14 ms·

Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”

126 points by benbreen 9y ago

benbreen 9y ago
I'm not Texan but lived in Austin for 8 years and found that this had snuck into my own speech without realizing it. I.e. I lived in East Austin and saying "going out to Krause Springs" (west); "head over to Bastrop" (east); or "go down to New Braunfels" (south) comes naturally to me now. I'm curious though, is the phenomenon described in the article really a Texas thing? Do people in San Jose "go out to Santa Cruz" and "go over to Yosemite"?
- qbrass 9y ago
  Up and Down aren't. They're map relative and pretty common. Some places had a history of south-oriented maps so they may call south up and north down.
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    In the presence of a river, up and down often mean upstream and downstream. In the presence of hills, up and down generally mean up and down. I live in Santa Cruz and as far as I'm aware, up and down have no fixed meaning and may be used freely according to the whim of the speaker. My instincts tell me that a trip to Yosemite would be up, because Yosemite is located in the mountains. But I never actually talk about going there.
    - saltcured 9y ago
      I was raised in the East Bay and we would head "up to Yosemite" or "up to Tahoe" because they are in the mountains, even though they are mostly eastward. Similarly, we'd probably say "up to Mount Tam" or "up to Mount Diablo" from anywhere in the Bay Area. Those are not big mountains, but they stick out of the local topography. A weird one is we might say "up to Muir Woods" even though the approach by car feels like you're descending into grotto. But I think that is because we also think about it being north of us, related to San Rafael. In general, we'd use up/down for north/south when elevation wasn't the most significant mood. We might head "down to Santa Cruz" if we were in Oakland since it feels like a trip south. If we were in San Jose or Palo Alto, we might say "over to Santa Cruz" because it feels primarily like traversing some mountains. But I think we would say "down to Santa Cruz" if we were in San Francisco and planning to take Highway 1 along the coast.
    - 8note 9y ago
      up the bay and down the bay can also be towards/away from the ocean in some parts of Newfoundland
  - en4bz 9y ago
    On Prince Edward Island (PEI) phrases like 'Up West' and 'Down East' are the norm which seems pretty weird at first. But once you look at the orientation of the island on a map [1] it starts to make some sense. Basically people think of the island as being laid out East to West but in reality the island is rotated ~45 degrees on the actual map. So West is really North-West and East is South-East. This leads to people combining the usual North = Up and South = Down with East-West qualifiers. [1] https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Prince+Edward+Island/@46.6460952,-65.3567529,7z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x4b5e52ddd47f83c5:0xa968d6d5f4926686!8m2!3d46.510712!4d-63.4168136 https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Prince+Edward+Island/@46.64...
    - wffurr 9y ago
      The "down" in "Down East" actually refers to downwind, as in a sailing direction. The prevailing winds in the area in the summer are form the southwest. So to go to Maine from Boston, one would sail "down"(wind) and east. Likewise from Maine to PEI, it would be "down"(wind) and east.
    - tectec 9y ago
      That's simplifying it a bit, because there is both 'Up East' and 'Down East', but I've never heard 'Down West'. There is also 'Out West' which refers to Alberta.
    - Stratoscope 9y ago
      The same thing happens on the San Francisco Peninsula. People think SF is north of San Jose, when it's actually northwest. So everything tends to be off by 45 degrees here too, and very often a full 90 degrees. For example you can drive west on North 101 and turn south onto West 84: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4877668,-122.213475,14z https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4877668,-122.213475,14z
pfraze 9y ago
I grew up in Abilene. I figure west is "out" because it gets sparser and dustier. Abilene is 3 hours from everything. I hadn't heard the east is "over" thing but I guess it makes sense.
instaheat 9y ago
I have lived in Texas my entire life. Currently in Dallas. Have traveled extensively in the US and abroad. In fact, I'm going down to Austin this weekend.
cthalupa 9y ago
I've lived my whole life in Texas and never assigned cardinal directions to out or over. Up and down, sure, but that seems fairly universal. No one in checking with, regardless of Texas hometown or age had any idea this was a thing, either, and that's hitting people up to 60 years old and from Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Maybe it's a rural Texas thing?
- emodendroket 9y ago
  It does seem like a huge, diverse state (as the old song goes, Heaven's almost as big as Texas). I don't think I could make many accurate sweeping generalizations about the way people talk in Eastern Massachusetts, let alone a territory the size of France. The "up" or "down" parts don't seem unusual to me, though, as someone who's never even been to Texas.
- dtornabene 9y ago
  I have! Born and bred. I'd agree it seems like its far, far more of a rural, and probably anglo, thing.
- kodablah 9y ago
  > Maybe it's a rural Texas thing? Not really. Maybe for the author. Living a long time in rural Texas (now urban), I can say that someone might have a propensity to use over and out for specific directions, but in my experience they are interchangeable and it's not a universal truth. Granted there are no universal truths about Texas/Texans so when you hear one, discount it. And you are right that up and down as cardinal directions doesn't feel uniquely Texan but can't tell when only on the inside. In the seemingly endless rush to satisfy Texan exceptionalism, dialect and slang are among the traits that are always held up as unique. Yet every region has their own.
  - WillAbides 9y ago
    This brings back a memory of a conversation with my grandfather. We were in Midland, and I said something about heading over to Odessa. He made a disparaging remark about my intelligence and said we would have to head out to Odessa from there. That never made any sense to me until now.
zwieback 9y ago
I thought that was universal, for me it's up to Portland, down to Eugene, out to Newport (coast), over (the mountains) to Bend. My kids, who are just starting to drive, don't know their compass directions that well (and maybe never will, thanks to GPS) so they say wrong things like "up to California".
- wink 9y ago
  Not a native English speaker, but living (relatively) close to the Alps, and I've definitely heard "up" meaning "towards the mountains into higher regions". On the other hand, without thinking about it too long "out" means "to the countryside, out of town", "over" is mostly east/west and "in" is definitely the city centre. "Down" is the odd one out, I can't pinpoint a direction.
  - zwieback 9y ago
    Agree with hibbelig, I grew up in Germany (Stuttgart) and I think compass directions aren't as popular as here in the US. Maybe because all the roads are so twisty, even in the cities, that nothing goes in one direction for very long. We definitely went "down" to the city center because it was at a much lower elevation than our neighborhood.
- hnruss 9y ago
  Same in coastal Northern CA: Up the 101 to Portland, down the 101 to San Fran, over (the mountains) to Redding, or (a short drive) out to the coast. Sometimes we’d go “up into the hills” nearby.
arcaster 9y ago
As someone who grew up in ATX with family from originally from NYC, I have a very unique and somewhat ephemeral "southern accent". But I find myself talking the way this article depicted. Oddly enough, most of the time people are either disappointed I don't have an accent or think I'm from Chicago.
heywire 9y ago
Definitely not specific to Texas. I hear and have used "over to Columbus", "down to Cincinnati", "up to Toledo" here in Ohio (that probably narrows my location pretty significantly). Though I don't think I've heard "out to Indianapolis", only "out west"
gervase 9y ago
As someone who grew up on the coast of California, I've used "out" and "back" to refer to east and west respectively, but I don't think would be a generalizable rule. For people who grew up on an east-facing coast, perhaps it would be reversed? As other commenters have stated, I would commonly use up and down to refer to north and south.
- kelnos 9y ago
  Heh, yeah. I live in CA now (for the last 14 years), but grew up on the east coast. I still say things like "going back east" when I visit family. Although, when I'm returning to CA, it's always "going back home", so I guess I use "back" interchangeably and "out" not much at all.
clamprecht 9y ago
I haven't read the article yet but I'm fixin' to.
- ryanmarsh 9y ago
  Sounds like a hell of a deal
blunte 9y ago
