Yins goin dahntahn n'at?

You can usually tell where a person is from by their accent. New England, Brooklyn, the Mid-west, down South, not to mention foreigners. Well, I'd like to add another area to that list: Western PA. It seems that, unless the person you're talking to is originally from this area, no one knows you're from Western PA, Pittsburgh, specifically. Pittsburghers have a very distinct accent. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up Myron Cope and see if you can't find some of his old broadcasts. Chances are, you won't be able to understand him half the time. Ha-ha.
Anyway, my whole point of this post was to educate people on some of the ins and outs of Pittsburghese.

We have a very relaxed way of talking around here. We like to leave out consonants and not completely pronounce vowels.  It's a very lazy way of speaking. Like "down." Moving our lips to make the "ow" sound is just too much work. So we say "dahn." Same thing with "town." So "downtown", to us would be more like "dahntahn."  We also have words that we just made up. Like "yins" and "n'at." "Yins" is our version of "y'all." And "n'at" is a contraction of "and" and "that."

On that website I linked to up there, there is also a translator. Want to hear how Shakespeare would sound in Pittsburghese? Try it. I like setting it up. "When you are finished cleaning your room, you all can go downtown and get some sandwiches." turns into "whenever yinz are finished redd uping yinzes room, yinz alls can go dahntahn and git some sammitches."

You would think that a grammar snob like me would hate this way of speaking, but I love it. I'm a Pittsburgh girl, through and through. I always used to talk of moving away from here. But, in truth, I don't think I ever could. There's nothing like heading in-bound on the Parkway West and going through the Fort Pitt Tunnels. Before the tunnels, there's nothing but trees lining the highway. Then you go through the tunnels and BAM! There's Pittsburgh. It's awesome.

See what I mean?

Anywho...I hope you found this post to be informative. If there are any Pittsburgh natives out there, and I forgot something, please let me know.

Later lovelies!
♥