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The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun

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Re: The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun

#41

Post by ars »

covercash wrote: post #4
apalmer wrote: post #2

dont understand the mystery that is attributed to 'jawn' in this article. I have known a couple slang words in my own lifetime that have been used in an all purpose manner similar to 'jawn', the only real difference is that jawn manages to remain stable, most of these generic slangs fade out relatively quickly because they are pretty much meaningless...

Curious, what are the other all purpose slang words?

Who-zee-dingle (not sure how it's spelled)

Thingy

Thing-Ummy_Bob

whatchmacallit

Re: The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun

#42

Post by ludamad »

rroblak wrote: post #12
apalmer wrote: post #2

dont understand the mystery that is attributed to 'jawn' in this article. I have known a couple slang words in my own lifetime that have been used in an all purpose manner similar to 'jawn', the only real difference is that jawn manages to remain stable, most of these generic slangs fade out relatively quickly because they are pretty much meaningless...

Agreed. I was surprised that the article didn't mention the Hawaiian Pidgin expression "da kine"[1], which functions similarly to "jawn". Funnily enough, the da kine Wikipedia page makes the same claim regarding uniqueness of expression. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_kine

A big problem I have with news articles: Usually they correctly state that an expert has an opinion (sure, someone thinks jawn is different for $FOO reason), but it usually has no real bearing on expert consensus, nulling the value of asking an expert.

Re: The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun

#43

Post by tdumitrescu »

JohnBooty wrote: post #24
apalmer wrote: post #2

dont understand the mystery that is attributed to 'jawn' in this article. I have known a couple slang words in my own lifetime that have been used in an all purpose manner similar to 'jawn', the only real difference is that jawn manages to remain stable, most of these generic slangs fade out relatively quickly because they are pretty much meaningless...

The "mystery" in the title is just utter clickbait. The article itself (which is pretty good if you enjoy this sort of thing) explains precisely where the term came from! No mystery at all. It's an offshoot of "joint" which has been around in various forms for decades.

The mystery is why it is so imbued with elitism, secrecy, and tradition

Re: The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun

#45

Post by robbiep »

chjohasbrouck wrote: post #35
rubyfan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met a guy from Philly who over used "the jawn" so much we started calling him John. He was also often caught uttering phrases like "I'm from Philly yo"

I once played chess against a guy who used this word for just about everything. He made his move while I wasn't watching, I turned around and asked him what he did. "I took your jawn with my jawn." I said "which one is John?" He said "They're all jawn." From then on, every time I spoke to him I replaced every noun with "John." Surprisingly, even without nouns, we never had much difficulty understanding each other.

Marklar

Re: The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun

#47

Post by jawns »

I read this jawn and wanted to suggest some other Philly-related jawns that you might want to check out if you come to this jawn:

* TastyKakes. Not quite as delicious since the Flower Foods acquisition a few years back, but still tasty. I especially like the peanut butter cake jawns.

* Soft pretzels. Get those jawns when they're still hot.

* Cheese steak. Don't go to one of those tourist jawns. Instead, get it from a mom-and-pop corner store kind of jawn.

* Wawa. Heaven's convenience store. Once you've been to this jawn, you'll never go back to 7-Eleven.

* SEPTA. Just kidding.

* Comcast. Also just kidding.

Re: The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun

#48

Post by jdhzzz »

jawns wrote: post #47

I read this jawn and wanted to suggest some other Philly-related jawns that you might want to check out if you come to this jawn: * TastyKakes. Not quite as delicious since the Flower Foods acquisition a few years back, but still tasty. I especially like the peanut butter cake jawns. * Soft pretzels. Get those jawns when they're still hot. * Cheese steak. Don't go to one of those tourist jawns. Instead, get it from a…

Soft pretzels with mustard.

Re: The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun

#49

Post by jdhzzz »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #18
imglorp wrote: post #15

Wooder and crick are dead on. Also unmentioned is "down a' shawr", meaning you're going to the shore, specifically New Jersey.

I hear crick as an alternative pronunciation all over the northeast.

I grew up 30ish miles west and moved out > 40 (Yikes!) years ago. We used both crick (a small creek) and creek (a larger crick). My mother lived all her life near or around Philly (and hated that that term) and put an 'r' in wash: Warshington D.C. I don't know if that was regional or not. I can still instantly tell someone has the accent if I hear them say 'On' (the 'o' gets caught in their nose, almost if followed by a 'w') or 'now' as it sounds like an 'e' preceeds the o.

Re: The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun

#50

Post by jdhzzz »

I am currently in central Connecticut and it drives me crazy that natives employ the "glottal stop" for t's in the middle of words. To my (prejudiced) ears it sounds vaguely ignorant: Bu'on for button, the town of New Bri'ain. There's a pause where the 't' was, but no sound.
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