Persnickety language observation/question
Jun. 27th, 2024 09:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerA trilogy I recently read was set in Sacramento, California, and featured mostly characters raised in various parts of northern California. The setting wasn't super-vivid or anything, but the bits that did appear seem reasonably well-researched. (Why yes, a snooty McMansionville neighborhood does sound plausible for Granite Bay. I see someone watched Lady Bird. Great movie in general and for researching this setting! /tangent) I mean, other than a few odd details like a character not thinking of himself as being super-cautious to check the weather forecast to see if it might rain in the last week of May. (It won't.) And cult leaders up near Mt. Shasta claiming troublesome members got mauled to death by wolves, which have only very recently wandered back into California from Oregon after going locally extinct around the 1920s, and none of the investigators commenting that this is a sign of how thoroughly brainwashed cult members are. Or asking why the cult leaders picked wolves in the first place rather than more-plausible bears or mountain lions. I mean, wolves? Really? When just about everyone knows someone who knows someone whose beloved pet got eaten by a mountain lion? Still, you could chalk that up to cult weirdness even if the characters inexplicably don't.
But one thing especially struck me as seriously off, and now I'm wondering whether my impression is correct or whether I just haven't encountered the right linguistic pockets: all of these supposed Californians kept referring to people going "out east." I have never, ever, not even once in my life, heard anyone from any state in the western United States say "out east." It's back east. Because that is where the English-speaking colonizers came from. You go out west and return back east.
Is this just a case of an author raised in the Eastern U.S. with a probably-New-York-based editor taking "out west" and incorrectly extrapolating to "out east" because they haven't heard enough West Coast people talking, or is there an explanation? Maybe it's different in Spanish? There is a Northern vs. Southern California linguistic distinction in how people refer to highways which I suspect comes from the greater proportion of Spanish-speakers in the southern counties. (Up north, you'd drive on I-5, while down south you'd drive on the I-5. Spanish is more article-loving than English, hence my guess.) Not that any of these characters speak Spanish as a first language, but has anyone else heard West Coast residents say "out east," and were they Spanish-speakers, or from a particular part of California, or some other distinguishing characteristic?
But one thing especially struck me as seriously off, and now I'm wondering whether my impression is correct or whether I just haven't encountered the right linguistic pockets: all of these supposed Californians kept referring to people going "out east." I have never, ever, not even once in my life, heard anyone from any state in the western United States say "out east." It's back east. Because that is where the English-speaking colonizers came from. You go out west and return back east.
Is this just a case of an author raised in the Eastern U.S. with a probably-New-York-based editor taking "out west" and incorrectly extrapolating to "out east" because they haven't heard enough West Coast people talking, or is there an explanation? Maybe it's different in Spanish? There is a Northern vs. Southern California linguistic distinction in how people refer to highways which I suspect comes from the greater proportion of Spanish-speakers in the southern counties. (Up north, you'd drive on I-5, while down south you'd drive on the I-5. Spanish is more article-loving than English, hence my guess.) Not that any of these characters speak Spanish as a first language, but has anyone else heard West Coast residents say "out east," and were they Spanish-speakers, or from a particular part of California, or some other distinguishing characteristic?
(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-03 10:20 pm (UTC)A family locution of ours is to come out. It means to emigrate--to come out from Ireland to the United States. Of course, that phrase has a very different meaning in the world at large!
And yes, that is extremely funny about the people being mauled by wolves! Where I come from, it would most definitely be bears, and in California it would just as definitely be mountain lions. Fascinating that the author didn't know this.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-05 05:42 pm (UTC)I have not heard of down east!
It really is odd about the wolves, to the point that I wonder whether it was meant to show how successful these cult leaders were at brainwashing and a key sentence didn't make it in somehow. The author does seem to have done decent research overall, based on what I know of the area. Maybe it's just a couple of little things that slipped through.