Regional Differences

Lack of Honey Dew donuts: The only thing keeping Maine a "good" state and not a "great" state....you dont see the "old school" signs anymore. I freakin love this bear!

You could get a spuckie here....you could also get a "number 9" (named after Ted Williams), a TRUE "Italian" (and an AMerican), and the best Greek Pocket around (ask my mom or sister)

Short of when I asked her to marry me, I dont know if I have ever seen Amanda get more excited than when I told her George and Lynne were bringing these back from NJ!

I was teaching a lesson the other day on "cultural literacy" and the differences between the denotations and connotations of words depending of WHERE and WHEN you say them. For example--the word "gay" today has a much different meaning than it did a hundred years ago. The topic is really quite interesting, especially to a nerdy word maven and language fan like me. This is why I have few friends. Consider the differences between the words NUDE and NAKED. They essentially both mean UNCLOTHED....but dont you see how NUDE has more of an "artistic" and less obtrusive sound to it than NAKED does? Artists dont paint NAKEDS, they paint NUDES. And you dont look at the sun with your NUDE eye...it is your NAKED eye. Stuff like that.

Ultimately, the conversation turned to food. As it does most of the time for me WHENEVER I am talking about something.

What we call "soda," the new girl in my class from Kansas calls pop....and my Nana, from Boston, called it tonic...and friends of ours Alabama call all soda "coke." You could have a root beer coke, a sprite coke, a coke coke, etc.

In Maine, we call them doughboys....back in Mass they were fried dough...in RI, they call them elephant ears....in NJ they call it funnel cake

What about Frappes (like I used to get at Maplewood back home)? They dont seem to exist in Maine....but milkshakes do....and down in RI they call them "cabinets," like a kitchen cabinets. And in NY, the (pretty much) same thing is called an egg cream. Why?

But what I find really interesting is the whole locus of terminology for sandwiches. It gets really heated depending on where you are. Back home, when I ordered an ITALIAN, I got a SUB with salami, montadella, pepporoni, etc on it. It was a type of sub. But in Maine, an ITALIAN is a blanket term used to describe ANY cold submarine sandwich (a turkey italian, a ham italian, etc). What Mainers call Italians (a cold sub) we in Mass call "spuckies." And when George makes these types of sandwiches, he is always making a HOAGIE, which is what they are in Philly. But then I have a student from New Orleans, and when he eats this, he is eating a Po'boy.

And dont even bring HOT sandwiches into this! Up here in Maine there is no real special name for these things--they are just called hot subs. But down in Mass all hot subs are called "grinders" as in a steak and cheese grinder or a meatball grinder, etc. But sometimes we would put our steak and cheese in a syrian bread pocket and eat it. You can do this in Maine, too, but no one will know what you mean if you ask for a "pocket." They will gladly oblige, however, if you ask for a DAGWOOD, which is how these are known. Weird.

This all came to me in a thought today because I had been emailing with George about all the great regional food he was bringing back from NJ (if they ever come back). He has some scrapple, pork roll, tastycakes, boost, and Ivan's spicy wafers. Has anyone ever heard of any of these things? I had not heard of Ivan's spicy wafers until today. But I guess that is the same way some of my friends from away dont truly understand what I mean if I talk about a whoopie pie, bismarck, Allyn's (a type of coffeebrandy....wait...THE type of coffeebrandy), or salt pork on hotdogs. Or what about brown bread? Or salmon peawiggle?

Wow. This blog is driving me crazy.

Regional differences. Kind of cool. Can you help me think of any others???