Little Differences

Hey folks, I'm back! Yesterday, as you know, was my birthday. I celebrated by going out to dinner with M and the in-laws. They had wanted to take me to one of Iron Chef Jose Garces' restaurants, but I didn't want all that fancyness for a family dinner, so I chose a teppan place in center city. I call it teppan because that's what it is, but here in Philly it's referred to as "hibachi." I always thought that was more of a grill with coals, but if you say teppan to someone, they aren't going to know what you're talking about.

The little differences in Philly are sometimes funny, other times infuriating, and always fascinating. A city so old you would think could figure out street signage, but they are horrendously bad at it. You don't know you are about to get onto a freeway until it's too late, and bizarre 6 way stops have no indicators to let you know you are traveling onto the street you need to be on. It took me a while to realize that there are no painted red curbs to let you know you shouldn't park somewhere. Instead, you have to look at the parking signs that point out which side of the sign is considered a no parking zone. I was mad about this for a good week before I realized that, doy, snow covers the curbs in winter and you still need to be able to know where it's safe to park! 

Snow things are going to be fun to figure out. These things are everywhere in Old City. They are usually right next to the bottom of a row house's steps. In my neighborhood there are tons of them, and some are broken. Some aren't even there anymore, but they have left an imprint in the concrete. It took a while to figure out that they are elaborate boot scrapers!

My building also has a room near the trash labeled "salt room," just for salting the exterior during the snowy months. A whole room for salt!

Another little difference is the word "jawn." I LOVE this word. It's a funny, Philly-only word. It basically means "thing." Kind of like "thingamajig" or "doohickey" (my references are old-timey, but you get it right?). Jawn is used to refer to a person, place, or thing, or even sometimes an idea. If you don't know the word for it, you substitute jawn. "Hand me that jawn over there." "That jawn she has in her hair is ugly as hell."

The Philadelphia dialect is amazing. It is actually a well documented linguistic phenomenon, due to the fact that William Lebov, a premiere sociolinguist, was working in Philly documenting the region's language and dialect. Many people confuse the Philly accent with a Jersey or New York accent, but since moving here, I can tell you they are very different. Coming from California, the place where pop culture comes from (and therefore the nation's dialect), it is really cool to be around a specific way of speaking and relating. Read the wiki article to get a sense of the ways the accent sounds different, but really, you need to hear it in action to get the nuances. Like I said in a previous post, my dear husband, M, has strengthened his accent by moving back here! He had always spoken a little differently, though. For instance, instead of what I thought of as the 'normal' pronunciation of "towel" Tow-el, he says "taal," and "gas" sounds suspiciously like "gaz." But now the floodgates are open, and things (or jawns) are over "der," and across the "shtreet." On some occasions, I have heard people (though never M) use the fabled "youse" as in "youse guys can't leave." Most Philadelphians don't seem to use "youse" but I have heard it around. 

Will my way of speaking change? I don't know. People haven't really said anything to me about the way I talk, though most people know I'm from California. I can't say that my California accent is any more or less pronounced. I don't really have a Valley accent, though, and maybe that's what the prevailing idea is of the Cali accent. Whatever dudes, I gotta bail!