Honestly, I never thought about the "rules" of how these words were used... that's just how we talk in much of Texas (and probably other places). I can guess that "out" meaning west is because in early American times, going west was dangerous. You were going "out" of safety and into the wild. Going "over" just meant going horizontally on the map but within an established (safe) area. Up and down are kind of obvious, given their relationship to a map. We go "up north" or "down south". Also, and I imagine this has been brought across HN before - y'all can be singular or plural. Or rather, it can be "about singular", meaning we may not be sure if we're talking about one or a few. But if we want to be clear that we're talking about more than a few, we say "all y'all". Make no mistake, it means every one of you. Every region has its interesting local language quirks. I guess few regions are full of people as proud as Texans, so we don't often hear about the quirks of Iowans.
- gowld 9y ago
  > so we don't often hear about the quirks of Iowans. It's highlighted in one of the most famous Broadway shows of all time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV7ZcVFSWWU&t=1m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV7ZcVFSWWU&t=1m50s
  - blunte 9y ago
    I clearly picked exactly the wrong example!
- look_lookatme 9y ago
  The sing-songy nature of "all y'all" provides such a nice wind-up for dropping the hammer on a bunch of kids not listening to their mother. The foundational difference between "y'all get out in the yard for family photos" vs "all y'all better get your asses out in the yard for family photos" is unmistakeable if you grew up in Texas. I use y'all in slack/email within the company I work at and correspondence with just about anyone (I live in the Northeast, but still use it), but I save "all y'all" for my closest friends, even though they might not have grown up hearing it.
  - 9y ago
tbirrell 9y ago
Up and Down, yes. Over and Out less so. The thing about more then two hours being "to" is true. I have a friend who always says "down" no matter where she is going. Dallas and San Antonio and Houston are equally "down" from Austin. Drives me nuts.
tzakrajs 9y ago
When you put something away in Texas you "put it up"
- ssanders82 9y ago
  I think that applies everywhere...
  - tzakrajs 9y ago
    Never heard it until I moved there, thanks for the info.
  - Roedou 9y ago
    I grew up in the UK, now live in Seattle. I've never heard anyone use that. My wife does talk about "pick up the lounge" though, to mean tidy it up & put things away.
__david__ 9y ago
As a native Californian I definitely use "up" and "down". Up to L.A., down to San Diego. I might make a trip up the coast to Oregon or Washington. I also might go back east (meaning the east coast). Never used "out" though, probably because I'm already about as west as you can go on this continent! "Over", however is just used without regard to direction, though it generally signifies a close distance. I'd head over to the city next door, but I'd never head over to Las Vegas. I'd head "out" to Vegas though. So maybe "out" is for far distances?
- username223 9y ago
  As a native of... nowhere in particular, I think "up" and "down" are pretty universal among Americans for "north" and "south." I wouldn't be surprised if they're near-universal to inhabitants of the northern hemisphere, since that's the way maps are drawn. A possible exception would be inhabitants of mountainous regions saying e.g. "up to Leadville" or "down to Denver." Having lived in Houston, I didn't notice "over" and "out." I would personally use "over" for "within city" and "out" for "outside of city."
  - pwagland 9y ago
    Even in Australia which, last I checked, is not in the US, uses up and down to refer to north and south. That seems fairly independent or state as well. For example ins Perth you go "up to Geraldton" and in Sydney you go "up to Brisbane", and "down to Melbourne". The whole out and over thing seems more regional to me. In Australia "out" is generally just "far from here" and "over"... well that isn't a thing, at least in the dialects that I'm used to. :-)
    - fian 9y ago
      It is not uncommon in Australia to say you are going over to a friend's house. In Perth people often would say they are "going over" to Melbourne or Sydney. There is also the reverse "coming over" "Out" is used generally such as in "heading out" where often no destination is specified. Also we sometimes use "outback" meaning anywhere not in a city or suburban area.
unit91 9y ago
TIL: not everybody talks this way. Y'all get it together! :-)
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
Was talking with a Japanese friend the other day and had a great conversation trying to nail down the meanings of over by, out near, up there, down by, etc, using local landmarks. The Japanese equivalents are ここ、そこ、あこ, meaning respectively "here", "there (nearer)", and "there (further)". There's also これ、それ、あれ, meaning "this", "that (nearer)", and "that (further)". These distances can be both spatial, temporal, and metaphorical. The distinction between them seems relative in scale - if you ask for something to be passed to you at the dinner table, the things furthest from you are あれ and the things closest are これ (the latter is close enough you could reach it yourself). The neighboring town is そこ and the next town over is あこ.
- glandium 9y ago
  あこ is an archaism. あそこ is used instead these days.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    Maybe it's regional? I've heared あこ used by native speakers many times.
- Sniffnoy 9y ago
  I think the archaic English equivalent is "here", "there", "yonder"?
- philsnow 9y ago
  I always thought the close one is used for things that are closer to the speaker than the listener, the middle one is used for things that are more or less in between the speaker and the listener, and the 'far' one is used for things that are far away from both the speaker and the listener. can any native speakers say whether there is any sense of that, or does it not have anything to do with the listener?
  - glandium 9y ago
    Not native, but essentially, ここ is here, as in something close to the speaker, そこ is there, as in something close to the listener, and あそこ is there, as in something that is neither close to the speaker nor close to the listener. Now imagine a variant of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m-kbBamg_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m-kbBamg_U with the 3 words.
Cactus2018 9y ago
Jerry Seinfeld talks about New York's "On", "In", "Off", and "Out" in his new Netflix special: http://kism.com/400-funnies/jerry-seinfeld-talks-about-living-in-the-city-versus-on-long-island/ http://kism.com/400-funnies/jerry-seinfeld-talks-about-livin...
sputknick 9y ago
We use the same terms in the Shenandoah Valley, which makes sense, since many of the original settlers to Texas were from Virginia, and might explain the term "over" because many places you might go would be over the Blue Ridge Mountains. A related one I've noticed since moving to Seattle, is people using "back east" to describe the east coast. It's not just transplants from the east coast like myself that do it, people born and raised in Washington will say "back east" to describe the East Coast. An interesting remnant from our country being settled from east to west.
logfromblammo 9y ago
I have never used "up" and "down" for north and south, but to be fair, that is solely to be contrarian in the face of people who used them as synonyms for north and south. Of course, growing up in central Indiana, it was a long while before I even knew what a hill was. People frequently used "up" and "down" directionally, probably because they're nice and short, and there was nothing else to use them for. There was no "over/out"-like distinction for east and west, though. East and west were both "over". That might be related to the general north-south orientation of the state, too. ...And it just occurred to me that north actually is up and south actually is down in most of Indiana. All the rivers run south, to the Ohio, except around Gary and South Bend. Facepalming at my teenaged self right now.
S_A_P 9y ago
I live in a suburb(using the term generously) of Houston. Its actually 40 miles from downtown Houston. It is southwest of the city, and when asked where I live, I say "down in Richmond". As a native Houstonian, I can say that this article rings true to me, but is becoming less so. Houston is actually quite diverse and there is a healthy distribution of cultures and immigrants so some of the Texas slang is fading. I think that Houston is a much better place to live now than it was even 20 years ago, there is great authentic cuisine from just about any corner of the globe available, and lots to do.
citationnerded 9y ago
I was born and raised in houston and lived there for 15+ years. People say these words, but know one I know of actually associates them with specific cardinal directions. Up and down make elementary school sense and so likely are used this way in most places... I am wary of out vs over though. But who knows, maybe this is used explicitly by people in a specific region of Houston. I grew up mostly on the sw end.
- brosky117 9y ago
  I had the same thought as I was reading the article. My experience living in Houston for a decade was that no one assigned any special meaning to "out" and "over".
hotsauceror 9y ago
No discussion of our colloquialisms for measures of distance? "Over yonder" vs "a piece" vs "a ways"?
nograpes 9y ago
