Regionalisms

[Ela]

Do we have a topic on this? I couldn't find one and didn't know where to post this so...

Last week, when we were changing out a rental car at the airport, I had to wait next to the old rental car while my spouse took car of getting the new one, because all our stuff was in the trunk of the old car. Someone from the rental agency came up to me and asked me if I'd been helped and I said:

Yes, I'm just waiting on my husband.

After I said it, I realized that if I'd stayed in NY all my life, I would have said:

Yes, I'm just waiting for my husband.

Pretty sure saying "waiting on" when you mean "waiting for" is a southern thing, but not sure.

[Tante Shvester]

I grew up in New York, and I never heard it until I moved down South.

[Jonathon]

The OED isn't very helpful in determining whether either of those is a regionalism. I've seen a tool that lets you map words from Twitter (based on the Twitter users' locations), but it only works for single words.

I think I might use both, possibly with slightly different connotations, though I'm trying to figure out what they are.

[Tante Shvester]

In New York or New Jersey, when you wait on someone, you are serving them.

Also, when you are on line, you are not on the internet, you are what they describe elsewhere as in line.

[Jonathon]

So how do you say you're on the internet?

[Tante Shvester]

Being online is not the same as being on line, although you can be both, if you are using a mobile device.

[rivka]

I think I might use both, possibly with slightly different connotations, though I'm trying to figure out what they are.

Me too, actually.

[Ela]

The OED isn't very helpful in determining whether either of those is a regionalism. I've seen a tool that lets you map words from Twitter (based on the Twitter users' locations), but it only works for single words.

I think I might use both, possibly with slightly different connotations, though I'm trying to figure out what they are.

Let me know when you figure it out.

[Ela]

In New York or New Jersey, when you wait on someone, you are serving them.

Also, when you are on line, you are not on the internet, you are what they describe elsewhere as in line.

Being online is not the same as being on line, although you can be both, if you are using a mobile device.

Yup to both. As I said, if I'd never left NY to move south, I'd never say "waiting on" when I meant "waiting for".

[Noemon]

I don't think we really have a thread that this fits into perfectly, but since it's a regional dialect thing I thought that this one would do.

When I was in grade school, there was a girl in my class that used the phrase "has done did", as in "June has done did her homework". At the time, being a judgmental little kid, I just took this as proof that the girl in question was dumb. As an adult, I realize that she'd just internalized the grammar of the English spoken in her home, the same as I had, and that I'd just gotten lucky in terms of having parents who spoke Standard English.

Is that little snippet of grammar enough to identify what her dialect was? If it helps, this was in rural NE Kansas, and I know that her parents (and probably her grandparents) grew up within about 5 miles of where she did.

[Jonathon]

I don't know if that's enough to identify a particular regional dialect, partly because I suspect that that may be widespread across a lot of the US.