Back East - Out West
 

While speaking to a buddy in Cali the other day I noticed how we still used the terms "Back East" and "Out West".

It's funny how terms from our past history stick around. I have always been fascinated how sayings get integrated into the vernacular.

Post your old sayings or old terms.

Just Sayin.

I have to fill in the 4 compass points before anybody else. Up north and down south!:)

We still say sunrise and sunset and we know the sun does not revolve around the earth.

Somehow a "beautiful earth rotation into darkness" just does not sound romantic.

My parents always say "hit the hay," in reference to going to sleep. Neither have ever lived on a farm.

I know a several folks that call their refegerator the ice-box. People a generation or more too young to have ever used a real ice box.

I love language. I bought this book in the 70's and still refer to it:

Amazon.com: I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated Treasury of American Words and Phrases (9780442224134): Stuart Berg Flexner: Books

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1339679600.jpg

I have to check that out. Even after 40 years in the US, my wife still has an occasional issue with the wacky way we 'mericuns talk.

That can depend on how the rivers flow. Around here they tend to head north, so often people go down (stream) north and up (stream) south. Not natural for me to say, but it is for the locals.

I too love language and I take special notice to small changes. For example, fun. When did the usage of "funnest", "that's so fun", etc come into play?

We old timers used to say "that was so much fun". Fun alone just does'nt sound right.

Back in the Eighties, Robert Macniel did a documentry, "History of the Story English"....fascinating stuff.

The Story of English | Watch Free Documentary Online

Excellent. Happy birthday to me!

It's bizarre and epidemic the way that people raised in California commonly refer to traveling south as "up" and north as "down".

As in, "I'm going up to San Diego", (starting from Los Angeles), or "down to Santa Barbara..."

It just happened to me the other day on the phone, talking to some young guy selling something on CL. I'm not talking about something that has happened once or twice, it's extremely common and extremely bizarre. It would be one thing if they just said, "I'm going to Santa Barbara". But always with the *up* and *down* and always ****ing backwards!! Drives me insane, as you can see...

It's as though something in their inner ear or whatever the fk tells us up from down and left from right is upside-down. If memory serves, we are all actually upside-down but gravity creates the illusion that we are right side up and our eyes correct it automatically(?) I can't remember. But it drives some other part of my brain into biotch-slapping kookoo.

Here in jersey we never drive to the beach we always "go down the shore". I'm just sayin'.

in Louisiana, you used to get lots of English (well, to the extent that Southern speech is English) words put into French sentence constructions

e.g "That boat, she good." or "That boat, she a good one."

this was beyond the sprinkling of French words into English sentences, and beyond the old guys who spoke a French dialect that nobody could understand, even French visitors.