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

texasmonthly.com

101–110 of 136 posts

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

#101
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,…

> y'all can be singular or plural. Or rather, it can be "about singular", meaning we may not be sure if we're talking about one or a few. But if we want to be clear that we're talking about more than a few, we say "all y'all".

I can't get a straight answer on the y'all / all y'all distinction from you Texans. I asked here before and someone from Dallas said both are plural.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15234742

:-)

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

#102

Very interesting ! Funny thing, in France we do use "up" and "down" but with a different set of axis. They don't represent north and south. If you're in Lille (north of Paris), you'd say "I'm going up to Paris" although you'd be going south. If you're in Paris and you're going to Lille, you'd say "I'm going down to Lille" although you'd be going north. But if you're going to Lyon from Paris, you'd say "I'm going down…

In Japan there is a similar phenomenon. Trains going to the capital (or other urban center) use the word 'going up' (上り) and trains going away from the capital use the 'going down' (下り). This is so well used that signs and station announcements use the words too. It's not just a colloquialism.

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

#103

Another fun one that I'm definitely guilty of as a native Californian is "no yea" for "yes" and "yea no" for "no". I do it without thinking all the time and am always shocked that no one ever questions what I mean.

the lexicon valley podcast did an episode on this.

http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2013/0...

(the discussion starts a bit before six minutes in)

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

#104

I guess y'all are fixin to use our directional words. Honestly Houston (and I'm sure the other major cities too) has a bunch of weird pronunciation that marks natives versus folks just lucky enough to move here and I assumed the article was going to go into things like "fixing" or our weird town names. Here in Houston for example "Kuykendall" Street is pronounced with an R like the Dutch name from which it derives "K…

My favorite is if you're from Houston you call on/off ramps "feeder roads". I don't think people use that term anywhere else.

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

#105

In my native Danish, up and down are used fairly much as described in the article, but genrerally only for smaller, provincial locations. From Copenhagen I can go down to the southern part where I live, but from here I can not go up to Copenhagen. East- and westwise, I can go over [exact same word] to some neighboring locations, though by no means all. As a native speaker I know when and when not, but don't have a cl…

You can go up to Aarhus though, right?

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

#106
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…

Definitely agree with this. Both are plural, but all y'all is a direct address to a specific group of people.

I might be chatting with people at work, standing around getting a snack in the kitchen or, like you said, hanging out in slack general. And I might toss something out to the room, "Y'all want to go out to this comedy club on Thursday night?"

But when Thursday night rolls around and 3 of us are waiting on 5 people to commit and log out, then it's, "All y'all need to wrap it up."

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

#107

I guess y'all are fixin to use our directional words. Honestly Houston (and I'm sure the other major cities too) has a bunch of weird pronunciation that marks natives versus folks just lucky enough to move here and I assumed the article was going to go into things like "fixing" or our weird town names. Here in Houston for example "Kuykendall" Street is pronounced with an R like the Dutch name from which it derives "K…

My favorite is if you're from Houston you call on/off ramps "feeder roads". I don't think people use that term anywhere else.

[deleted]

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

#108
post #98

Very interesting ! Funny thing, in France we do use "up" and "down" but with a different set of axis. They don't represent north and south. If you're in Lille (north of Paris), you'd say "I'm going up to Paris" although you'd be going south. If you're in Paris and you're going to Lille, you'd say "I'm going down to Lille" although you'd be going north. But if you're going to Lyon from Paris, you'd say "I'm going down…

Native French speaker here. I can confirm. "Going up to" (monter sur) refers to somewhere central while "going down to" (descendre sur) refers to a peripheral location .

So it's not related to the direction the rivers flow?

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

#109
post #105

In my native Danish, up and down are used fairly much as described in the article, but genrerally only for smaller, provincial locations. From Copenhagen I can go down to the southern part where I live, but from here I can not go up to Copenhagen. East- and westwise, I can go over [exact same word] to some neighboring locations, though by no means all. As a native speaker I know when and when not, but don't have a cl…

You can go up to Aarhus though, right?

Interesting. I'm sure you can, over there on the mainland. But to my somewhat more easterly attuned ears, it doesn't sound quite right.

