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Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”

texasmonthly.com

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Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”

#71

Post by look_lookatme »

blunte wrote: post #15

Honestly, I never thought about the "rules" of how these words were used... that's just how we talk in much of Texas (and probably other places). I can guess that "out" meaning west is because in early American times, going west was dangerous. You were going "out" of safety and into the wild. Going "over" just meant going horizontally on the map but within an established (safe) area. Up and down are kind of obvious,…

The sing-songy nature of "all y'all" provides such a nice wind-up for dropping the hammer on a bunch of kids not listening to their mother. The foundational difference between "y'all get out in the yard for family photos" vs "all y'all better get your asses out in the yard for family photos" is unmistakeable if you grew up in Texas.

I use y'all in slack/email within the company I work at and correspondence with just about anyone (I live in the Northeast, but still use it), but I save "all y'all" for my closest friends, even though they might not have grown up hearing it.

Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”

#72

Post by saltcured »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #7
qbrass wrote: post #3

Earlier 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.

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 g…

I was raised in the East Bay and we would head "up to Yosemite" or "up to Tahoe" because they are in the mountains, even though they are mostly eastward. Similarly, we'd probably say "up to Mount Tam" or "up to Mount Diablo" from anywhere in the Bay Area. Those are not big mountains, but they stick out of the local topography.

A weird one is we might say "up to Muir Woods" even though the approach by car feels like you're descending into grotto. But I think that is because we also think about it being north of us, related to San Rafael. In general, we'd use up/down for north/south when elevation wasn't the most significant mood.

We might head "down to Santa Cruz" if we were in Oakland since it feels like a trip south. If we were in San Jose or Palo Alto, we might say "over to Santa Cruz" because it feels primarily like traversing some mountains. But I think we would say "down to Santa Cruz" if we were in San Francisco and planning to take Highway 1 along the coast.

Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”

#74

Post by look_lookatme »

cthalupa wrote: post #6

I'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?

I'm from rural Texas and I use them all, but out and over aren't strictly cardinal, though thinking about it now they probably mostly conform to the cardinal directions (when being used in this context). I definitely will say "out" for anywhere west, all the way to California. I'll say "over" for short distances in any direction. I doubt I'd ever say "out" for anywhere east of where I grew up.

Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”

#75

Post by candeira »

bshimmin wrote: post #55

In England, if you're fairly traditional, you would always say up to London, Oxford, or Cambridge (and, from the latter two, if you are a student and temporarily expelled, you are "sent down" - or "rusticated", to use a lovely word), whether you're starting from the north or the south.

Joe Jackson sang of "going down to London[1] (to be the King)". According to his wikipedia biography[2], from age one he grew up in Portsmouth, which is South of London.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNoOLCsqNTE [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Jackson_(musician)

Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”

#76

Post by bazeblackwood »

philsnow wrote: post #59
rconti wrote: post #56

I once tried to explain to my French host family when I would use 'oh' versus 'zero' when describing numbers, but I couldn't come up with a rule. My phone number has a 0 in the middle of the area code ('four oh eight') but elsewhere in my phone number, I use 'zero'. I couldn't correlate zero-versus-oh to position in the string nor what came before or after it. Yet it's totally natural to me to use each in the 'correc…

for me I seem to say zero after numbers ending in vowel sounds: one oh two zero three zero four oh five oh six oh seven oh eight oh nine oh

Tommy Tutone doesn't follow your guideline:

> Eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-nine

Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”

#77

Post by andrew_wc_brown »

nograpes wrote: post #52

In North Ontario, Canada, and in some parts of the East coast, many speakers use the words "up" and "down" to refer to elevation rather than direction. So you would say "I'm going up to the store" only if the store was higher in elevation than where you were currently standing, even slightly. I grew up in North Ontario, but my parents were not native English speakers, and it was only in my late teens that most of my…

I'm for the Northwestern Ontario, or as we think of it as the "truth north"

up and down are directions. Also we say pack sack instead of back pack.

Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”

#78

Post by runaway »

markcerqueira wrote: post #42
__david__ wrote: post #26

As 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…

I'm surprised to hear a native Californian would say "back east." I thought only people from the East Coast (or I guessed who lived there at one point) would go "back."

Raised in LA and so was my mother, but she would say "back east". I always took it in a historical sense.

Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”

#79

Post by labster »

markcerqueira wrote: post #42
__david__ wrote: post #26

As 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…

I'm surprised to hear a native Californian would say "back east." I thought only people from the East Coast (or I guessed who lived there at one point) would go "back."

As a California native, I say "back east" with the same connotation as a farmer saying "the back 40" -- somewhere annoying to get to and somewhat overgrown.

Re: Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”

#80

Post by taneq »

pwagland wrote: post #41
username223 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native of... nowhere in particular, I think "up" and "down" are pretty universal among Americans for "north" and "south." I wouldn't be surprised if they're near-universal to inhabitants of the northern hemisphere, since that's the way maps are drawn. A possible exception would be inhabitants of mountainous regions saying e.g. "up to Leadville" or "down to Denver." Having lived in Houston, I didn't notice "over"…

Even in Australia which, last I checked, is not in the US, uses up and down to refer to north and south. That seems fairly independent or state as well. For example ins Perth you go "up to Geraldton" and in Sydney you go "up to Brisbane", and "down to Melbourne". The whole out and over thing seems more regional to me. In Australia "out" is generally just "far from here" and "over"... well that isn't a thing, at least…

Perth here, we tend to use 'up north' / 'down south', and 'over' for east. 'Out' just means 'away from home' and could be to the corner shops or the next city.

One thing that always amuses my Eastern States friends is our tendency to refer to the entire other half of the country as "over east". Sydney? Melbourne? I dunno, it was somewhere over east anyway.

Edit: I had 'over' for both east and west, but there's nothing but ocean to the west of here so we don't have much occasion to talk about things being to the west of us... apart from Rottnest Island, which is still 'over' because you get there by boat or plane.

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