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You've never referred to Philadelphia as anything but "Philly." And New Jersey has always been "Jersey."
You refer to Pennsylvania as "PA" (pronounced Peeay).How many other states do that?
You know what "Punxsutawney Phil" ( A Ground Hog ) is, and what it means if he sees his shadow.
The first day of buck and the first day of doe season are school holidays.
You can use the phrase "fire hall wedding reception" and not even bat an eye.
You can't go to a wedding without hearing the "Chicken Dance," at least 1 Polka and either an Italian song (sung in Italian,) or "Hava Nagila."
At least 5 people on your block have electric "candles" in all or most of their windows all year long.
You know what a "Hex sign" is.
You know what a "State Store" is, and your out of state friends find it incredulous that you can't purchase liquor at the mini-mart.
You own only three condiments "salt, pepper and Heinz ketchup".
Words like "hoagie", "crick", "chipped ham", "sticky buns", "shoo-fly pie", "pierogies" and "pocketbook" actually mean something to you.
You can eat cold pizza (even for breakfast) and know others who do the same. (Those from NY find this "barbaric".)
You not only have heard of Birch Beer, but you know it comes in several colors: Red, White, Brown, Gold.
you know several places to purchase or that serve Scrapple, Summer Sausage (Lebanon Bologna), and Hot Bacon Dressing.
You can eat a cold soft pretzel from a street vendor without fear and enjoy it.
You know the difference between a cheese steak & a pizza steak sandwich and a Primanti's, and know that you can't get a really good one outside PA.
You live for summer, when street and county fairs signal the beginning of funnel cake season.
Customers ask the waitress for "drippy eggs" for breakfast.
You know that Blue Ball, Intercourse, Climax, Bird-in-Hand, Beaver, Moon, Virginville, Paradise, Mars, and Slippery Rock are PA towns.
You know what a township, borough, and commonwealth is.
You can identify drivers from New York, New Jersey, Ohio,or other neighboring states by their unique and irritating driving habits.
A traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a horse-drawn carriage on the highway in Lancaster County.
You know several people who have hit deer more than once.
You carry jumper cables in your car and your female passengers know how to use them.
You still keep kitty litter, starting fluid, de-icer, or a snow brush in your trunk, even if you live in the south.
Driving is always better in winter because the potholes are filled with snow.
As a kid you built snow forts and leaf piles that were taller than you were.
Your graduating class consisted of mostly Polish, German, & Italian names.
"You guys" and "ynz" is a perfectly acceptable reference to a group of men & women.
You know how to respond to the question "Djeetyet?" (Didyoueatyet?)
You learned to pronounce Bryn Mawr, Wilkes-Barre, Schuylkill, Bala Cynwyd, Conshohocken, and Monongahela.
You know what a "Mummer" is, and are disappointed if you can't catch at least highlights of the parade.
You actually understand these jokes and send them on to other Pennsylvanians. Plus friends who you want to know --- why you think the way you do. HA HA HA HA
1. Please tell me I'm not the only one. 2. PLEASE make this night end, so I can go home and go to bed and stop inflicting these threads on everyone.
[This particular list is from an email, but here is a very similar list.]
posted
More than half of these apply to me, and I am not from (or in) PA, although one of my SILs is. I am originally from Joisey, tho'. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I lived in Hanover and then Stroudsburg for quite a bit of my formative years... so many of those do or did apply to me at one point or another.
Posts: 2689 | Registered: Apr 2000
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Quite a complete list and all too true... But though I am native Pennsylvanian what the heck is a mummer?
Posts: 181 | Registered: Jan 2004
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I was actually born in a town between Blue Balls and Paradise.
Taal, I had no idea you'd lived in Hanover. Next you'll tell me you were on the golf team at the time.
Posts: 318 | Registered: Apr 2002
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you can walk into a bar and ask for a "lager" and the bartender knows exactly what you're talking about.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I have relatives (which I try to forget about) that live in Lancaster County. I have never figured out why they spell it Washington Boro instead of Washington Borough. Scrapple and shoo fly pie are both good though. Did I mention one of the random uncles runs a pig farm? The rest of the uncles are engineers except for the one that is both a postal worker and a G. Gordon Liddy fan.
AJ
btw in PA it is Lank a ster in CA it is Lan castor the spellings are actually the same
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Oh, man... the Lebanon Bologna! I've got to get Vána to PA and have some of that stuff. She doesn't believe me when I tell her it's the perfect cold-sandwich meat!
And I haven't been to PA for something like 5 years...
I gave some to my college roommate from NJ once. She ate some and then opined, "My God, it's a pie made of sugar!"
Posts: 1512 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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Yohzik, I am from nowhere near Philly, and almost the entire list applies to me. But thanks for the "dippy eggs" clarification. I couldn't figure out why it didn't make sense. And Teshi, PA dippy eggs aren't soft-boiled, they're sunny-side up.
quote: btw in PA it is Lank a ster in CA it is Lan castor
Banna, I had to come to Ohio to learn how to pronounce "Lank a ster" correctly. Back home it was "Lan castor." And I hear Latrobe is actually "Lay trobe" if you live there. Maybe I just need some more ejucation.
Posts: 1090 | Registered: Oct 2003
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You know you live in PA if your place of residence isn't a town, but a Village
You know you live in PA if minor power outtages can and do last for days at a time.
