How to Talk Like a Texan
by Smockity Frocks on January 21, 2013
- Pecan = “Puh – CAWN”. Anyone who says “PEE – can” is clearly not from Texas.
- Grandma = “Gram – MAW”, not “GRAM – muh”
- Grandfather = “PAW – Paw”
- Almost to the point of = “Fixin’ to”
- Everyone here = “All y’all”
- Lots of stores in one place = “Thuh MAWL”
- Any soft drink = “Coke”. Calling it “pop” or “soda” is a dead giveaway you’re not from Texas.
- The letter after V = “Dub-ya”
- The petroleum industry = “Thuh OLL bidness”
Can you add any Texas pronunciations or phrases I missed?
{ 24 comments }
Wull I think you dunn purtty good thinking of all them Texan wurds. lol I am the biggest sounding Hick there is. VERY CUTE Thanks Jaime Roden
Hi. I’m not from Texas (originally form SC), but when I go shopping I use a buggie. Folks here in PA, where is love now, look at me funny, but they usually get over it. I say “fixin to”, “gut”, “pin”, and “dub-ya”., too. Thanks for sharing this.
My 77 year old Father was born and raised
in Fort Worth. If we are expecting a big storm
he says “it’s going to come a gully washer”.
Pillow is pronounced ‘pill-a’, ain’t, ‘whatcha’ (like whatcha lookin at), big’ol (that’s a big ‘ol buck). I’m sure there are lots of others that we Texans don’t even realize!
Schoo…without the l, not sure if its all y’all, but I have heard it! I’m from Ok and we say some of the same stuff.
I almost did………… like tuh uv After missing a step, “Whew! I liketouv fell!”
Most of those could be from MS too. lol.
I’m from MS, too, and I was thinking Texas ain’t too diffrent from the rest of the south!! All those words/phrases are used here. Another one…if you don’t have something, it’s “Ain’t got no….”, but, that’s right, you were asking for Texas sayins, not MS!!!
I’m from Oklahoma, so this may not be a Texas thing, but how to you refer to Walmart?
I’m in Texas, and the natives all say “Walmarts” instead of “Walmart.” They add an S to all kinds of words. They shop at Krogers, go to the doctors, and more.
A lot of people where I grew up tend to say ‘WalmarK’, with or without an s on the end. I grew up <20 miles from Texas.
Ha! We have a friend from Arkansas and he always calls it Walmarts!!! Too funny, because I have always thought it was just him!
My husband is a native Texan but I only lived there a few years. I still giggle a little when thinking about servers telling me what drinks were available at a restaurant that seved Pepsi products: Pepsi coke, clear coke, fruity coke, etc.
DH has lived “up north” for several years now and still grumps when the waitress doesn’t ask what kind of coke he wants when he orders his drink.
You change the all in your car. (oil)
I’ve lived in Washington state (definitely not the south) my whole life and I’ve always pronounced “pecan” the same way you do. It always sounds so funny to me when someone says “Pee-can”!
I remember going to CA when I was 13. (That’s been a few years back!) If someone heard me talk, the first thing they would ask was “Are you from Texas”? I thought it was interesting that they didn’t ask “Are you from the South”?
We were at a church potluck soon after moving to TX and a young lady came up to us – in a beautiful Texas drawl said, “Did ya get y’alls food?”
I’m not even quite sure what the punctuation on that would be but it was completely charming!
Going to = gonna
“Are you gonna eat that, or not?”
Raised a Texan … I laughed and laughed …
Do you know how hard it is to learn phonics and spelling when your teacher can’t pronounce it???
I was public schooled – though I’ve homeschooled my own 4.
Imagine your teacher telling you to ” Sweep thu flow”.
Most of my relatives eat with a spoon and a fornk.
And I still ask for a “coke” and expect them to ask, “What kind?” or give a list.
When I went to high school, it was common to see the boys arriving in pick up trucks with their hunting rifles in the back windows, and a knife in their pocket. The teachers borrowed the knives to open things when needed … and no one thought twice about it.
And I can’t BEGIN to list all of the funny things my northern cousins have asked/told/assumed about us Texans … or the mind boggling strange things non-Texans said while we lived in Colorado. LOL
The church we attended just happened to be pastored by a man raised in Texas, barely 20 miles from when I had grown up. Sometimes it was funny to look around and see the puzzled looks he received when he used a Texan phrase in his story … and you could pick out us Texans, we were the ones laughing or agreeing.
This Canadian lived in Texas for two years and was rather puzzled when told to put something up and they pointed to a cubbie on the ground.
put it up = put it away
I carried her there =I took her there
For example: I carried my class to the museum
And I got bugged all the time for having an agent. SURE I DID.
Too funny! Not in Texas, but born and raised in the South. We were raised saying pee-kawn. A pee-can used to be kept under the edge of the bed(for emergencies) to avoid a middle of the night run to the out house.
Put the DEAL in the DEAL. You know, that DEAL we have tonight after work?
ALL UH Y’ALL come over here. I’m going to tag ALL UH Y’ALL!
So you Texans are the ones who came up with calling all soda Coke?!!! I waited tables before I became a mom and let me tell ya, some people would get mad when I’d reply, “no, we have Pepsi.” They’d give me a look like, “um, that’s what I just said.”!
Sorry I dont know if I have ever posted a comment on your blog but I just wanted to say I laughed a lot at this one. I live in Aberdeen, North East Scotland and because we are the Oil Capital of Europe we deal with a lot of Texans and this is exactly how they speak. It amuses me a lot! Here in Aberdeen we speak a lot of what is known as Doric. The older generation speak it a lot more than the younger ones but if you dont knowDoric it can be very difficult to understand it so we wrote out a long list for one of my english colleagues as she spent the first few months here not understanding anything! A few words for you are
You Ken – You know
Bidey Inn – The Wife
Greetin – Crying
Quine – Girl
Loon – Boy
I am origingally from the Outer Hebrides where we speak English and Gaelic so when I first moved to the East Coast, these words were not in my vocabularly at all but now I use them (and a lot more!) All the time!
Anyway thank you so much for advice that you give to raising a family. We have finally recently been blessed after a long time of having our first baby and I look forward to using some of your advice as she grows older!!!