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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 5, 2010 3:05:23 GMT
I remember hearing the term "the big easy" back in the 70s, also. It was usually said wryly or with tongue in cheek, rather as you might say "it's a toddling town" if you lived in Chicago.
My uncle, who was generally reliable on all things historical, claimed it was a term used by rural black people to refer to the ease of making a living in New Orleans, and that it dated from at least the 20s or 30s.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2010 5:41:05 GMT
I'm thinking that small towns have a ton of nicknames, or at least shorter names, for their neighbors. When I was little, people said 'The Bay,' The Pass,' and 'The Point' instead of Bay Saint Louis, Pass Christian or D'Iberville.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2010 10:40:47 GMT
I distinctly remember when the term "the Hamptons"(a cluster of hamlets/villages on the South Fork of Long Island) came into use. It was coined by a prominent real estate agent in the area,back in the 1970's, purely as a marketing ploy. It especially unnerved me because each village out there has a distinct feature,personality and population make up. Southampton,was, and still is to some degree a wealthy enclave,wheras Bridgehampton although, now comprising a huge amount of wealthy residents (mostly summertime),was more of a rural potato farming community. When I tell people where I am originally from and say Bridgehampton,the retort is generally something like "oh,you're from the Hamptons",conjecturing that I am wealthy and or from a blue blood family.(Neither of which I am).
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Post by lagatta on Jul 5, 2010 18:59:30 GMT
I always wondered where the hell the Hamptons were - it is scarcely the other end of the earth from where I hail from. The mystery is solved - it is simply part of Long Island (I guess part of the area that is more rural and less NYC and immediate suburbs).
SoHo was at least a wordplay on a famous London district, but the others are just estate agent inventions.
Decades ago people here tended to talk of the parish they lived in (even if they were non-Catholic or not churchgoers). We talked about local issues in St-Louis or St-Jacques. (And of course the Louis is pronounced in French).
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2010 19:07:17 GMT
And we all know about the nasty goings-on of Sainte Catherine. I sublet my previous apartment to someone who was seduced and abandoned by André Boulerice, so I have a surfeit of information about that area.
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Post by komsomol on Jul 5, 2010 20:02:59 GMT
Calling a city like Philadelphia "Philly" should qualify.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2010 10:06:58 GMT
Yes Lagatta,the Hamptons refers to the South Fork eastern last 30 miles of Long Island (which is 100 miles long).
Louisiana uses the designation Parish versus the conventional term County. I think we are the only state that does. It also uses arpent versus acre.
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Post by livaco on Jul 6, 2010 16:27:40 GMT
My city of Milwaukee has the nickname "Cream City". Many people think it has to do with its being part of the dairy state, or something to do with beer but actually the name came from a kind of brick that was used in its early architecture. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cream_City_brickI don't know of anyone who really uses this nickname in their everyday speech, but it is part of the names of plenty of places of business here.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2010 17:38:28 GMT
Curiously,I just read this morning that Buffalo,NY was known as the City of Light at the turn of the century,having largely to do with the huge Niagra Falls hydro-electric power development nearby.Never knew this before.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 7, 2010 1:43:56 GMT
Buffalo was a lovely city at the turn of the LAST century, and despite of or perhaps in part due to its sad decline, it has many beautiful historical districts, especially in the West End near Elmwood Avenue. januarymagazine.com/fiction/citylight.htmlIt is actually very much worth a visit, if you are taking in the GTA (greater Toronto Area), Niagara Falls or the Niagara Vineland district (in nearby Ontario).
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2010 2:01:13 GMT
LOL! Yes,meant to say last century Lagatta!! I have been several times to that area,(my brother attended Niagra University),the coldest I have ever been in my life!!( My first trip to Montreal was back in the 1960's) . Sorry,thread jack there...
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Post by lagatta on Jul 7, 2010 2:19:33 GMT
No prob (as the younguns say). I was revising a text today that still said "turn of the century" and "in the last century" in reference to the 19th century, though we are a decade (or almost, depending on calculations) into the 21st.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2010 5:17:00 GMT
Now that we're in the tens, everything should start to become clear...
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Post by dahuffy on Jul 9, 2010 22:41:26 GMT
We have "Okies" here.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2010 19:12:44 GMT
It's true that Okies is perhaps one of the only nickname terms universally understood by all Americans, along with Yankees for northeasterners.
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Post by fumobici on Jul 19, 2010 4:22:17 GMT
If you get "Okies" you'll probably understand "Arkies".
