How We All Say It: Speaking American *How Y'all, Youse, and You Guys Talk by Josh Katz

Americans can't agree on much!

Take a simple common chore, for instance. It's summer and the grass is growing tall. What do you do?

MOW THE GRASS?

MOW THE LAWN?

CUT THE GRASS?

CUT THE LAWN?

It depends on where you are. Easterners commonly cut their grass. Westerners mostly mow it. But Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana are split within themselves over what to call it. Some of us shrug and say it both ways.

Suppose you want to cook up a batch of bacon 'n' eggs. What do you reach for?

It depends on where you live. Most folks use a "frying pan," but in the central Midwest and South, people pull out their "skillet." (And they'd might say they were fryin' up a "mess" of bacon 'n' eggs.)

And if you want to address a group of people, you've got quite a choice of what to call them:

YOU?

Y'ALL?

YOU ALL?

YOU GUYS?

YOUSE?

Y'UNS?

YINS?

(Yes. A small population of western Pennsylvania clustered around Harrisburg say "yins" for the plural of "you.")

What do you call something diagonal? "Kitty-Cornered" or "Catty-Cornered?" In the U.S. it seems to depend on your latitude. And what should we call those long sandwiches we all love? "Subs?" "Hoagies?" "Grinders?" "Heroes?" While all the rest of New England chows down on grinders, Mainers stubbornly call them "Italian sandwiches" (unless they are lobster rolls.)

Some cities have their very own lingo. In New York City they don't stand IN line to wait for the subway like the rest of us. They stand ON line to wait for the train, and as we have learned, big things are HUGE in most of the country, but in NYC they are YUGE!

Not to be outdone, Boston insists on calling milkshakes "frappes," and carbonated drinks "tonics."

But Americans do sometimes come to a consensus. "Flapjacks," "flannelcakes," and "hoecakes" seem to be passe'. We all call them "pancakes" now!

It's Vive la Difference in Josh Katz' Speaking American: How Y’all, Youse, and You Guys Talk: A Visual Guide (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), where it is fun to see the differences we share coast to coast and border to border. There's plenty more word lore in this inviting volume filled with infomatics--maps and graphs and statistics about what we call everything from some bugs ("roly-poly vs. potato bug"), what we wear to the gym ("sneakers" vs. "tennis shoes"), or the seaside ("the shore" vs. "the beach").

See youse at the shore! (Unless y'all are headin' for the beach.)