In North Ontario, Canada, and in some parts of the East coast, many speakers use the words "up" and "down" to refer to elevation rather than direction. So you would say "I'm going up to the store" only if the store was higher in elevation than where you were currently standing, even slightly. I grew up in North Ontario, but my parents were not native English speakers, and it was only in my late teens that most of my friends (who had native English speaker parents) were using the terms this way. I used "up" and "down" interchangeably. What amazed me is that this implied an intrinsic awareness of elevation, which I didn't have; everybody else always knew if your house was higher than their house. In some cases, the up/down distinction was used in place of left and right. In fact, I learned about this distinction sitting in a car at an intersection and getting the directions "just go up the road", as if that was totally unambiguous.
- andrew_wc_brown 9y ago
  I'm for the Northwestern Ontario, or as we think of it as the "truth north" up and down are directions. Also we say pack sack instead of back pack.
bshimmin 9y ago
In England, if you're fairly traditional, you would always say up to London, Oxford, or Cambridge (and, from the latter two, if you are a student and temporarily expelled, you are "sent down" - or "rusticated", to use a lovely word), whether you're starting from the north or the south.
- candeira 9y ago
  Joe Jackson sang of "going down to London[1] (to be the King)". According to his wikipedia biography[2], from age one he grew up in Portsmouth, which is South of London. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNoOLCsqNTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNoOLCsqNTE [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Jackson_(musician) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Jackson_(musician)
- Roedou 9y ago
  I've never heard 'up to London'; being from Manchester, London was definitely "down South". Coming 'up' to Cambridge had a specific meaning, of matriculating at the University. For example: I came up to Cambridge in 2002. I assume that the University of Oxford uses it in the same way?
  - standardhuman 9y ago
    I came up to Cambridge in 2004 and was at Oxford before that. I can confirm that both places use it in this sense. :) That said, I've also noticed that many of my friends from those years still use "up" when simply visiting Oxford or Cambridge, and I do get the odd alumni e-mail inviting me to come "up" to Cambridge (not sure if this is unique to a secretary at Clare, or more widely used).
rconti 9y ago
I once tried to explain to my French host family when I would use 'oh' versus 'zero' when describing numbers, but I couldn't come up with a rule. My phone number has a 0 in the middle of the area code ('four oh eight') but elsewhere in my phone number, I use 'zero'. I couldn't correlate zero-versus-oh to position in the string nor what came before or after it. Yet it's totally natural to me to use each in the 'correct' place. I think others do, too, but I don't know if we have the same 'correct' place.
- philsnow 9y ago
  for me I seem to say zero after numbers ending in vowel sounds: one oh two zero three zero four oh five oh six oh seven oh eight oh nine oh
  - bazeblackwood 9y ago
    Tommy Tutone doesn't follow your guideline: > Eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-nine
- bazeblackwood 9y ago
  I'm guessing there's something to do with syllabic grouping here, where we're naturally doing some optimization to form easily repeatable syllable groups. The other case would be to avoid making ambiguous sounding noises. Take for example the inclusion of two '0' digits sequentially. Excluding the case where it's a 1-800 number, which indicates its own class of phone number. Let's look at a hypothetical example here: 459-2001. I'm pretty sure most English speakers would pronounce the final clause in this hypothetical number: "two-zero-zero-one", because "oh-oh" could blend together. Any other rule, I think, would then follow how you approach grouping the numbers. In the case of the first three of seven digits in the number, in my experience a number is unlikely to start with a 0, (i.e. 019-9949), but in the case that a "group" does, I would definitely lean toward "zero", in that case "zero-one-nine" sounds infinitely better than starting with "oh". It makes sense that "oh" would work better in between two other digits, and I'm having trouble imagining any three-digit zero sandwich (101, 102, ... 201, 202, 203 etc.) that doesn't sound better as "oh". If the '0' is the final number in the group, I also think I say "zero". Try out 450, 290, etc. or even 050. When you get to four digits, I think that's where interpretation might come into play. 5057 sounds equally good as "five-oh-five-seven" or "five-zero-five-seven" to me, though I might prefer the latter. Maybe that's when the speaker has to decide how to group, and in the case of a repeating pattern, that might change the way they inflect, too. Swap one digit in the previous example and you get 5050, which to me, instantly seems like it would switch to two groups of "five-zero".
technofiend 9y ago
I guess y'all are fixin to use our directional words. Honestly Houston (and I'm sure the other major cities too) has a bunch of weird pronunciation that marks natives versus folks just lucky enough to move here and I assumed the article was going to go into things like "fixing" or our weird town names. Here in Houston for example "Kuykendall" Street is pronounced with an R like the Dutch name from which it derives "Kerkendal". I'm not sure how the Dutch emphasize the syllables but it's "KIRK-en-dahl" here. Our street "Elgin" is pronounced with a soft g instead of the hard one found at the front of the drink and there's no y sound marrying the consonant. Fuqua is properly pronounced "FYU-qway" at least according to the Fuqua I met working at a local energy company. And "San Jacinto" doesn't follow Spanish pronunciation rules and is pronounced "San Jyacinto" not "San Yacinto or San Hacinto." Same with "San Felipe" which is "San fillipee" not "San Fuh-lee-pay." Here's an article with more examples. https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2013/6/1/whats-in-a-street-name-may-2013 https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2013/6/1/whats-in-a-st...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- hmcdona1 9y ago
  My favorite is if you're from Houston you call on/off ramps "feeder roads". I don't think people use that term anywhere else.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - izuchukwu 9y ago
    From Houston myself—I’ve mostly seen feeder roads refer to the roads with ramps alongside freeways, not the ramps themselves. Since moving, I’ve seen them called frontage roads elsewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontage_road#Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontage_road#Texas
  - technofiend 9y ago
    Yeah the feeder road is the entire parallel road not just the on ramp. Between feeders and regular freeway exits every mile or two it really prevents some of the incredibly dangerous driving I've seen in other parts of the country where people dive for an exit because the next one is 5+ miles away. Because we typically have overpasses for intersections under the freeway it's no big deal if you miss an exit. Just take the next one 1/2 mile or a mile away and make a uturn underneath the freeway. If you aren't going far you can just take the feeder down to your missed exit.
joveian 9y ago
I don't think I use any of those words directionally. I guess it is more of a general directional awareness thing than really useful information to convey in most cases. Similar to how some people might describe even the front and back of a building with compass directions. Although I guess in cases of lesser known destinations the general direction might be enough to prompt you to ask if someone could run a quick errand for you or drop you off/pick you up somewhere. I use "over" to imply "right now unless otherwise specified" but it could be anywhere. Although usually that would be implied by context so it is mostly just an extra word. I ignore the other words when others use them (I would not notice any particular usage) and might say some of them on occasion if I hear enough people using one particular word with a particular place.
davidw 9y ago
Fun fact about cardinal directions in Italy: they don't really exist and people will give you confused looks. They talk about going in the direction of whatever city or landmark lies that way - "towards Milano, towards Bassano, follow the canal" and so on.
tomrod 9y ago
Texan here. This seems pretty overthought yet incomplete. For example you might here "We're going on out to Fredericksburg" from any distance except in Fredericksburg.
mirimir 9y ago
I learned my English in Manhattan, and it was definitely "up to Boston", "down to DC", "over to Brooklyn", and "out to Jersey". And "way out to Chicago", and "way over to London".
self_assembly 9y ago
Another fun one that I'm definitely guilty of as a native Californian is "no yea" for "yes" and "yea no" for "no". I do it without thinking all the time and am always shocked that no one ever questions what I mean.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- meej 9y ago
  the lexicon valley podcast did an episode on this. http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2013/06/yeah_no_lexicon_valley_slate_podcast.html http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2013/0... (the discussion starts a bit before six minutes in)
interfixus 9y ago
