Every once in a while my father in law will get mad and call a politician a damn carpetbagger, which, he's in his 70s, but it still surprised me that people still said that the first time I heard it. I don't know enough about the rest of the world to know if the US south has any regional insults other than, like, "Yankee" (which absolutely does still get used) and the dialect-specific phrases like "couldn't find his ass with both hands" and "fell out the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down".
I've never heard of 'mangiacake' before! Midwestern U.S. here. I've had close Canadian friends for the vast majority of my life, but not Italian-Canadian afaik. I'm absolutely certain we have regional insults though I can't think of any right this second. I spend most of my time on the internet rather than interacting with my immediate community, so that probably doesn't help.
slipper. my family's from hawaii, and "slipper" for us is short for "rubber slipper" (or rubbah slippah, depends on the pidgin content), and my beloved best friend..........keeps calling them flipflops..........................on purpose.................................... for her a slipper is more like a house slipper? for me those are house slippers or "fuzzy slippers", and the rubber ones are "rubber slippers" or "slippers"
oh also! litchi versus lychee (and the pronunciations as well, lee-chee or lai-chee it's really interesting)
I was wondering if it was linked to regional dialects? my mom's chinese, and she and her relatives all say "lai-chee", but their family also immigrated over a decent while ago...
Australia here, and rubber sandal things are called 'thongs', which makes for hilarious imagery on both sides when talking to Americans. (We call butt-flossing underwear/swimwear a G-string)
US south and it's definitely lee-chee here (if you can find it at all; I mostly know it from candy flavors and could not actually pick out a fresh lychee if you paid me. I don't even know what part of the plant it is...). Also, here a g-string is a particular type of thong underwear, generally the version with the absolute least coverage.
i've studied mandarin, if i want to hazard a guess that one's probably cantonese? just because it's the next most statistically lolol what part of china is your mom from? that'll help narrow it down :D
y'know I think that might be it!! there's a higher percentage of cantonese speakers in hawaii than mandarin speakers, iirc? I'm not 100% sure but from what I've heard from family and seen in reports and whatnot? but!! a lot of my friends who were first gen chinese would be speaking cantonese and take mandarin in high school for my mom, honestly I'm not 100% sure anymore? I think Guangdong, but yeah my mom's like 4th gen on one side maybe 5th on the other? ALSO SORRY THIS IS SO COOL @rats THANK YOU FOR THE INFO??? I've been wondering about this for AGES
Aw man, you've never had fresh lychees? Honestly I would have expected they'd grow fine in the southern US...
I say lee-chee because that's how I first heard it from my best friend in elementary school's family. (They were from India; I never found out what region.)
flip flops are specifically the kind of shoe that just have the bit between the toes and thin bands over the side to hold the bottom part to your foot. they flop when you walk. all other open-toed and/or heel-less shoes meant for wearing outdoors are sandals. sandals that have no strap around the back, and just a band across the foot can be referred to as flip flops if you're trying to indicate that they're dress down. slippers are usually the fuzzy kind that are close-toed, but very open in the back. can be plastic if shower shoes/slippers source: military brat/florida, but then i repeat myself, dialect-ly speaking.
There's very few plants that don't grow well in Georgia (if it doesn't need a hard frost it's probably in somebody's backyard), but there's not really a market for them bc most people are unfamiliar with them and how to prepare them around here. That and, like, we're not a very strong region economically speaking, importing fruit to grow isn't a thing most farmers will invest in if they're not sure it'll sell. But now I know what fresh lychee looks like! It's very pretty and I wish I could get ahold of some.
Lii-chi. (P much the same as lee-chee.) I don’t hear many people say the word out loud. I’ve almost exclusively seen it on a certain brand of Japanese gummy candy. I think the packaging has it spelled ライチ in Japanese (raichi, sort of like (rd)ah-ee-chi, with the Japanese r that’s sort of halfway to being a d, so more or less lye-chee) and litchi in English (which I’d write as リッチ, ricchi/ritchi in Japanese). My brain has attempted to compromise between these. It’s... mostly taking pronunciation cues from the English spelling, and taking rhythm cues from the Japanese. It’s assuming the r is there because Japanese has no L sound. Okay, so far so reasonable. But then it becomes a mess. “Rai” and “ri” are not remotely the same. Even aside from making totally different vowel sounds, ra-i is two beats long and ri is only one beat. “Tchi” would normally indicate to me that the consonant has a stop (hard to explain in English, but there’s a TMBG song Acey linked me the other day about a tractor, sung as “trac—Tor”, which is a pretty good exaggerated version), which would make it two beats long. Two beat vowels often get compressed down to one beat in English because English doesn’t really pay attention to that as an important thing for differentiation between words. Rai -> ri isn’t the most likely transformation but ehhh. It’s very difficult to make a double consonant, with the trac-Tor stop, sound natural in English. It’s easier with some British dialects imo, but I’m not British. So, my brain decided I needed exactly one (1) double sound. (Is it.... even possible to follow a two beat vowel with a two beat consonant in Japanese? It feels really unnatural if I try.) It wasn’t going to be the consonant when speaking English, because awkward. So it’s the vowel. I’m not sure how I ended up with lii (like “lee”) instead of lai. I guess since I was already ignoring the r for the L, it seemed like a thing to do? (I’m capitalizing each stand-alone L not because it implies anything about pronunciation, it’s just easier to read. This ain’t the tlhIngan Hol.) So, from someone who has never, to my memory, heard the word said out loud by anyone who seemed remotely confident about it, it’s “lii-chi”. Said fast and casual enough it’s just lichi, with “i” still taking an “ee” sound, just only one beat long.
IIIIII do not. my mother was Way more interested in japanese culture, studied french (college level) in high school then b/c she'd finished it studied japanese in college, and made sure I studied learned japanese (note: I'm also adopted, and am not ethnically chinese, but am ethnically japanese) (other note: my dad's half japanese half chinese and was closer to his mother (japanese) so he leaned more that way too) you are an amazing persona and I respect your opinions and I'm still going to 1v1 anyone who deliberately calls them flipflops SPECIFICALLY to torment me (so, basically, my best friend and loving partner whomst I adore are both going THE FUCK down) (nothing against other people who call them flipflops) (but oh my god if you ever wanna make someone from hawaii get ready to throw down) (this is one of the fastest ways) @Verily that's hella cool!! it's Up High on the "favorite family fruit" list (no literally. everyone in my moms extended family goes NUTS for lychee. we're talking multiple bags in a week type nuts.) so I've been hearing the word + eating fresh lychee since...uh... well since I got past my sensory fuckery and it turned into a sensory YES and I started chowing the fuck down also there's a whole group of ~similar-ish~ fruits that are DELICIOUS. from that I've had....rambutan, longan, and I've heard of guinep, but never had any Good Shit
@rats also they only taught mandarin at high schools/middle schools back home? so pretty much everyone in my family who learned chinese speaks mandarin instead of cantonese ...hrm I bet there's a thought train I could follow there. probs somewhere else, but hrm.
