Once in a while I check referrer logs, and that's how I learned that my "y*nzer" posts from last Spring have taken on renewed life in Wikipedia -- here (in an entry on "yinz") and here (in a discussion about the "right" categories to include in an entry on Pittsburgh).
I'm not planning to edit either of the entries, though I'm a little disappointed that someone thought that I originally used the word "y*nzer" "carelessly." Way back when, I used the word intentionally, though from a non-native point of view and therefore without regard to what turn out to be important social and economic subtleties among some natives. Moreover, much of the ensuring conversation pointed out, on this blog and elsewhere, that there are many more important things to talk about in Pittsburgh than whether "y*nz" is the local linguistic equivalent of plutonium. The n-word it's not. The word means a lot of things to a lot of people, and it doesn't mean much to many others, which goes to show the irony of those posts popping up as relatively durable contributions to public discourse. By the way, welcome back to The New Yinzer!
Anyway, for an example of someone who *really* doesn't get the meaning of "plays well with others" when it comes to local mores, read today's op-ed about the shortcomings of Steeler Nation. The piece reminds me of a friend who took a different route. She moved to Pittsburgh several years ago and decided to acquire a single line of of Steeler (or should that be Steelers?) trivia to share at cocktail parties and the like -- the point being that this person cared not at all for football but didn't want to seem out of things. The year in question was 1998. The line this person mastered, with a great deal of pride and no irony at all, was: "How about that immaculate reception?"
Not that there was anything wrong with that.
1 comment:
Ya, that was me that originally posted the links.
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