In my native Danish, up and down are used fairly much as described in the article, but genrerally only for smaller, provincial locations. From Copenhagen I can go down to the southern part where I live, but from here I can not go up to Copenhagen. East- and westwise, I can go over [exact same word] to some neighboring locations, though by no means all. As a native speaker I know when and when not, but don't have a clue as to any formal rule. No out. The west was never a wilderness to be conquered here.
- Kluny 9y ago
  You can go up to Aarhus though, right?
  - interfixus 9y ago
    Interesting. I'm sure you can, over there on the mainland. But to my somewhat more easterly attuned ears, it doesn't sound quite right.
    - Kluny 9y ago
      Hmm, are you from Als?
      - interfixus 9y ago
        No, easterly. Bottom right corner of the map.
        Kluny 9y ago
        Oh, I see, it'd be hard to go up to Aarhus from there. You'd be travelling in several other directions first.
globuous 9y ago
Very interesting ! Funny thing, in France we do use "up" and "down" but with a different set of axis. They don't represent north and south. If you're in Lille (north of Paris), you'd say "I'm going up to Paris" although you'd be going south. If you're in Paris and you're going to Lille, you'd say "I'm going down to Lille" although you'd be going north. But if you're going to Lyon from Paris, you'd say "I'm going down to Lyon" and you would be going south. In French you go "up" to the capital (or more generally to a larger city than you're currently in), and you go down from the capital (or more generally to a smaller city than the one you're currently in). So you'd say from Paris "I'm going down to Lyon" or "I'm going down to Grenoble" and from Lyon you'd say "I'm going down to Grenoble" or "I'm going up to Paris". (And you instantly know that Paris is the largest city of the 3 and Grenoble the smallest ^^ so from Grenoble you go "up to Lyon" and "up to Paris"). I learned that fairly old because I didn't live in France until later in my childhood but I always found this linguistic kinda funny :) Descendons donc en province, disent-ils a Paris !
- look_lookatme 9y ago
  One BIG thing worth noting is Texas, almost formally, redefines the cardinal directions [1], so it's even harder to parse what up/down/out/over are. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JREkqCvLzSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JREkqCvLzSo
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mrb 9y ago
  Native French speaker here. I can confirm. "Going up to" (monter sur) refers to somewhere central while "going down to" (descendre sur) refers to a peripheral location.
  - titanomachy 9y ago
    So it's not related to the direction the rivers flow?
  - glandium 9y ago
xtalx 9y ago
Too many people sleep on or disparage Texas, it’s such a diverse/weird/surprising/sometimesDisapointing place. It’s definitely not some place that can be categorized or disparaged with only a few words. Disclosure: I grew up in Houston
ianamartin 9y ago
I hadn't really thought about this much before. I grew up in rural Texas outside Waco. Up and Down are for sure aligned with the map. Over isn't directional though. Out sort of is. Over is something we used when the destination as specific to a person's location. Go over to the neighbor's in any direction. But also go over to my grandma's house. But if you didn't specify to her house, then it was out to East Texas for the weekend, not over. We'd go over to Mickey's place for a week, but out to Memphis. I'm sure this is not generalizable, but that's how it works for me. In general, out is anything that's kind of a pain in the ass, and over is something you're a little happier about. And there's also the "in" to contrast with "out." When I was growing up we went in to town. And back out to the farm. And of all my strange Texas-isms, that's the one that gets me the most shit from New Yorkers. I live in Brooklyn, and so I say, I'm going in to town, when I go to Manhattan. And I'm going out to Brooklyn when I'm headed home. And it makes people seriously angry sometimes. Some of the other strange things I grew up with, that are weird even to me: "Cut the lights on." What? That doesn't even make sense? You can cut something off. You can't cut it on. "I'm fixin' to . . ." mow the lawn, take out the trash, make dinner. Very often used when someone is nagging you about something you are not really about to do. You're just fixin' to do it. "Let's get a colbear." It's a cold beer with the d dropped and a twang on the beer and all said as a single word with the accent on the co. It sounds really weird to this day. We have really weird relationships with units of distance. We don't measure distance in units of length. We measure it in how long it takes us to drive there. I remember getting called out on this not long after I move to NYC. Some people I met wanted to know where the hell Waco is. And I figured if they live here and know any city in Texas, they will know Austin. So I gave position relative to Austin. "Oh about 2 hours up from Austin." 2 hours what? By subway? Jesus, that's terrible. I was like, "No, it's an easy drive. You just get on I35 and your there. Hour and a half if traffic is good and you speed a little." Finally had to break it down. It's a hundred miles. Another related thing is that we don't think twice about driving distances that would have other people looking for a plane ticket. Fun fact: it's a longer drive from Texarkana to El Paso than it is from Dallas to Minneapolis. It's just a thing we grew up with. We like our cars, and we don't mind driving. I lived in Dallas for many years (and am about to move back soon). And I would often leave work an hour early or so, beat the traffic out of town, go have dinner with my parents and siblings (about a two hour drive), then drive home after dinner (another two hours), and not even think twice about it. Or if my brothers wanted to hang out and have some drinks, stay there, and just drive straight to work the next morning. Tea is a weird thing here as well. I love iced tea, but not the way I grew up with it in Texas. I like what used to be hot tea, poured over ice until it's freezing cold. And unsweetened and without milk. But in Texas, there's a process for making sweet tea that's almost as intricate and cantankerous as making BBQ. You boil a quart of water, add 8-12 bags of cheap black teabags and stew those for about an hour. Take the bags out, and bring back to a boil. Then you supersaturate this bitter cauldron with sugar until it's basically a syrup. That concentrate is supposed to be diluted. But the problem is that whenever you're having someone over for an event that would warrant sweet tea, you're too busy making BBQ and doing last minute cleanup to dilute it properly, so you throw it all in an 8-quart pitcher, fill it up to the top with ice, and add some water. The restaurants don't do a much better job. It's basically like mainlining simple syrup with dark color and a bitter flavor. I hate it. But I'd be dead if I ever said that within state boarders. And since I'm getting a little nostalgic, I'll wrap this up. I've heard before that people who aren't from Texas think of our gas stations as grocery stores and our grocery stores as stadiums full of food. After 3 years in NYC, THIS IS SO TRUE! Nothing has been able to consistently frustrate me as much as trying to grocery shop here. It is so unreal what people have to deal with. And then when you go to 3 different hole-in-the-wall grocery stores (which may involve multiple subway rides, carrying your loot as you go) just to get the ingredients you need for one meal, the prices are so ridiculously high in the stores, that you really haven't saved that much money over just getting crappy takeout or delivery every night. Instead, you've wrecked your back lugging 80 lbs of groceries and wasted your weekend, and are pissed off anyway. I feel genuinely sorry for people who live here.
Intermernet 9y ago
In Sydney, Australia we tend to use exactly the same nomenclature, but over (East) is never very far. You might go over to Bondi. Out (west) tends to include everything until the centre of Australia (going out to Bathurst, going way out to Alice Springs, or even just going out west). Up and down tend to extend the entire north - south distance of the country. Up to eff-en-cue (FNQ = Far North Queensland) or down to Tassie (Tasmania). I think the extended distances compared to Texas is probably due to the vast amount of nothing throughout most of Australia.
d--b 9y ago
Up / down is not confined to Texas. Think upstate NY. Out and over is pretty cool though.
air7 9y ago
In Hebrew we use "up" and "down" to refer to permanently moving to Israel ("up") or moving from Israel("down"). These are such important social concepts that there are nouns too: Someone who moved to Israel is an "Ascender" who just did an "Ascent". In the other direction is a "Descender" who did a "Descent".
jacobsohn101 9y ago
In NYC, up/down indicates north/south in general. However there are two special exceptions I can think of. First special case is when New Yorkers sometimes talk about Albany (NY state capital), we use "up state" in political context, even though Albany is like in the middle of NY. But then again, "up state" can mean anywhere above NYC to some New Yorkers... Second is when we yell out "up yours, buddy". We don't mean north in that context.
jenkstom 9y ago
I disagree with over and out. Out means more rural, over just means to another urban place.

