By Helen Vollmer, PresidentI am a serious word wonk. Language is music to me. Want to make me happy? Introduce me to a new word or turn of phrase I’ve never heard of before. Which is why I am thrilled that after 50 years, the final volume (Volume 5) of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) is seeing the light of day, thanks to Harvard University Press.
This amazing linguistic project traces how Americans speak and reflects how we’ve communicated past and present. The dictionary, with its 60,000 terms, also shows that while we have become mobile and many of us live far from our roots, some of our phrasing is “dyed in the wool,” proving that home is not necessarily where you live but what you take with you.
Cases in point:
Do you say “soda” or “pop” or do you simply ask for a Coke, like we do in Texas?
If you order a slushburger, you’re probably someone from the Dakotas who wants a sloppy joe.
If you’re from Wisconsin, you may want that burger with a wapatuli, a potent punch.
Will you vote for a snollygoster this election year? In the South, this is a term for a self-promoting politician.
The point of all this is that as life gets more homogenized and one WalMart pretty much looks like another as you traverse I-10 from sea to shining sea, the way we communicate and the words and phrases we use are details that make us distinctive and point to how we relate to the world around us. It’s how we tell stories about ourselves, serving up clues in word form.
In the days ahead, I DARE you to think about unique words clusters you use to engage with others. Oops—gotta run and clean up that Coke I just tumped over on my desk.
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