Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
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Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#2I'm not Texan but lived in Austin for 8 years and found that this had snuck into my own speech without realizing it. I.e. I lived in East Austin and saying "going out to Krause Springs" (west); "head over to Bastrop" (east); or "go down to New Braunfels" (south) comes naturally to me now.
I'm curious though, is the phenomenon described in the article really a Texas thing? Do people in San Jose "go out to Santa Cruz" and "go over to Yosemite"?
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#3I'm not Texan but lived in Austin for 8 years and found that this had snuck into my own speech without realizing it. I.e. I lived in East Austin and saying "going out to Krause Springs" (west); "head over to Bastrop" (east); or "go down to New Braunfels" (south) comes naturally to me now. I'm curious though, is the phenomenon described in the article really a Texas thing? Do people in San Jose "go out to Santa Cruz"…
Up and Down aren't. They're map relative and pretty common.
Some places had a history of south-oriented maps so they may call south up and north down.
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#4I grew up in Abilene. I figure west is "out" because it gets sparser and dustier. Abilene is 3 hours from everything. I hadn't heard the east is "over" thing but I guess it makes sense.
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#5I have lived in Texas my entire life. Currently in Dallas. Have traveled extensively in the US and abroad.
In fact, I'm going down to Austin this weekend.
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#6I've lived my whole life in Texas and never assigned cardinal directions to out or over. Up and down, sure, but that seems fairly universal.
No one in checking with, regardless of Texas hometown or age had any idea this was a thing, either, and that's hitting people up to 60 years old and from Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.
Maybe it's a rural Texas thing?
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#7I'm not Texan but lived in Austin for 8 years and found that this had snuck into my own speech without realizing it. I.e. I lived in East Austin and saying "going out to Krause Springs" (west); "head over to Bastrop" (east); or "go down to New Braunfels" (south) comes naturally to me now. I'm curious though, is the phenomenon described in the article really a Texas thing? Do people in San Jose "go out to Santa Cruz"…
Up and Down aren't. They're map relative and pretty common. Some places had a history of south-oriented maps so they may call south up and north down.
In the presence of a river, up and down often mean upstream and downstream.
In the presence of hills, up and down generally mean up and down.
I live in Santa Cruz and as far as I'm aware, up and down have no fixed meaning and may be used freely according to the whim of the speaker. My instincts tell me that a trip to Yosemite would be up, because Yosemite is located in the mountains. But I never actually talk about going there.
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#8I've lived my whole life in Texas and never assigned cardinal directions to out or over. Up and down, sure, but that seems fairly universal. No one in checking with, regardless of Texas hometown or age had any idea this was a thing, either, and that's hitting people up to 60 years old and from Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Maybe it's a rural Texas thing?
It does seem like a huge, diverse state (as the old song goes, Heaven's almost as big as Texas). I don't think I could make many accurate sweeping generalizations about the way people talk in Eastern Massachusetts, let alone a territory the size of France. The "up" or "down" parts don't seem unusual to me, though, as someone who's never even been to Texas.
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#9I'm not Texan but lived in Austin for 8 years and found that this had snuck into my own speech without realizing it. I.e. I lived in East Austin and saying "going out to Krause Springs" (west); "head over to Bastrop" (east); or "go down to New Braunfels" (south) comes naturally to me now. I'm curious though, is the phenomenon described in the article really a Texas thing? Do people in San Jose "go out to Santa Cruz"…
Up and Down aren't. They're map relative and pretty common. Some places had a history of south-oriented maps so they may call south up and north down.
On Prince Edward Island (PEI) phrases like 'Up West' and 'Down East' are the norm which seems pretty weird at first. But once you look at the orientation of the island on a map [1] it starts to make some sense.
Basically people think of the island as being laid out East to West but in reality the island is rotated ~45 degrees on the actual map. So West is really North-West and East is South-East. This leads to people combining the usual North = Up and South = Down with East-West qualifiers.
[1] https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Prince+Edward+Island/@46.64...
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#10I thought that was universal, for me it's up to Portland, down to Eugene, out to Newport (coast), over (the mountains) to Bend.
My kids, who are just starting to drive, don't know their compass directions that well (and maybe never will, thanks to GPS) so they say wrong things like "up to California".