126 points by benbreen 9y ago

I'm not Texan but lived in Austin for 8 years and found that this had snuck into my own speech without realizing it. I.e. I lived in East Austin and saying "going out to Krause Springs" (west); "head over to Bastrop" (east); or "go down to New Braunfels" (south) comes naturally to me now. I'm curious though, is the phenomenon described in the article really a Texas thing? Do people in San Jose "go out to Santa Cruz" and "go over to Yosemite"?

qbrass 9y ago
Up and Down aren't. They're map relative and pretty common. Some places had a history of south-oriented maps so they may call south up and north down.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  In the presence of a river, up and down often mean upstream and downstream. In the presence of hills, up and down generally mean up and down. I live in Santa Cruz and as far as I'm aware, up and down have no fixed meaning and may be used freely according to the whim of the speaker. My instincts tell me that a trip to Yosemite would be up, because Yosemite is located in the mountains. But I never actually talk about going there.
  - saltcured 9y ago
    I was raised in the East Bay and we would head "up to Yosemite" or "up to Tahoe" because they are in the mountains, even though they are mostly eastward. Similarly, we'd probably say "up to Mount Tam" or "up to Mount Diablo" from anywhere in the Bay Area. Those are not big mountains, but they stick out of the local topography. A weird one is we might say "up to Muir Woods" even though the approach by car feels like you're descending into grotto. But I think that is because we also think about it being north of us, related to San Rafael. In general, we'd use up/down for north/south when elevation wasn't the most significant mood. We might head "down to Santa Cruz" if we were in Oakland since it feels like a trip south. If we were in San Jose or Palo Alto, we might say "over to Santa Cruz" because it feels primarily like traversing some mountains. But I think we would say "down to Santa Cruz" if we were in San Francisco and planning to take Highway 1 along the coast.
  - 8note 9y ago
    up the bay and down the bay can also be towards/away from the ocean in some parts of Newfoundland
- en4bz 9y ago
  On Prince Edward Island (PEI) phrases like 'Up West' and 'Down East' are the norm which seems pretty weird at first. But once you look at the orientation of the island on a map [1] it starts to make some sense. Basically people think of the island as being laid out East to West but in reality the island is rotated ~45 degrees on the actual map. So West is really North-West and East is South-East. This leads to people combining the usual North = Up and South = Down with East-West qualifiers. [1] https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Prince+Edward+Island/@46.6460952,-65.3567529,7z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x4b5e52ddd47f83c5:0xa968d6d5f4926686!8m2!3d46.510712!4d-63.4168136 https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Prince+Edward+Island/@46.64...
  - wffurr 9y ago
    The "down" in "Down East" actually refers to downwind, as in a sailing direction. The prevailing winds in the area in the summer are form the southwest. So to go to Maine from Boston, one would sail "down"(wind) and east. Likewise from Maine to PEI, it would be "down"(wind) and east.
  - tectec 9y ago
    That's simplifying it a bit, because there is both 'Up East' and 'Down East', but I've never heard 'Down West'. There is also 'Out West' which refers to Alberta.
  - Stratoscope 9y ago
    The same thing happens on the San Francisco Peninsula. People think SF is north of San Jose, when it's actually northwest. So everything tends to be off by 45 degrees here too, and very often a full 90 degrees. For example you can drive west on North 101 and turn south onto West 84: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4877668,-122.213475,14z https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4877668,-122.213475,14z

pfraze 9y ago

I grew up in Abilene. I figure west is "out" because it gets sparser and dustier. Abilene is 3 hours from everything. I hadn't heard the east is "over" thing but I guess it makes sense.

instaheat 9y ago

I have lived in Texas my entire life. Currently in Dallas. Have traveled extensively in the US and abroad. In fact, I'm going down to Austin this weekend.

cthalupa 9y ago

I've lived my whole life in Texas and never assigned cardinal directions to out or over. Up and down, sure, but that seems fairly universal. No one in checking with, regardless of Texas hometown or age had any idea this was a thing, either, and that's hitting people up to 60 years old and from Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Maybe it's a rural Texas thing?

emodendroket 9y ago
It does seem like a huge, diverse state (as the old song goes, Heaven's almost as big as Texas). I don't think I could make many accurate sweeping generalizations about the way people talk in Eastern Massachusetts, let alone a territory the size of France. The "up" or "down" parts don't seem unusual to me, though, as someone who's never even been to Texas.
dtornabene 9y ago
I have! Born and bred. I'd agree it seems like its far, far more of a rural, and probably anglo, thing.
kodablah 9y ago
> Maybe it's a rural Texas thing? Not really. Maybe for the author. Living a long time in rural Texas (now urban), I can say that someone might have a propensity to use over and out for specific directions, but in my experience they are interchangeable and it's not a universal truth. Granted there are no universal truths about Texas/Texans so when you hear one, discount it. And you are right that up and down as cardinal directions doesn't feel uniquely Texan but can't tell when only on the inside. In the seemingly endless rush to satisfy Texan exceptionalism, dialect and slang are among the traits that are always held up as unique. Yet every region has their own.
- WillAbides 9y ago
  This brings back a memory of a conversation with my grandfather. We were in Midland, and I said something about heading over to Odessa. He made a disparaging remark about my intelligence and said we would have to head out to Odessa from there. That never made any sense to me until now.

zwieback 9y ago

I thought that was universal, for me it's up to Portland, down to Eugene, out to Newport (coast), over (the mountains) to Bend. My kids, who are just starting to drive, don't know their compass directions that well (and maybe never will, thanks to GPS) so they say wrong things like "up to California".

wink 9y ago
Not a native English speaker, but living (relatively) close to the Alps, and I've definitely heard "up" meaning "towards the mountains into higher regions". On the other hand, without thinking about it too long "out" means "to the countryside, out of town", "over" is mostly east/west and "in" is definitely the city centre. "Down" is the odd one out, I can't pinpoint a direction.
- zwieback 9y ago
  Agree with hibbelig, I grew up in Germany (Stuttgart) and I think compass directions aren't as popular as here in the US. Maybe because all the roads are so twisty, even in the cities, that nothing goes in one direction for very long. We definitely went "down" to the city center because it was at a much lower elevation than our neighborhood.
hnruss 9y ago
Same in coastal Northern CA: Up the 101 to Portland, down the 101 to San Fran, over (the mountains) to Redding, or (a short drive) out to the coast. Sometimes we’d go “up into the hills” nearby.

arcaster 9y ago

As someone who grew up in ATX with family from originally from NYC, I have a very unique and somewhat ephemeral "southern accent". But I find myself talking the way this article depicted. Oddly enough, most of the time people are either disappointed I don't have an accent or think I'm from Chicago.

heywire 9y ago

Definitely not specific to Texas. I hear and have used "over to Columbus", "down to Cincinnati", "up to Toledo" here in Ohio (that probably narrows my location pretty significantly). Though I don't think I've heard "out to Indianapolis", only "out west"

gervase 9y ago

As someone who grew up on the coast of California, I've used "out" and "back" to refer to east and west respectively, but I don't think would be a generalizable rule. For people who grew up on an east-facing coast, perhaps it would be reversed? As other commenters have stated, I would commonly use up and down to refer to north and south.

kelnos 9y ago
Heh, yeah. I live in CA now (for the last 14 years), but grew up on the east coast. I still say things like "going back east" when I visit family. Although, when I'm returning to CA, it's always "going back home", so I guess I use "back" interchangeably and "out" not much at all.

clamprecht 9y ago

I haven't read the article yet but I'm fixin' to.