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

#110
I hadn't really thought about this much before. I grew up in rural Texas outside Waco. Up and Down are for sure aligned with the map. Over isn't directional though. Out sort of is.

Over is something we used when the destination as specific to a person's location. Go over to the neighbor's in any direction. But also go over to my grandma's house. But if you didn't specify to her house, then it was out to East Texas for the weekend, not over. We'd go over to Mickey's place for a week, but out to Memphis. I'm sure this is not generalizable, but that's how it works for me.

In general, out is anything that's kind of a pain in the ass, and over is something you're a little happier about. And there's also the "in" to contrast with "out." When I was growing up we went in to town. And back out to the farm. And of all my strange Texas-isms, that's the one that gets me the most shit from New Yorkers. I live in Brooklyn, and so I say, I'm going in to town, when I go to Manhattan. And I'm going out to Brooklyn when I'm headed home. And it makes people seriously angry sometimes.

Some of the other strange things I grew up with, that are weird even to me:

"Cut the lights on." What? That doesn't even make sense? You can cut something off. You can't cut it on.

"I'm fixin' to . . ." mow the lawn, take out the trash, make dinner. Very often used when someone is nagging you about something you are not really about to do. You're just fixin' to do it.

"Let's get a colbear." It's a cold beer with the d dropped and a twang on the beer and all said as a single word with the accent on the co. It sounds really weird to this day.

We have really weird relationships with units of distance. We don't measure distance in units of length. We measure it in how long it takes us to drive there. I remember getting called out on this not long after I move to NYC. Some people I met wanted to know where the hell Waco is. And I figured if they live here and know any city in Texas, they will know Austin. So I gave position relative to Austin. "Oh about 2 hours up from Austin." 2 hours what? By subway? Jesus, that's terrible. I was like, "No, it's an easy drive. You just get on I35 and your there. Hour and a half if traffic is good and you speed a little." Finally had to break it down. It's a hundred miles.

Another related thing is that we don't think twice about driving distances that would have other people looking for a plane ticket. Fun fact: it's a longer drive from Texarkana to El Paso than it is from Dallas to Minneapolis. It's just a thing we grew up with. We like our cars, and we don't mind driving. I lived in Dallas for many years (and am about to move back soon). And I would often leave work an hour early or so, beat the traffic out of town, go have dinner with my parents and siblings (about a two hour drive), then drive home after dinner (another two hours), and not even think twice about it. Or if my brothers wanted to hang out and have some drinks, stay there, and just drive straight to work the next morning.

Tea is a weird thing here as well. I love iced tea, but not the way I grew up with it in Texas. I like what used to be hot tea, poured over ice until it's freezing cold. And unsweetened and without milk. But in Texas, there's a process for making sweet tea that's almost as intricate and cantankerous as making BBQ. You boil a quart of water, add 8-12 bags of cheap black teabags and stew those for about an hour. Take the bags out, and bring back to a boil. Then you supersaturate this bitter cauldron with sugar until it's basically a syrup. That concentrate is supposed to be diluted. But the problem is that whenever you're having someone over for an event that would warrant sweet tea, you're too busy making BBQ and doing last minute cleanup to dilute it properly, so you throw it all in an 8-quart pitcher, fill it up to the top with ice, and add some water. The restaurants don't do a much better job. It's basically like mainlining simple syrup with dark color and a bitter flavor. I hate it. But I'd be dead if I ever said that within state boarders.

And since I'm getting a little nostalgic, I'll wrap this up. I've heard before that people who aren't from Texas think of our gas stations as grocery stores and our grocery stores as stadiums full of food. After 3 years in NYC, THIS IS SO TRUE! Nothing has been able to consistently frustrate me as much as trying to grocery shop here. It is so unreal what people have to deal with. And then when you go to 3 different hole-in-the-wall grocery stores (which may involve multiple subway rides, carrying your loot as you go) just to get the ingredients you need for one meal, the prices are so ridiculously high in the stores, that you really haven't saved that much money over just getting crappy takeout or delivery every night. Instead, you've wrecked your back lugging 80 lbs of groceries and wasted your weekend, and are pissed off anyway. I feel genuinely sorry for people who live here.

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