" I said. It wasn't an "I didn't hear you" what. It was more of a "what in the world are you talking about" kind of what.

"Do. You. Want. A. Sack?" She said each word slowly, as if she were speaking to someone very, very stupid. (Apparently, she was).

Slow speech notwithstanding, I was still confused. "A sack?"

"Yes. A sack." She kind of hissed the word that time, and I started to hear grumbling coming from the people in line behind me.

Suddenly--and I don't know how or why, only that it happened--the proverbial lightbulb when off and my brain comprehended what she meant. This is what I looked like at that moment:

Photo by Kim Newberg
Courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

Don't I look wise? (Again, ignore the fur. And the whiskers. And the whole "this is a cat" thing. I know it's a cat. Just look for the essence of wise.)

"Oh, you mean a bag!" I said triumphantly, like I had cracked some kind of code. (Actually, I felt like I had cracked a code.) "Yes, I'll take one!" (Notice how overly enthusiastic I had become. I was trying to erase my earlier ignorance by turning on my bubbly charm--kind of like pop when you shake up the bottle.)

The clerk ignored me, slammed my purchases into a bag (excuse me--sack), and I left the store feeling like a stranger. In a strange land. Or something.

When I told this story to my journalism students the next week, I was met with the same blank stare I had given the clerk.

Photo by Robert Kraft
Courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

(That picture's just too good not to use again.)

There was silence. I stared at my students. My students stared at me. Finally, one brave young man spoke up. "Um, of course it's a sack, Ms. P. I don't get it. Why would you call it a bag?"

Clearly, we had a communication problem.

I explained to the class that the only sack I knew was in football, and by "knew" I meant I had heard some announcer say the word as I was surfing past ESPN to get to a rerun of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I had grown up calling these paper containers bags. That's what my parents called them; that's what my grandparents called them. I assumed that was what everyone called them.

Obviously, I assumed wrong.

Since that fateful day in Nebraska when my ideas about everything I thought I had known were dashed, I've come across many more examples of the country's varied vocabulary. Here in western New York, for example, those shoes pictured above are called sneakers. I grew up calling them tennis shoes. People in some parts of the country say that the water receptacle that Jack and Jill carried up the hill is called a pail; others call it a bucket. Some fry their eggs in a frying pan, and others fry them in a skillet. And in some areas of the country, water comes from a faucet, yet in other areas, it comes from a spigot

Moving from one part of the United States to the other means you almost need to learn a new language.

I know I did.



Have you noticed differences in vocabulary in various parts of the United States? If you're not from the US, have you noticed any vocabulary differences in your country?

Homebody

Today's 100 words:

Growing up, I was always somewhat of a homebody. I attended a college that was only about an hour and a half away from my hometown, and I had no intention of beginning my career too far away from my family. As my graduation from graduate school neared, though, I realized that college teaching jobs were scarce in Upper Michigan, and, finding myself carried forward by the momentum of my friends' enthusiasm for the job hunt, I applied for work all over the country. The result: I was offered and accepted a job in Nebraska, so very far from home.

Much more than tomato/tomahto

Today's 100 words:

I used to live in Western Nebraska, where I taught English and journalism at a college on the plains, an area so different from where I grew up. I remember talking about a forest one day in my composition class, and when I said the word "woods," I was met with blank faces. My students weren't familiar with the term, one that was such a part of my own life growing up in tree-filled Upper Michigan. Even after I defined the word, I'm not certain they truly understood, showing that our comprehension does depend somewhat on where we're from.

They walked these streets; they lived and breathed.

I wrote this 100-words exercise on February 12 as I was thinking about the setting of a story. I grew up in Upper Michigan, and ghosts towns are common in many of the northernmost areas. Even as a child, I was fascinated by these tiny towns that once hummed with life but now were nothing more than the leaning buildings, rusted vehicles, and boarded-up windows I saw from the backseat of my parents' blue Buick. I always had questions: Who had lived here? Why did they leave? Where did they go? And if no one knew the answers, my imagination would step in.

 

Abandoned places fascinate me. I love exploring ghost towns, imagining the lives that were lived inside the decrepit buildings, the people who once called the town home. The term ghost town intrigues me: do some spirits love a place so much that they stay there for eternity? Does their laughter still echo in the boarded-up movie theater? Do shouting, excited children play an eternal game of catch in the park while proud parents watch nearby? These places speak to the writer in me, the one who imagines and creates and dreams what was and what could be.

A memory

A lengthy sentence I wrote for today's 100 words exercise:

Spring was a muddy time in Upper Michigan, and I can remember recesses during elementary school when we weren't allowed on the soggy playground and instead were told to play on the school driveway and sidewalks, where teachers and aides would patrol among us, ensuring that we didn't run out into traffic or throw balls at cars, and I can remember the gym teacher, Mr. Teddy, commenting on my looped pigtails as I paced the sidewalk that led toward the high school, wondering why we had to play outside at all, wondering why we couldn't just stay inside and read.