ryanmarsh 9y ago
Sounds like a hell of a deal

blunte 9y ago

Honestly, I never thought about the "rules" of how these words were used... that's just how we talk in much of Texas (and probably other places). I can guess that "out" meaning west is because in early American times, going west was dangerous. You were going "out" of safety and into the wild. Going "over" just meant going horizontally on the map but within an established (safe) area. Up and down are kind of obvious, given their relationship to a map. We go "up north" or "down south". Also, and I imagine this has been brought across HN before - y'all can be singular or plural. Or rather, it can be "about singular", meaning we may not be sure if we're talking about one or a few. But if we want to be clear that we're talking about more than a few, we say "all y'all". Make no mistake, it means every one of you. Every region has its interesting local language quirks. I guess few regions are full of people as proud as Texans, so we don't often hear about the quirks of Iowans.

gowld 9y ago
> so we don't often hear about the quirks of Iowans. It's highlighted in one of the most famous Broadway shows of all time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV7ZcVFSWWU&t=1m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV7ZcVFSWWU&t=1m50s
- blunte 9y ago
  I clearly picked exactly the wrong example!
look_lookatme 9y ago
The sing-songy nature of "all y'all" provides such a nice wind-up for dropping the hammer on a bunch of kids not listening to their mother. The foundational difference between "y'all get out in the yard for family photos" vs "all y'all better get your asses out in the yard for family photos" is unmistakeable if you grew up in Texas. I use y'all in slack/email within the company I work at and correspondence with just about anyone (I live in the Northeast, but still use it), but I save "all y'all" for my closest friends, even though they might not have grown up hearing it.
- 9y ago

tbirrell 9y ago

Up and Down, yes. Over and Out less so. The thing about more then two hours being "to" is true. I have a friend who always says "down" no matter where she is going. Dallas and San Antonio and Houston are equally "down" from Austin. Drives me nuts.

tzakrajs 9y ago

When you put something away in Texas you "put it up"

ssanders82 9y ago
I think that applies everywhere...
- tzakrajs 9y ago
  Never heard it until I moved there, thanks for the info.
- Roedou 9y ago
  I grew up in the UK, now live in Seattle. I've never heard anyone use that. My wife does talk about "pick up the lounge" though, to mean tidy it up & put things away.

__david__ 9y ago

As a native Californian I definitely use "up" and "down". Up to L.A., down to San Diego. I might make a trip up the coast to Oregon or Washington. I also might go back east (meaning the east coast). Never used "out" though, probably because I'm already about as west as you can go on this continent! "Over", however is just used without regard to direction, though it generally signifies a close distance. I'd head over to the city next door, but I'd never head over to Las Vegas. I'd head "out" to Vegas though. So maybe "out" is for far distances?

username223 9y ago
As a native of... nowhere in particular, I think "up" and "down" are pretty universal among Americans for "north" and "south." I wouldn't be surprised if they're near-universal to inhabitants of the northern hemisphere, since that's the way maps are drawn. A possible exception would be inhabitants of mountainous regions saying e.g. "up to Leadville" or "down to Denver." Having lived in Houston, I didn't notice "over" and "out." I would personally use "over" for "within city" and "out" for "outside of city."
- pwagland 9y ago
  Even in Australia which, last I checked, is not in the US, uses up and down to refer to north and south. That seems fairly independent or state as well. For example ins Perth you go "up to Geraldton" and in Sydney you go "up to Brisbane", and "down to Melbourne". The whole out and over thing seems more regional to me. In Australia "out" is generally just "far from here" and "over"... well that isn't a thing, at least in the dialects that I'm used to. :-)
  - fian 9y ago
    It is not uncommon in Australia to say you are going over to a friend's house. In Perth people often would say they are "going over" to Melbourne or Sydney. There is also the reverse "coming over" "Out" is used generally such as in "heading out" where often no destination is specified. Also we sometimes use "outback" meaning anywhere not in a city or suburban area.

unit91 9y ago

TIL: not everybody talks this way. Y'all get it together! :-)

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

Was talking with a Japanese friend the other day and had a great conversation trying to nail down the meanings of over by, out near, up there, down by, etc, using local landmarks. The Japanese equivalents are ここ、そこ、あこ, meaning respectively "here", "there (nearer)", and "there (further)". There's also これ、それ、あれ, meaning "this", "that (nearer)", and "that (further)". These distances can be both spatial, temporal, and metaphorical. The distinction between them seems relative in scale - if you ask for something to be passed to you at the dinner table, the things furthest from you are あれ and the things closest are これ (the latter is close enough you could reach it yourself). The neighboring town is そこ and the next town over is あこ.

glandium 9y ago
あこ is an archaism. あそこ is used instead these days.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  Maybe it's regional? I've heared あこ used by native speakers many times.
Sniffnoy 9y ago
I think the archaic English equivalent is "here", "there", "yonder"?
philsnow 9y ago
I always thought the close one is used for things that are closer to the speaker than the listener, the middle one is used for things that are more or less in between the speaker and the listener, and the 'far' one is used for things that are far away from both the speaker and the listener. can any native speakers say whether there is any sense of that, or does it not have anything to do with the listener?
- glandium 9y ago
  Not native, but essentially, ここ is here, as in something close to the speaker, そこ is there, as in something close to the listener, and あそこ is there, as in something that is neither close to the speaker nor close to the listener. Now imagine a variant of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m-kbBamg_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m-kbBamg_U with the 3 words.

Cactus2018 9y ago

Jerry Seinfeld talks about New York's "On", "In", "Off", and "Out" in his new Netflix special: http://kism.com/400-funnies/jerry-seinfeld-talks-about-living-in-the-city-versus-on-long-island/ http://kism.com/400-funnies/jerry-seinfeld-talks-about-livin...

sputknick 9y ago

We use the same terms in the Shenandoah Valley, which makes sense, since many of the original settlers to Texas were from Virginia, and might explain the term "over" because many places you might go would be over the Blue Ridge Mountains. A related one I've noticed since moving to Seattle, is people using "back east" to describe the east coast. It's not just transplants from the east coast like myself that do it, people born and raised in Washington will say "back east" to describe the East Coast. An interesting remnant from our country being settled from east to west.

logfromblammo 9y ago

I have never used "up" and "down" for north and south, but to be fair, that is solely to be contrarian in the face of people who used them as synonyms for north and south. Of course, growing up in central Indiana, it was a long while before I even knew what a hill was. People frequently used "up" and "down" directionally, probably because they're nice and short, and there was nothing else to use them for. There was no "over/out"-like distinction for east and west, though. East and west were both "over". That might be related to the general north-south orientation of the state, too. ...And it just occurred to me that north actually is up and south actually is down in most of Indiana. All the rivers run south, to the Ohio, except around Gary and South Bend. Facepalming at my teenaged self right now.

S_A_P 9y ago

I live in a suburb(using the term generously) of Houston. Its actually 40 miles from downtown Houston. It is southwest of the city, and when asked where I live, I say "down in Richmond". As a native Houstonian, I can say that this article rings true to me, but is becoming less so. Houston is actually quite diverse and there is a healthy distribution of cultures and immigrants so some of the Texas slang is fading. I think that Houston is a much better place to live now than it was even 20 years ago, there is great authentic cuisine from just about any corner of the globe available, and lots to do.

citationnerded 9y ago

I was born and raised in houston and lived there for 15+ years. People say these words, but know one I know of actually associates them with specific cardinal directions. Up and down make elementary school sense and so likely are used this way in most places... I am wary of out vs over though. But who knows, maybe this is used explicitly by people in a specific region of Houston. I grew up mostly on the sw end.

brosky117 9y ago
I had the same thought as I was reading the article. My experience living in Houston for a decade was that no one assigned any special meaning to "out" and "over".

hotsauceror 9y ago

No discussion of our colloquialisms for measures of distance? "Over yonder" vs "a piece" vs "a ways"?

