Pittsburghese A Language All Its Own N'At

PITTSBURGH, PA - Yinzers speak a peculiar variation of the English language known as Pittsburghese. That truism was reinforced when Patch recently posted the question "What's something you say that only someone from Pennsylvania would understand?"

The vast majority of the responses were pure Pittsburghese words and sentences that certainly people living in Pennsylvania Amish country wouldn't understand. But that's OK if this amusing exercise provided even a momentary distraction from the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

The responses included:

• "Some jagoff moved my parking chair!"

• "Kennywood's open."

• "I put french fries on my salad."

• "I'm going to redd up once I get my sweeper back."

• "Yinz wanna go get some chipped ham at Isaly's? Go get a buggy and go get some pop."

• "The crick is slippy, be careful!"

• "J'id git it?"

• "Don't be so nebby."

• "J'eet yet?"

• "If you don't quit jagging around I will tie you up with a Babushka throw you in the jagger bush."

• Jumbo

• Gumbands

Care to add to the above collection of uniquely Pittsburgh words and sentences? Feel free to do so in the comments below or on social media.

The Pittsburghese phenomenon is nothing new, of course. The dialect commonly spoken in places like Jack's bar in the South Side and dahn Giant Eagle n'at has been the subject of several books, including:

• "How to Speak Pittsburghese," described thusly on Amazon: "If judged by the extent to which it has been borrowed from, then by far (this) the most influential description of local speech in Pittsburgh."

• "Lean Your ABCs in Pittsburhgese," presumably a children's book.

• "Speaking Pittsburghese: The Story Of A Dialect (Oxford Studies In Sociolinguistics)," described as follows on Amazon: "Treating Pittsburghese as a cultural product of talk, writing and other forms of social practice, (the author) shows how nonstandard pronunciations, words and bits of grammar used in the Pittsburgh area were taken up into a repertoire of words and phrases and a vocal style that has become one of the most reonant symbols of local identity in the United States today."

There also are Pittsburghese T-shirts and even a Pittsburghese website. How many dialects can make that claim?