Talk:Western Pennsylvania English

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Pittsburghese is "white only"?[edit]

This statement and it's sources don't reflect this article properly. To say that Pittsburghese is only documented and limted to white Pittsburghers' is extremely wrong and ignorant! Being of multiple ethnicity's myself, I grew up in the South Side, across the bridge from downtown Pgh. It's a very diverse neighborhood, where heavy Pittsburghese is found, and where I've picked up mine. I grew up using multiple Pittsburghese terms, picked up from family and friends from our very diverse neighborhood. Speaking Pittsburghese has nothing to do with race. It's all geographical, and to summarize a segment on such a broad term, with this narrow statement is invalid, deceptive, and fallacious. I think this segment needs edited, or removed altogether, as it's portraying another point entirely, that is not relevant to the Pittsburghese English segment.Surpmutin (talk) 23:09, 16 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the accent itself is white (cf. White South African English, Indian South African English and Black South African English, all perfectly distinct from each other), whereas the lexicon isn't. Sol505000 (talk) 19:59, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a small point..."redd up" would not happen at a spigot in my experience. "redd up" implies tidying up an area, not oneself...and never with water. Cjrodkey (talk) 23:29, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Central Pennsylvania Accent[edit]

Why does Central Pennsylvania accent now redirect to this page? I grew up in central PA and it is not the same Western PA/Pittsburgh speech. --Robin (talk) 18:04, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. It is quite different from my point of view. Gerry D (talk) 22:59, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I was born, raised, and still live in Central Pennsylvania. While there are some similarities between the dialects, obviously, they are still very much not the same. I actually found out these two pages were merged because I was discussing the differences between the Western and Central Pennsylvania dialects with a friend whose family is from the western end of the state. We were discussing the differences between the common phrases and words we grew up with and realized we learned some wildly different things growing up. I remembered this great article on Wikipedia that used to have a long list that basically covered every "Central PA-ism", but when I tried to bring it up for us to check out to compare and contrast, all I got was a redirect to Western Pennsylvania English. We were both upset, because neither of us feels the two are the same, and we both have some affection for our separate "accents".

There definitely should NOT be a merge of the two pages; they are way too different. If anything, the Central PA Dialect is closer to an odd merging of English and Pennsylvania Dutch, which is itself a dialect of German. We often use German word order in our English sentences, and we use a lot of "English-ified" versions of German words. Example: "Throw the horse over the fence some hay," is a normal way of ordering sentences in the Central PA Dialect, whereas Western PA natives would probably give us strange looks. Nothing on the Western PA English page really reflects Central PA English much at all; it is entirely unrepresented. I know I probably shouldn't feel so personally about it, considering it's just a Wikipedia article, but I do.

Considering how long it's been, I doubt anything will come of it, but I put a vote out there to make it a separate page again. 8.20.65.4 (talk) 16:33, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Jimmies[edit]

I'm from Pittsburgh and I've never heard anyone call sprinkles "jimmies". I'm aware of the term but as far as I know it's not part of the regional dialect. The source attributed to that only mentions advertisements for Just Born candies in Pittsburgh in the 1920s and 30s, it doesn't say that the term is or ever was commonly used here. Hunter12396 (talk) 04:30, 14 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am also from Pittsburgh, and I can confirm that "jimmies" is a common word for sprinkles; although I will say that it appears to have fallen out of favor with the younger generations, and is not unique to Pittsburgh. Calling them "jimmies" is also quite common in Philadelphia and Boston. So I would support the removal of that term from this page due to the fact that it is not unique to the Western PA region. Shticker (talk) 16:28, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New Pittsburghese book[edit]

This article which I just added to the "Further reading" section mentions that the book New Pittsburghese was what created the modern interest in the accent. This should probably be referenced somewhere in the article, but I don't know where and how. Mapsax (talk) 00:27, 23 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"'All' to mean 'All Gone'"[edit]

I am a native of Pittsburgh, and someone who studies accents and regional dialects. The inclusion of All to mean All Gone in the "Grammar" section of this page is incorrect with regards to the actual dialect and grammar of Western Pennsylvania. The source document referenced for this inclusion states that it is a construction found in the English dialects of Pennsylvania Dutch, which is rarely found in actual Western Pennsylvania and is more frequently spoken in more rural areas of Central and Eastern Pennsylvania. I understand that the Atlas of North American English appears to carve out a large section of Central Pennsylvania for inclusion in its borders for Western Pennsylvania English, and I would take issue with that designation as well. The dialect of rural Central and Eastern Pennsylvania is wholly separate from that of Pittsburgh, and should be moved to its own page, or at least removed from this one. Shticker (talk) 17:15, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. The Central Pennsylvania Dialect page no longer exists and now redirects here for some reason. Being a "native speaker" of the Central Pennsylvania Dialect, there is very little on the Western Pennsylvania English page that actually is commonly used here where I was born, raised, and still live. Much of it I never even heard of until meeting on of my best friends whose family is from Western Pennsylvania. The pages should have never been merged.

If my vote helps to get the separate Central Pennsylvania Dialect page back, then consider this a vote to "unmerge" the two pages. 8.20.65.4 (talk) 16:44, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]