nograpes 9y ago

In North Ontario, Canada, and in some parts of the East coast, many speakers use the words "up" and "down" to refer to elevation rather than direction. So you would say "I'm going up to the store" only if the store was higher in elevation than where you were currently standing, even slightly. I grew up in North Ontario, but my parents were not native English speakers, and it was only in my late teens that most of my friends (who had native English speaker parents) were using the terms this way. I used "up" and "down" interchangeably. What amazed me is that this implied an intrinsic awareness of elevation, which I didn't have; everybody else always knew if your house was higher than their house. In some cases, the up/down distinction was used in place of left and right. In fact, I learned about this distinction sitting in a car at an intersection and getting the directions "just go up the road", as if that was totally unambiguous.

andrew_wc_brown 9y ago
I'm for the Northwestern Ontario, or as we think of it as the "truth north" up and down are directions. Also we say pack sack instead of back pack.

bshimmin 9y ago

In England, if you're fairly traditional, you would always say up to London, Oxford, or Cambridge (and, from the latter two, if you are a student and temporarily expelled, you are "sent down" - or "rusticated", to use a lovely word), whether you're starting from the north or the south.

candeira 9y ago
Joe Jackson sang of "going down to London[1] (to be the King)". According to his wikipedia biography[2], from age one he grew up in Portsmouth, which is South of London. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNoOLCsqNTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNoOLCsqNTE [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Jackson_(musician) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Jackson_(musician)
Roedou 9y ago
I've never heard 'up to London'; being from Manchester, London was definitely "down South". Coming 'up' to Cambridge had a specific meaning, of matriculating at the University. For example: I came up to Cambridge in 2002. I assume that the University of Oxford uses it in the same way?
- standardhuman 9y ago
  I came up to Cambridge in 2004 and was at Oxford before that. I can confirm that both places use it in this sense. :) That said, I've also noticed that many of my friends from those years still use "up" when simply visiting Oxford or Cambridge, and I do get the odd alumni e-mail inviting me to come "up" to Cambridge (not sure if this is unique to a secretary at Clare, or more widely used).

rconti 9y ago

I once tried to explain to my French host family when I would use 'oh' versus 'zero' when describing numbers, but I couldn't come up with a rule. My phone number has a 0 in the middle of the area code ('four oh eight') but elsewhere in my phone number, I use 'zero'. I couldn't correlate zero-versus-oh to position in the string nor what came before or after it. Yet it's totally natural to me to use each in the 'correct' place. I think others do, too, but I don't know if we have the same 'correct' place.

philsnow 9y ago
for me I seem to say zero after numbers ending in vowel sounds: one oh two zero three zero four oh five oh six oh seven oh eight oh nine oh
- bazeblackwood 9y ago
  Tommy Tutone doesn't follow your guideline: > Eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-nine
bazeblackwood 9y ago
I'm guessing there's something to do with syllabic grouping here, where we're naturally doing some optimization to form easily repeatable syllable groups. The other case would be to avoid making ambiguous sounding noises. Take for example the inclusion of two '0' digits sequentially. Excluding the case where it's a 1-800 number, which indicates its own class of phone number. Let's look at a hypothetical example here: 459-2001. I'm pretty sure most English speakers would pronounce the final clause in this hypothetical number: "two-zero-zero-one", because "oh-oh" could blend together. Any other rule, I think, would then follow how you approach grouping the numbers. In the case of the first three of seven digits in the number, in my experience a number is unlikely to start with a 0, (i.e. 019-9949), but in the case that a "group" does, I would definitely lean toward "zero", in that case "zero-one-nine" sounds infinitely better than starting with "oh". It makes sense that "oh" would work better in between two other digits, and I'm having trouble imagining any three-digit zero sandwich (101, 102, ... 201, 202, 203 etc.) that doesn't sound better as "oh". If the '0' is the final number in the group, I also think I say "zero". Try out 450, 290, etc. or even 050. When you get to four digits, I think that's where interpretation might come into play. 5057 sounds equally good as "five-oh-five-seven" or "five-zero-five-seven" to me, though I might prefer the latter. Maybe that's when the speaker has to decide how to group, and in the case of a repeating pattern, that might change the way they inflect, too. Swap one digit in the previous example and you get 5050, which to me, instantly seems like it would switch to two groups of "five-zero".

technofiend 9y ago

I guess y'all are fixin to use our directional words. Honestly Houston (and I'm sure the other major cities too) has a bunch of weird pronunciation that marks natives versus folks just lucky enough to move here and I assumed the article was going to go into things like "fixing" or our weird town names. Here in Houston for example "Kuykendall" Street is pronounced with an R like the Dutch name from which it derives "Kerkendal". I'm not sure how the Dutch emphasize the syllables but it's "KIRK-en-dahl" here. Our street "Elgin" is pronounced with a soft g instead of the hard one found at the front of the drink and there's no y sound marrying the consonant. Fuqua is properly pronounced "FYU-qway" at least according to the Fuqua I met working at a local energy company. And "San Jacinto" doesn't follow Spanish pronunciation rules and is pronounced "San Jyacinto" not "San Yacinto or San Hacinto." Same with "San Felipe" which is "San fillipee" not "San Fuh-lee-pay." Here's an article with more examples. https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2013/6/1/whats-in-a-street-name-may-2013 https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2013/6/1/whats-in-a-st...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
hmcdona1 9y ago
My favorite is if you're from Houston you call on/off ramps "feeder roads". I don't think people use that term anywhere else.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- izuchukwu 9y ago
  From Houston myself—I’ve mostly seen feeder roads refer to the roads with ramps alongside freeways, not the ramps themselves. Since moving, I’ve seen them called frontage roads elsewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontage_road#Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontage_road#Texas
- technofiend 9y ago
  Yeah the feeder road is the entire parallel road not just the on ramp. Between feeders and regular freeway exits every mile or two it really prevents some of the incredibly dangerous driving I've seen in other parts of the country where people dive for an exit because the next one is 5+ miles away. Because we typically have overpasses for intersections under the freeway it's no big deal if you miss an exit. Just take the next one 1/2 mile or a mile away and make a uturn underneath the freeway. If you aren't going far you can just take the feeder down to your missed exit.

joveian 9y ago

I don't think I use any of those words directionally. I guess it is more of a general directional awareness thing than really useful information to convey in most cases. Similar to how some people might describe even the front and back of a building with compass directions. Although I guess in cases of lesser known destinations the general direction might be enough to prompt you to ask if someone could run a quick errand for you or drop you off/pick you up somewhere. I use "over" to imply "right now unless otherwise specified" but it could be anywhere. Although usually that would be implied by context so it is mostly just an extra word. I ignore the other words when others use them (I would not notice any particular usage) and might say some of them on occasion if I hear enough people using one particular word with a particular place.

davidw 9y ago

Fun fact about cardinal directions in Italy: they don't really exist and people will give you confused looks. They talk about going in the direction of whatever city or landmark lies that way - "towards Milano, towards Bassano, follow the canal" and so on.

tomrod 9y ago

Texan here. This seems pretty overthought yet incomplete. For example you might here "We're going on out to Fredericksburg" from any distance except in Fredericksburg.

mirimir 9y ago

I learned my English in Manhattan, and it was definitely "up to Boston", "down to DC", "over to Brooklyn", and "out to Jersey". And "way out to Chicago", and "way over to London".

self_assembly 9y ago

Another fun one that I'm definitely guilty of as a native Californian is "no yea" for "yes" and "yea no" for "no". I do it without thinking all the time and am always shocked that no one ever questions what I mean.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
meej 9y ago
the lexicon valley podcast did an episode on this. http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2013/06/yeah_no_lexicon_valley_slate_podcast.html http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2013/0... (the discussion starts a bit before six minutes in)

interfixus 9y ago

In my native Danish, up and down are used fairly much as described in the article, but genrerally only for smaller, provincial locations. From Copenhagen I can go down to the southern part where I live, but from here I can not go up to Copenhagen. East- and westwise, I can go over [exact same word] to some neighboring locations, though by no means all. As a native speaker I know when and when not, but don't have a clue as to any formal rule. No out. The west was never a wilderness to be conquered here.

