I love Southern people. They're just fantastic. It's absolutely insane how crossing the border of a couple states can actually make you feel like you're in a whole different country. Southerners aren't weird, y'all just live differently. I mean, from a Yankee's point of view.
Moving down to Mississippi for college from Boston, Massachusetts was a total change, and much more then I assumed it would be. So over the course of a year of living, traveling across the SEC, and staying with my best friends from Nashville, Tennessee, I definitely think I'm qualified to make this list from a different perspective. (In case you are unaware, being from New England and being located down South means your first name is now permanently changed to "Yankee").
Lingo. There are so many different words and phrases, I feel like I'm back in freshman year Spanish.
"Who all is going to that party tomorrow?" versus a Yankee's "Who's going?" This just sounds proper and unfamiliar.
The first time I went grocery shopping with my two Nashville roommates, they said "Oh wait, grab a buggy!" I frantically looked around the bread aisle we just walked into with absolutely no idea what I was supposed to get. Buggy? It's the grocery cart, carriage, etc.
My first class was also an experience because the professors also have the same lingo, and it can be different at first. When teachers get agitated at the class and say "Don't pack up before the lesson is over," Southern professors simply say "Don't put up." Yup. And you best believe me-being-me, I looked up at the ceiling and got confused until I caught on like, a month of classes later.
Y'all. This wasn't number one because I knew you guys would be expecting that. But yes, y'all is as common as you would expect, only people don't turn heads and laugh when it's said every-other-sentence down South.
Tennis shoes. This one really grinds my gears with Southern Lingo. I've never met a Southern tennis player thus far, but I've also never heard sneakers as a referred-to term. "Gym right now?" "Yeah, let me put my tennis shoes on." Where does this sports generalization as a term for shoes come from?
One day in the dorm my friend asked if she could borrow a sweat shirt. I said, "Yeah the gray one in the top drawer of my bureau" And she pulled a me-in-the-grocery-store, circling for what the word could possibly mean. Apparently it's called a dresser, or for a weirder more common translation, a "chest of drawers."
Other lingo:
-pronouncing 'theater' as "thee-ay-ter" (Pronunciation)
-house shoes vs. slippers
-'pea-boh-dee' vs. Peabody (Pronunciation)
-aunt vs. ant (Pronunciation)
-"Taking it up" vs. "collecting" term papers
And yes, despite this article, I am considered a converted-Yankee to the Southern lifestyle according to my school friends and home town friends. I guess once you let "y'all" casually slip out more then once without noticing and shoot a gun in your dress and heels for the first time ever on Easter with your friend's family, there really is no avoiding it.
#SouthernNewEnglandPride is wicked cool y'all!