You know you live in PA if your development has its own well.
You know you live in PA if you've ever seen an Amish teenager riding a bike down a town's main street wearing a modern winter coat.
You know you live in PA if you've ever bought a pie from an Amish roadside fruit stand
You know you live in PA if the "Amish Buggies Drive Here" road sign doesn't look alien to you
You know you live in PA if you've ever been to a Farmer's Market
You know you live in PA if you think the plural of you is youse and that pluralization is often followed by a "guys". "What can I get youse guys?" It's an EPIDEMIC among waitresses, i just don't understand it
Posts: 3516 | Registered: Sep 2002
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You know, it might very well be my house's own well. I never thought to ask, and just assumed it serviced a larger area than just us Posts: 3516 | Registered: Sep 2002
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My wife and her family are from western PA.
They pronounce pull, pool, and pole, and any word that rhymes with them, so as to be homonymns. They are all prounounced pull, or the word that rhymes with pull.
School/Skull, Fool/Full/Foal, Cool/Coal/Cull, you get the picture.
To test this, ask someone to say, "We pulled him from the pool with a pole."
Also, she can't just say "Truck" she has to say "Truuuuuck."
Posts: 1894 | Registered: Aug 2000
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They've taught me how to "Red up" the house. Not that I didn't actually red up the house before, I just didn't know what I was doing was called redding up.
Is it a PA thing to use a "sweeper" when vaccuming a carpet?
We're always asked "When are you'uns coming up?".
My last name has several unusual letters in it and it ends with "vitch". I felt so at home when we went to visit and everyone else had the same or similiar ending to their last name. No one blinked twice at my last name. Here in the South where we currently live, I'm looked at in the strangest way when I give my last name. (Or at least I feel I'm looked at strangely. )
I think it may be a PA thing to turn into monster while watching the Steelers play, or at any sports event for that matter.
My husband has the ugliest clock "The Super Steeler Gallery" with 48 players pictures on it. I've managed to convince him to put it on a wall where we can honor it properly (in the basement). I hate it. I almost lost my life suggesting nicely that we could make a mint on that clock if we placed it on E-Bay. His 78 year old mother immediately started crossing herself and praying for immediate forgivness for my ignorance and foolish behavior. Seriously!
I've repented. I'll never openly admit that it's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. At least not while I'm physically in PA.
We have a bottle of Heinz Ketchup on the computer desk. It's "special". The label reads "Heinz Field..Home of the Pittsburgh Steelers...Limited Edition...Opening Day September 16, 2001. (It really is special) It's right next to the six pack of unopened coke bottles with Heinz Field all over them. I've collected all the black and yellow objects of honor in our home and turned the basement into quite a lovely altar. I'm looking for some big time mother-in-law lovin the next time she's in town. Posts: 3771 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:You know several people who have hit deer more than once.
You carry jumper cables in your car and your female passengers know how to use them.
quote:you know several places to purchase or that serve Scrapple, Summer Sausage (Lebanon Bologna), and Hot Bacon Dressing.
I've never heard of Lebanon Bologna, but scrapple and hot bacon dressing are Southern staples and have been for generations.
Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote:Yohzik, I am from nowhere near Philly, and almost the entire list applies to me.
My bad -- I misstated the case. (Just because I associate some of the things from Philly does not mean that they are exclusive to Philly.)
I'm from south central PA -- our area was settled mostly by Germans or Swiss Germans, and some Irish. So we have dippy eggs, whoopie pies, shoo-fly pie, Lebanon bologna, slippery pot pie, chicken corn soup, and snitz pie (made with dried apples), but nothing Italian or Polish.
We redd up rooms, and many people back home say "worsh," "truuuck" [as discussed by docmagik above] and "yunz." Our local accent seems to be, as best I can tell, similar to Pittsburghese, but with more German influence.
Sentences like "That needs fixed," do not sound wrong to me, although I know that they are.
Also, "what for?" in the sense of "what kind of?", as in "What for book you got there?" I think that this is an anglicization of the German "was fur?" but I'm not positive.
Another probable Germanism is "once," (translation of 'einmal,") used for emphasis, as in "Come over here once [or 'once-t'] and look at this." My dad says this all the time.
Posts: 1512 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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Hehe... This is very amusing. And not only do I know that Intercourse is a town in PA, I worked there!
Posts: 1295 | Registered: Jan 2003
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I was born and raised in PA, and live in Franklin! This is like a homecoming, Jatraquero style!
(Tammy, I am 30 miles from Meadville)
You know you are from PA if:
-you pronounce Du Bois as DO BOYS
-you go to Giant Iggle Video(Giant Eagle Grocery Store) to rent a movie in your Stillers (Steelers) jacket.
-you call the shoulder along side a road or highway "the berm"
-you use the "clicker" to channel surf on TV. May also be called the "flipper".
PA also has two towns called Mars and Venus. There is also a Moon Township...
We also wear tennis shoes, not sneakers.
PA is a wonderful place to live, if you haven't traveled much and don't know any better, but I like it! No wait...
Posts: 1870 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Hey, Alucard... that was awesome. I grew up pretty close to "Do Boys" and most of the rest of those apply to me. I'm not from a parallel universe after all. Yay!!!
Posts: 1090 | Registered: Oct 2003
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