Kluny 9y ago
You can go up to Aarhus though, right?
- interfixus 9y ago
  Interesting. I'm sure you can, over there on the mainland. But to my somewhat more easterly attuned ears, it doesn't sound quite right.
  - Kluny 9y ago
    Hmm, are you from Als?
    - interfixus 9y ago
      No, easterly. Bottom right corner of the map.
      - Kluny 9y ago
        Oh, I see, it'd be hard to go up to Aarhus from there. You'd be travelling in several other directions first.

globuous 9y ago

Very interesting ! Funny thing, in France we do use "up" and "down" but with a different set of axis. They don't represent north and south. If you're in Lille (north of Paris), you'd say "I'm going up to Paris" although you'd be going south. If you're in Paris and you're going to Lille, you'd say "I'm going down to Lille" although you'd be going north. But if you're going to Lyon from Paris, you'd say "I'm going down to Lyon" and you would be going south. In French you go "up" to the capital (or more generally to a larger city than you're currently in), and you go down from the capital (or more generally to a smaller city than the one you're currently in). So you'd say from Paris "I'm going down to Lyon" or "I'm going down to Grenoble" and from Lyon you'd say "I'm going down to Grenoble" or "I'm going up to Paris". (And you instantly know that Paris is the largest city of the 3 and Grenoble the smallest ^^ so from Grenoble you go "up to Lyon" and "up to Paris"). I learned that fairly old because I didn't live in France until later in my childhood but I always found this linguistic kinda funny :) Descendons donc en province, disent-ils a Paris !

look_lookatme 9y ago
One BIG thing worth noting is Texas, almost formally, redefines the cardinal directions [1], so it's even harder to parse what up/down/out/over are. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JREkqCvLzSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JREkqCvLzSo
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mrb 9y ago
Native French speaker here. I can confirm. "Going up to" (monter sur) refers to somewhere central while "going down to" (descendre sur) refers to a peripheral location.
- titanomachy 9y ago
  So it's not related to the direction the rivers flow?
- glandium 9y ago

xtalx 9y ago

Too many people sleep on or disparage Texas, it’s such a diverse/weird/surprising/sometimesDisapointing place. It’s definitely not some place that can be categorized or disparaged with only a few words. Disclosure: I grew up in Houston

ianamartin 9y ago

I hadn't really thought about this much before. I grew up in rural Texas outside Waco. Up and Down are for sure aligned with the map. Over isn't directional though. Out sort of is. Over is something we used when the destination as specific to a person's location. Go over to the neighbor's in any direction. But also go over to my grandma's house. But if you didn't specify to her house, then it was out to East Texas for the weekend, not over. We'd go over to Mickey's place for a week, but out to Memphis. I'm sure this is not generalizable, but that's how it works for me. In general, out is anything that's kind of a pain in the ass, and over is something you're a little happier about. And there's also the "in" to contrast with "out." When I was growing up we went in to town. And back out to the farm. And of all my strange Texas-isms, that's the one that gets me the most shit from New Yorkers. I live in Brooklyn, and so I say, I'm going in to town, when I go to Manhattan. And I'm going out to Brooklyn when I'm headed home. And it makes people seriously angry sometimes. Some of the other strange things I grew up with, that are weird even to me: "Cut the lights on." What? That doesn't even make sense? You can cut something off. You can't cut it on. "I'm fixin' to . . ." mow the lawn, take out the trash, make dinner. Very often used when someone is nagging you about something you are not really about to do. You're just fixin' to do it. "Let's get a colbear." It's a cold beer with the d dropped and a twang on the beer and all said as a single word with the accent on the co. It sounds really weird to this day. We have really weird relationships with units of distance. We don't measure distance in units of length. We measure it in how long it takes us to drive there. I remember getting called out on this not long after I move to NYC. Some people I met wanted to know where the hell Waco is. And I figured if they live here and know any city in Texas, they will know Austin. So I gave position relative to Austin. "Oh about 2 hours up from Austin." 2 hours what? By subway? Jesus, that's terrible. I was like, "No, it's an easy drive. You just get on I35 and your there. Hour and a half if traffic is good and you speed a little." Finally had to break it down. It's a hundred miles. Another related thing is that we don't think twice about driving distances that would have other people looking for a plane ticket. Fun fact: it's a longer drive from Texarkana to El Paso than it is from Dallas to Minneapolis. It's just a thing we grew up with. We like our cars, and we don't mind driving. I lived in Dallas for many years (and am about to move back soon). And I would often leave work an hour early or so, beat the traffic out of town, go have dinner with my parents and siblings (about a two hour drive), then drive home after dinner (another two hours), and not even think twice about it. Or if my brothers wanted to hang out and have some drinks, stay there, and just drive straight to work the next morning. Tea is a weird thing here as well. I love iced tea, but not the way I grew up with it in Texas. I like what used to be hot tea, poured over ice until it's freezing cold. And unsweetened and without milk. But in Texas, there's a process for making sweet tea that's almost as intricate and cantankerous as making BBQ. You boil a quart of water, add 8-12 bags of cheap black teabags and stew those for about an hour. Take the bags out, and bring back to a boil. Then you supersaturate this bitter cauldron with sugar until it's basically a syrup. That concentrate is supposed to be diluted. But the problem is that whenever you're having someone over for an event that would warrant sweet tea, you're too busy making BBQ and doing last minute cleanup to dilute it properly, so you throw it all in an 8-quart pitcher, fill it up to the top with ice, and add some water. The restaurants don't do a much better job. It's basically like mainlining simple syrup with dark color and a bitter flavor. I hate it. But I'd be dead if I ever said that within state boarders. And since I'm getting a little nostalgic, I'll wrap this up. I've heard before that people who aren't from Texas think of our gas stations as grocery stores and our grocery stores as stadiums full of food. After 3 years in NYC, THIS IS SO TRUE! Nothing has been able to consistently frustrate me as much as trying to grocery shop here. It is so unreal what people have to deal with. And then when you go to 3 different hole-in-the-wall grocery stores (which may involve multiple subway rides, carrying your loot as you go) just to get the ingredients you need for one meal, the prices are so ridiculously high in the stores, that you really haven't saved that much money over just getting crappy takeout or delivery every night. Instead, you've wrecked your back lugging 80 lbs of groceries and wasted your weekend, and are pissed off anyway. I feel genuinely sorry for people who live here.

Intermernet 9y ago

In Sydney, Australia we tend to use exactly the same nomenclature, but over (East) is never very far. You might go over to Bondi. Out (west) tends to include everything until the centre of Australia (going out to Bathurst, going way out to Alice Springs, or even just going out west). Up and down tend to extend the entire north - south distance of the country. Up to eff-en-cue (FNQ = Far North Queensland) or down to Tassie (Tasmania). I think the extended distances compared to Texas is probably due to the vast amount of nothing throughout most of Australia.

d--b 9y ago

Up / down is not confined to Texas. Think upstate NY. Out and over is pretty cool though.

air7 9y ago

In Hebrew we use "up" and "down" to refer to permanently moving to Israel ("up") or moving from Israel("down"). These are such important social concepts that there are nouns too: Someone who moved to Israel is an "Ascender" who just did an "Ascent". In the other direction is a "Descender" who did a "Descent".

jacobsohn101 9y ago

In NYC, up/down indicates north/south in general. However there are two special exceptions I can think of. First special case is when New Yorkers sometimes talk about Albany (NY state capital), we use "up state" in political context, even though Albany is like in the middle of NY. But then again, "up state" can mean anywhere above NYC to some New Yorkers... Second is when we yell out "up yours, buddy". We don't mean north in that context.

jenkstom 9y ago

I disagree with over and out. Out means more rural, over just means to another urban place.