Benjamin in Seattle, Washington, says both with a brief L sound, like bolth, a pronunciation his partner noticed before he did. It’s not confined to Northern California, where he grew up, or to the Midwest connection she wondered about. In an online...
A Dallas listener is struck by the fact that Texans talk about East Texas, North Texas, South Texas, and West Texas. So why, she wonders, do people in other states say things like Southern Indiana and Northern California? This is part of a complete...
What’s the correct pronunciation of crayon? Is it cray-on? Cran? Crown? Here’s a dialect survey map that shows the distribution of these pronunciations. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Regional Pronunciations of...
There doesn’t seem to be a settled counterpart to bicoastal for someone who travels between two places on the same coast. Maura in Marin County splits her time between Northern and Southern California to be near grandchildren, and bipolar isn’t the...
fi-fi n.— «Paul E. Erdman, a writer of best-selling novels of financial intrigue who began his literary career in a Swiss jail, where he was being held in connection with the collapse of the Swiss bank he ran, died Monday of cancer, his...
scraper n. an automobile, especially a large, unfashionable passenger vehicle that has been customized. Editorial Note: This term appears to originate in and be specific to northern California, especially the San Francisco Bay area. Etymological...
