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[Choop]

Where I was from, anything with ice cream in it became a "that soda" float.

At the ice cream stands where I grew up, Coke floats were more commonly ordered than root beer floats.

qfmft

[Golfhaus]

Okay, someone around here is in Charlotte, and I can't parse who it is. Whoever it is, PM me. I moved here in September, and need all the advice I can get on where to buy a house.

I was born and raised in eastern Virginia, and it's definitely "soda" there. My wife is from Lynchburg, but trained herself to say "pop" because she associated "soda" with Southernness, and wanted to be considered a Northerner. Her parents were from the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and her extended family is mostly there, but she has never lived there.

As for phrases that are common in one's everyday speech, my best one is "I can't even spell _______" as as indicator of how unknowledgeable I am on a given subject. "You want me to help you work on your transmission? Dude, I can't even SPELL 'transmission.'"

[Muse_Of_Fire]

*dies of pleasure*

Keep it going, folks.

Incidentally, PBS has a whole series on American English speech called "Do You Speak American?" that covers a lot of this stuff.

For me personally, this thread is a wonderful wealth of sexy data. Please, continue your discussion.

*looks about with wild desire*

[Choop]

As are most Atlantans, I am a transplant - the worst kind, a Yankee. I now have a hard time visiting due to my secret problem.

I, after more than twelve years in the south, use the word "fixin'" in all the wrong ways. And I love it. I'm always fixin' to do something. Or fixin' dinner. Or just fixin.'

I would be shunned were this ever to come out. I beg of you your confidence.

[Doc]

I have the inverse problem with zed, becuase zed is the convention here but because of too much american tv I sometimes slip in a zee by mistake and everyone just stares at me like I have a low understanding of the language.

Also that 'Zedbra' thing makes no goddamn sense at all. It's not called a See-arrot either assholes. If that's how pronunciation worked we wouldn't need the 'e' in zebra at all and I still wouldn't be able to pronounce it because I say z-eh-bra. Don't take no flak from people who don't know how language works.

[Muse_Of_Fire]

Don't take no flak from people who don't know how language works.

QFMFT

[littlefallsmets]

QFMFT

I am left with an interesting paradox.

If I did not have the internet, I would not have seen that acronym and had to scratch my head and wonder "Am I a complete moron for not knowing what this means?" and I would not have felt unhip and dumb for a moment or two.

However.

The internet also allowed me to highlight the text and, in four or five clicks, know the answer to this smarty-##### riddle.

So... did this work out essentially flat? Nothing lost, nothing gained?

Or have I learned an important lesson about how the internet is slowly killing the idea of niche knowledge?

I dunno.

All I do know is that if I had seen that on a blackboard in high school, I would've scrawled beneath it:

"Eschew obfuscation".

Because we are all nerds, we would've all been with or without the internet.

But perhaps our nerd-specialities would have remained separate strains instead of equal parts of a vastly-wider and yet somehow-shallower internet dorkness.

[Muse_Of_Fire]

Aha.

But without the internet, it can be argued that that acronym never would have come into being. Instead, I would have affirmed my agreement with a full utterance: "Right on, bro!" or something like that.

Still, looking at your larger question, I disagree that the internet is spelling the end of "niche knowledge" (one could argue it can't spell at all, given the lack of vowels in things like 'QFMFT' et al ). While the internet is becoming a repository for all knowledge that we've amassed so far as humans, and especially all buffoonery disguised as knowledge that we in our hubris like to pass off as sagesse, one still has to have at least a small awareness of a knowledge in order to find it on the internet. In other words, one has to at least have a term to enter into a search field.

In many cases, however, I would welcome a bit of "un-niche-ifying," given that one of my passions is linguistics, which seems to baffle everyone. I was cursed with a social nature coupled with a passion for an absolutely specialized passion. Trust me, trying to find people who are excited enough to bother looking up valence change and Oroko verb morphology in the Mbonge dialect, not to mention people who want to bother talking about it, is a difficult and lonely thing.

Yeah, specialized knowledge is alive and well. But what I see happening is that those who traffic in it are better able to find one another, and potentially bring others into their fold.

[theinevitable]

without the internet, I would lead an aggravated life.