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Post by fumobici on Jul 19, 2010 4:26:43 GMT
People from the little city of Sansepolcro in Eastern Tuscany often refer to themselves as "Biturgensi" based on the (somewhat questionable) assertion that the current medieval town was built on the site of the Roman regional outpost of Biturgia.
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Post by lola on Jul 19, 2010 14:10:10 GMT
"Hoosier" refers to Indiana or Indianans, but here in St. Louis it means lower (than one's own) class trashy caucasian. Having old cars parked in your yard and mowing the lawn without a shirt are both "hooshe." (unsure of correct phonetic representation here; "hoosier" with the "er.")
Calling people hooshe is a little hoosier, I think.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2010 23:24:25 GMT
"Hoosier" refers to Indiana or Indianans, but here in St. Louis it means lower (than one's own) class trashy caucasian. Having old cars parked in your yard and mowing the lawn without a shirt are both "hooshe." (unsure of correct phonetic representation here; "hoosier" with the "er.") Calling people hooshe is a little hoosier, I think. I thought that maybe the she part added on to it was an attempt at sounding like chic,chic (she she). ;D ;D ( sorry,couldn't resist...)Here, the suburb of Metairie,many refer to as Metry, (there's even a taxi company known as Metry Cab) and people from Saint Bernard Parish refer to themselves as from, Da Parish.
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Post by hwinpp on Aug 3, 2010 8:01:50 GMT
A certain kind of expat here refers to Bangkok as Bangers, Hong Kong as Honkers, Jakarta as Jakkers, Chiang Mai as Changers and Pattaya as Patters. Oh, and Singapore as Singers.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 3, 2010 8:30:21 GMT
Yes, I've heard those before. I understand nicknames that shorten a complicated name, but I can't stand it when the nickname is just as long as the real name.
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Post by fumobici on Aug 3, 2010 14:53:32 GMT
A certain kind of expat here refers to Bangkok as Bangers, Hong Kong as Honkers, Jakarta as Jakkers, Chiang Mai as Changers and Pattaya as Patters. Oh, and Singapore as Singers. A certain kind? I'll be pondering that over some champers.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 5, 2010 13:57:24 GMT
hee hee hee, Fumobici!
I don't know why this annoys me so much, but it does. The main square here, in common with much of Mexico, is called the zócalo, pronounced SO cah low. That's not at all difficult for non-native speakers, but many of the native English speakers breezily refer to it as "the zoke" with a Z sound, which does not exist in Spanish.
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Post by hwinpp on Aug 9, 2010 9:43:48 GMT
I would have thought every Tom, Dick and Harry square in Mehicoo is called plaza de independencia! A champers on that, Fu! And Bix
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 9, 2010 16:00:00 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2010 16:50:15 GMT
That's like in France, where in front of the train station, the name was always Place de la Gare. Except now, it usually seems to be Place Charles de Gaulle if no main artery was handy back when de Gaulle died. You can always ask for "Place de la Gare" anywhere, and no matter what the name is now, you will always be directed to it correctly.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 15, 2010 18:52:51 GMT
I hate those expat names too. One that is particularly calling is calling Amsterdam "The Dam". No Dutch person, even if a fluent English-speaker, would say that. Makes no sense either, as there is also Rotterdam. One of Amsterdam's real nicknames, Mokum, is believed to be of Hebrew origin via the Yiddish: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokum planeteyetraveler.com/2010/01/02/mokum-amsterdams-jewish-name/bixa, in Italian, zoccolo, with a z sound. In French, socle.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 15, 2010 20:50:15 GMT
It's that breezy way of claiming a foreign city by Anglicizing it that sounds so colonial and dismissive.
I didn't know that the French and Italian words were so similar to the Spanish. I was under the impression that zócalo meant "plinth", a reference to the fact that main plazas usually have a statue in the center. No?
That's a most interesting link about Amsterdam, especially the detail of why it's a diamond center to this day.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 16, 2010 14:43:00 GMT
Yes, it does mean a plinth or any type of base. In the famous DF case, of a monument that never got built.
Yes, it is cultural appropriation, and very annoying - in the zocalo and Amsterdam cases, they are simple for English-speaking people to say.
Of course another reason for Dutch diamond centres come from the old ties with South Africa. This was of course shameful during the apartheid era and there was a lot of anti-apartheid activism in the Netherlands, including renaming squares and streets bearing the names of colonialists for anti-apartheid activists. (C'mon Dutchies, you could name something big for Nelson Mandela BEFORE he expires)...
But now there are a lot of quite open economic exchanges, tourism promotions, and an awful lot of South African wines in Dutch supermarkets.
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