Pittsburghese: Of Yinzers, Gumbands, Jaggers, N’at

Always had a hankering to visit the Galapagos Islands but can’t afford the trip? Here’s a viable alternative: Come to Pittsburgh.

According to this 2006 New York Times article, our fair city is the “Galapagos Islands of American Dialect”. You might not hear the bark of the sea lion, the squawk of the red-footed booby, or the harumph of the giant tortoise, but you will hear some of the most unusual speech found anywhere in the United States. In fact, the way Pittsburghers talk is unique enough to warrant its own name – “Pittsburghese”, its own entry in Wikipedia, and the ongoing interest of researchers at institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University.

For Pittsburghers, Pittsburghese is without doubt a popular topic of conversation. Ask a group of locals for some examples and they will enthusiastically oblige you. People here take pride in the way they speak. There is no stigma associated with talking like a native, which is very refreshing and is typical of the way the city views itself. People from Pittsburgh are proud to be from Pittsburgh. And they have reason to be! Peculiar speech sounds can be found in many populations within the United States but in general, they are not restricted to one small geographic location. Usually, they can be found over a large area or region. But there is one peculiar pronunciation that truly seems to be found only in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. Meet the /aw/ monophthongization. Put in layman’s terms, people here pronounced “ow” as “ah”. No one in Pittsburgh ever goes downtown. They go dahntahn! And that’s a place you will only find in Pittsburgh, PA.

Here are some other examples of Pittsburghese:

Phonology

• Cot sounds like caught, not sounds like naught.
• Feel sounds like fill, fool sounds like full.
• Towel and tile sound the same.

Vocabulary

• Gumband – rubber band.
• Jag – to prick or stab.
• Jagger – a small, pointy object such as a thorn.
• Nebby – nosey.
• Redd up – to tidy or clean up.
• Slippy – slippery.
• Yinz – second person plural pronoun – “you ones”.
• Yinzer – speaker of Pittsburghese.
• N’at – along with some other stuff. Reduction of “and that”.

Why do Pittsburghers talk the way they do? No one can say for sure. It might have something to do with the fact that Pittsburgh is a city of many distinct neighborhoods, each settled by a different immigrant population. It is believed, for instance, that “yinz” came about as Irish-speaking immigrants learned English. In Irish, there is a distinction between the singular and plural form of “you”, but in English there is no such distinction. “You went dahntahn” could just as easily refer to one person as it could one hundred people. To make up for their lost second-person plural, the new speakers of English said “you ones”. Over time, this became you’uns and then youns and then yunz and then yinz. Incidentally, the same thing happened in the South (y’all) and in New Jersey (yous).

The most fun thing about Pittsburghese, and about dialects in general, is that they shouldn’t exist at all. Different ways of speaking make it harder for us to communicate with one another, not easier. And yet they persist. And it’s a good thing, or we would have one less answer to the question of “Why Pittsburgh?”

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