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

texasmonthly.com

81–90 of 136 posts

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

#81
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?

We grew up not using the dichotomy of 'Out' vs. 'Over', but 'Out' vs. 'In' signifying whether we're heading to a more rural or urban area. e.g. Let's go in (to town) to go to a bar. Let's go camping out at Krause.

'Over' is more reserved when going to a previously known destination.

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

#82
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…

I'm guessing there's something to do with syllabic grouping here, where we're naturally doing some optimization to form easily repeatable syllable groups. The other case would be to avoid making ambiguous sounding noises.

Take for example the inclusion of two '0' digits sequentially. Excluding the case where it's a 1-800 number, which indicates its own class of phone number. Let's look at a hypothetical example here: 459-2001. I'm pretty sure most English speakers would pronounce the final clause in this hypothetical number: "two-zero-zero-one", because "oh-oh" could blend together.

Any other rule, I think, would then follow how you approach grouping the numbers. In the case of the first three of seven digits in the number, in my experience a number is unlikely to start with a 0, (i.e. 019-9949), but in the case that a "group" does, I would definitely lean toward "zero", in that case "zero-one-nine" sounds infinitely better than starting with "oh".

It makes sense that "oh" would work better in between two other digits, and I'm having trouble imagining any three-digit zero sandwich (101, 102, ... 201, 202, 203 etc.) that doesn't sound better as "oh".

If the '0' is the final number in the group, I also think I say "zero". Try out 450, 290, etc. or even 050.

When you get to four digits, I think that's where interpretation might come into play. 5057 sounds equally good as "five-oh-five-seven" or "five-zero-five-seven" to me, though I might prefer the latter. Maybe that's when the speaker has to decide how to group, and in the case of a repeating pattern, that might change the way they inflect, too. Swap one digit in the previous example and you get 5050, which to me, instantly seems like it would switch to two groups of "five-zero".

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

#83
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…

up the bay and down the bay can also be towards/away from the ocean in some parts of Newfoundland

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

#84

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…

[deleted]

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

#86
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 clue as to any formal rule. No out. The west was never a wilderness to be conquered here.

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

#87
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 to Lyon" and you would be going south.

In French you go "up" to the capital (or more generally to a larger city than you're currently in), and you go down from the capital (or more generally to a smaller city than the one you're currently in).

So you'd say from Paris "I'm going down to Lyon" or "I'm going down to Grenoble" and from Lyon you'd say "I'm going down to Grenoble" or "I'm going up to Paris". (And you instantly know that Paris is the largest city of the 3 and Grenoble the smallest ^^ so from Grenoble you go "up to Lyon" and "up to Paris").

I learned that fairly old because I didn't live in France until later in my childhood but I always found this linguistic kinda funny :)

Descendons donc en province, disent-ils a Paris !

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

#88

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…

In New Zealand 'up' often means north, and 'down' south, but it also, depending on where you are, refers to altitude. I'm currently at 550m elevation, and I'd go down to the coast even though the place I'd probably go to is very slightly north of here.

The area I'm in is often referred to as the 'High Country' so that probably explains the up and down idea. I'd still go 'up' to Auckland because it's north, even though it's at sea level.

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

#89

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…

One BIG thing worth noting is Texas, almost formally, redefines the cardinal directions [1], so it's even harder to parse what up/down/out/over are.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JREkqCvLzSo

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