Because... I constantly have conversations where I end up wondering something... and I don't find the answer until I go home and look it up.

Did you know that the reason popcorn forms such cool shapes... is that the combination of heat and pressure inside the kernel is so great that the starch liquefies?

Did you know that no one is really sure why people cry when they're sad? Or why they laugh when tickled?

Did you know (I did, but I had to prove it to some one) that Romany are not the same as Romanian?

Do you know why hair grows to a certain length, and then stops? The hair grows for a certain period of time, then stops for a certain period of time, and then the old hair falls out and is replaced. I had wondered this since I was probably 12 years old, and only found out the answer this year.

I still can't figure out where/when the concept of shaving legs started. I get the impression that it goes pretty far back.
We had this conversation because we were watching a period film, and there was a nude scene, and the lady had smooth legs. We argued about whether this was realistic.

[littlefallsmets]

Very good points, Muse.

I guess I've just...

My dad raised my brother and I to be people who could find rare things and valuable things by going into places where they are careless or ignorant about the value of what they possess... by knowing what to look for and by being systematically-dogged.

The cut-out bins at music stores, dusty boxes at garage sales, small stores in the boonies of the Adirondacks, weird off-campus bookstores and flea markets, y'know?

And now... all those things that were such hard earned victories of scrounging and researching from ten scant years ago... you can find damn near anything you want on eBay or Amazon or whatever with five clicks, if you know what you're looking for and don't mind deeply overpaying for it.

A part of me misses that. "The Adventures of Mark Twain" in the backbin of a mom-and-pop video store in Dolgeville. The one shortpacked female figure in that wave of Marvel toys by hitting every single store that could possibly sell a toy in Albany.

And while the benefits outweigh the loss on the balance, in certain instances, I mourn the days before you could find anything in five minutes as long as you were prepared to waste a lot of money in the process.

ALSO: Dear madam, you have clearly outclassed me as a linguist. All I understood in there was that you were in some way referencing the comic relief wizard in "Masters of the Universe". I salute you.

[theinevitable]

a-so: I miss that, too. And I never really experienced it.

I feel like I get a little of it from the record store in Charlotte that I go to. that guy could probably be making a lot more money by selling his stuff on eBay.

[jaydub]

There's a way of speaking that seems to be characteristic of people around here (who aren't recent transplants) where they preface a quotation with "I'm all:" or "She's all:".  Its sort of used in the same way that "like" can be, as in: "I'm like: don't say that to her; then she's like: I'll say what I want to who I want."[sic - few people I know would actually say whomever].  The "I'm all/she's all" construction would drop right into that example.
It might even tie into the way Roast Beef speaks, "Eardrums all exploding like popcorn". I'm not sure why I feel that way - there just seems to be some consonance.

[Bjorn the Destroyer]

I'd like to confirm that Roast Beef speaks with diction very strongly of the Mid-Peninsula, San Francisco Bay. However it is most usually heard on buses at a very high volume by large women speaking on cellular phones.

All conferring with friends about what they're doing
All shocked and surprised by what he-said-she-said
All giving me hell of dirty looks when I ask them to please be quiet so I can nurse my hangover quietly.


Also: Roast Beef enunciates to a degree which is comical for someone used to hearing above diction slurred beyond recognition and punctuated by high pitched obnoxious braying laughter which grates at the very soul.

[wombat]

I still can't figure out where/when the concept of shaving legs started. I get the impression that it goes pretty far back.
We had this conversation because we were watching a period film, and there was a nude scene, and the lady had smooth legs. We argued about whether this was realistic.

I used to have a picture of a lady in a bathing suit from the 40s to prove that women used to be allowed to have hair on their legs. This is probably one of the few things left that you should ask your grandma instead of searching on the internet.

Also note: Movies get most details of history wrong. Don't get me started on whether there were any pug dogs in America at the time of Pochahontas.  Also, I love this site. And seriously, do you think they'd have a hairy naked lady in a movie just for accuracy's sake when they know most people would be grossed out? If so I think you have a misconception about the role of naked ladies in movies.

[theinevitable]

well, the argument centered around the fact that greek men shaved off their body hair. So maybe their women did, as well.

Also: wasn't that Pug the Pet of the fat+armored bad guy? Who was British?