YINZ SHOULD READ THIS N'AT

I can just throw in the towel now on all y’all thinking I am educated. Granted I went to a four-year school, have a degree and some change, and a full-time job (that doesn’t require working in the summer), but I come from a city where we sound dumb. No, not the south. I KID. Dear God, it’s me, Margret (or Torrie). If I could have a southern accent, that’d be swell. I’m almost 25 and having that for my birthday would be just like sweet tea on a hot summer day down by the water in my favorite little [insert cute southern town]. No? Not possible? Shit.

I don’t really have an accent. I may or may not (read: may) play with different accents in my classroom, as a tactic I like to call “confuse your students,” but for the most part, I’m pretty straight and narrow. No twang, no y’alls, and……no yinz.

Raise your hand, class, and tell me if you know where “yinz” came from. No one? Awesome. You fail.

It’s Pittsburgh. The town where we have a lot of super bowl rings (so I’m told), our hockey team is actually pretty good looking (oh and they do pretty well on the ice, too) and no one knows we have a baseball team….and if they do, it’s because they laugh at us. We’ll get ‘em next year, boys! Oh, it’s only the start of baseball season? Ok, well....we’ll get ‘em next year, boys!

I had to write a paper in college on the topic of dialect. My grammar professor basically forced me to write about "Pittsburghese" because it “fascinated” her much like the way my students “fascinate” me when they can’t give me an answer (therefore, it is clear that stupidity fascinates us.) We say things like….

“Yinz goin’ dahntahn ta-night? Yeahs, yinz goin’ to tha SausSide?”  -- Which can be read as “Are you all going downtown tonight? Oh, lovely, are you perhaps all going to the SouthSide of Pittsburgh?”

Or maybe something like…..”Did jeet jet?” is really just a lovely Pittsburgher asking, “Did you eat yet?” and then that said Pittsburgher will probably ask you to get a “Primanny Sammich” which is a delicacy that looks like this.

Yes, fries in the sandwich. Coleslaw, too.
We call it “Primanti’s” for those of us who do not speak this native tongue.
It’s a Pittsburgh original and, well, it’s damn good!

 

Other phrases or words include (but are certainly not limited to):

-Crick (creek)
-Gumbands (rubber bands)
-N'at (...and that)
-Slippy (slippery)
-Jagoff (a loser, a douche, etc.)
-Jynt Igle (Giant Eagle, a local grocery store)

 

My sister’s boyfriend really drove my nickname home by saying, in his best Pittsburgher voice, “Toooorrrre” – and it just doesn’t do it justice if you can’t truly hear the magic behind this wonderfully awful accent. Therefore, I have no choice but to leave you with a video of a man who, by definition, IS a Pittsburgh Dad. Once you watch this clip, feel free towatch more of them on YouTube. It is a quintessential example of how Pittsburgh people are. (& yes, we totally bought my dad a Pittsburgh Dad shirt for Father's Day. We're stellar, upstanding kiddos, obviously!)

This is holiday themed but far too funny to pass up!
GO GO GADGET -- check out the other Pittsburgh Dad videos for a good Friday laugh!

 

It should be noted that I, in fact, live outside in a suburban area, a solid 25 minutes from the city, which could very well explain my lack of this gloriously eloquent accent. Still, consider yourself smarter and far more cultured now for having learned about this beauteous dialect!

 

 

See YINZ at the next storm,

 

T