When you put something away in Texas you "put it up"
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”
#22I'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?
over seems like it's specifying that you aren't changing your "locale", whereas out seems to mean "more rural". Everything east of Houston that you might go to is as urban as houston itself, whereas most everything to the west of Houston is far less urban. Down, in contrast, seems to mean "more urban", as well as south.
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
That's simplifying it a bit, because there is both 'Up East' and 'Down East', but I've never heard 'Down West'. There is also 'Out West' which refers to Alberta.
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#24When you put something away in Texas you "put it up"
I think that applies everywhere...
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#25I'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?
> Maybe it's a rural Texas thing? Not really. Maybe for the author. Living a long time in rural Texas (now urban), I can say that someone might have a propensity to use over and out for specific directions, but in my experience they are interchangeable and it's not a universal truth. Granted there are no universal truths about Texas/Texans so when you hear one, discount it. And you are right that up and down as cardi…
This brings back a memory of a conversation with my grandfather. We were in Midland, and I said something about heading over to Odessa. He made a disparaging remark about my intelligence and said we would have to head out to Odessa from there.
That never made any sense to me until now.
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#26As a native Californian I definitely use "up" and "down". Up to L.A., down to San Diego. I might make a trip up the coast to Oregon or Washington. I also might go back east (meaning the east coast). Never used "out" though, probably because I'm already about as west as you can go on this continent!
"Over", however is just used without regard to direction, though it generally signifies a close distance. I'd head over to the city next door, but I'd never head over to Las Vegas. I'd head "out" to Vegas though. So maybe "out" is for far distances?
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#27I'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?
>Up and down, sure, but that seems fairly universal.
Only within a modern western civilization context. In the ancient world maps were usually oriented to the East (towards the rising sun) rather than to the North. So, for them Up would have meant toward the East and down toward the West (where the sun set - usually associated with the land of the dead).
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#28I'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?
> Maybe it's a rural Texas thing? Not really. Maybe for the author. Living a long time in rural Texas (now urban), I can say that someone might have a propensity to use over and out for specific directions, but in my experience they are interchangeable and it's not a universal truth. Granted there are no universal truths about Texas/Texans so when you hear one, discount it. And you are right that up and down as cardi…
Raised as a rural Oregonian with great grandparents from Arkansas here, north = up and south = down is pretty solid in my vernacular, though sometimes elevation will override latitude and we'll go "up" to somewhere slightly south. We mostly go "over" to places without a large elevation or latitude change, but there is some use of "out" but never to cardinal directions, only to imply change in population density or degree of settlement. If you're in town, you might be "headed out" to a campground, just as you might "head in" to town afterward, if you're in the city you'd head "out" to a smaller town.
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#29TIL: not everybody talks this way. Y'all get it together! :-)
Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
#30Was talking with a Japanese friend the other day and had a great conversation trying to nail down the meanings of over by, out near, up there, down by, etc, using local landmarks.
The Japanese equivalents are ここ、そこ、あこ, meaning respectively "here", "there (nearer)", and "there (further)". There's also これ、それ、あれ, meaning "this", "that (nearer)", and "that (further)". These distances can be both spatial, temporal, and metaphorical. The distinction between them seems relative in scale - if you ask for something to be passed to you at the dinner table, the things furthest from you are あれ and the things closest are これ (the latter is close enough you could reach it yourself). The neighboring town is そこ and the next town over is あこ.