A university voice professor has recorded people in more than 100 Arkansas towns, working toward all 75 counties. The data is clear: Arkansans don’t speak with one accent. They also have a vocabulary that feels foreign to other Americans. These are the Arkansas sayings that leave out-of-towners completely lost. 1. Woo Pig Sooie A visitor…
A hawk works a cattle pasture somewhere past Farmville, and nobody in the yard looks up. On the Chesapeake, that shape overhead is almost always an osprey. The Bay region holds close to a quarter of every nesting pair in the continental United States. But inland skies stay empty. These are the things Chesapeake Bay…
Alabama asphalt can reach 135 degrees when the air outside is only in the mid-80s, according to the American Animal Hospital Association. A dog feels that through its paws before anyone notices. These are the household habits Alabamians have that can make their pets more anxious. 1. Not Setting up a Calm-Down Spot Before Storms…
South Carolina made the shag its official state dance in 1984, a six-count step that came off the sand near Ocean Drive in the late 1930s. Coastal South Carolinians say a handful of things without thinking about it. And they notice who doesn’t. These are the things South Carolinians say about the coast that give…
The MTA charges $3 for a single subway ride now, a dime more than before January’s increase. The fare isn’t what gives anyone away. What gives them away happens at the turnstile, in the half second before the tap, and locals clock it without looking up. These are the subway habits that mark someone as…
Thirty-two of Ohio’s 88 counties carry an official Appalachian designation from the Appalachian Regional Commission. The Census Bureau’s map counts the whole state as Midwest. Both maps can’t be right. These are the arguments Ohioans have about whether their city is Midwest at all. 1. Cincinnati Cincinnati sits on the Ohio River with Kentucky visible…
Wilber Hardee sold hamburgers for 15 cents off a charcoal broiler at a Greenville drive-in in 1960. There were no tables. North Carolina’s burger and hot dog chains never lost that streak, and plenty of them still run the counter however they always have. These are the ordering mistakes tourists make at North Carolina’s burger…
Ask a big-box store in Tennessee to cut a key for a lock older than the house it’s on, and watch the clerk shrug. Leeper Hardware in Jefferson City will do it at the counter. These are the items only a Tennessee hardware store still bothers to keep in stock. 1. Glass and Acrylic Sheet…
More than 100 inches of snow falls on Erie in a normal year. That’s enough to bury a one-story house. Pennsylvania starts getting ready for it on a schedule that makes no sense anywhere south. These are the things Pennsylvanians do the first cold weekend that Southerners find excessive. 1. Bundling up a Month Before…
A driver who’s never set foot in Maine pulls off Route 1 in Wiscasset and asks if there’s a seafood shack up the road. The man behind the counter says “Ayuh” and goes back to ringing up coffee. That was his answer. These are the Maine words and phrases that make no sense to the…
