You didn't grow up calling green peppers "mangoes," did you? That one always killed me.
yep! i still make that mistake today.
also phrases like:
"turning up, shutting off the lights",
"look at that across the way",
"about 1/2 hour away (using time rather than distance to measure travel),
"cross the crick",
every destination was preceded by "goin' up..." for future tense, "down dare (there)" used for past tense.
Midnight mass at 8:00pm,
"couple or two / three (means more than 1, even if it was 6 or 7)",
"getting under the covers" (meant putting on another blanket),
"booties" (are slippers),
"highballs" (mixed drinks)
"grog" (beer)
"piggies" or "pigs in the blanket" (stuffed cabbage. weird that blankets are used here, but covers used for blankets when referring to actual blankets!)
"spaghetti, ziti or rigatoni" (used for all pasta, no matter what size or shape)
"spaghetti sauce" (anything used to cover pasta no matter what color or what's contained in the sauce. also interchanged with some soups & stews)
"night crawlers" used for all larger worm varieties of fish bait, "red worms" were smaller sized, no matter the color.
"winda" (window)
"nightgownd, drownded, throwed, walkeded, goed, did you went to the store?
"corpse house" a viewing at a funeral home.
the best is "hayna-or-no" (do you agree or not)
so many more retarded words and phrases its hard for me to "writed" them all down, but this local radio station did this bit that wraps up our dialect. be warned you may piss your pants whether you are from here or not:
http://www.coalregion.com/jonesy_hayna-family.mp3 Heynabonics (Wilkes-Barre, Hazleton, Throop: homes, middle school, gym) - Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pocono area - City-Data Forum Miscellaneous Items about CoalRegion.com and the Coal Region Scranton Dictionary How To Speak Like A True Native Of Scranton/Wilkes-Barre "jonesie" was an actual person that talked just like that, and lived in Eynon (Archbald)! got F'd up really bad on LSD, built choppers 'cause God told him to then beat the shit out of them 'cause they got possessed by the Devil, thought the government puts microphones in our bloodstreams and tags on clothes, and wasn't afraid to start preaching many of his outlooks in the middle of any public outing including how the local bigfoot populations were actually aliens that came to bring redemption to residents that were not clean of spirit.
