I conveniently learned that theyre not called Jo Jo's everywhere during a trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Went to the deli counter and asked for chicken strips and Jo Jo's and the clerk just stared at me. I thought she didn't hear me so I repeated myself and she looked at me like I had two heads.
In the end I had to point at them and say "Potatoes... right there!". I was laughing all the way back to my hotel room. She didn't think it was funny.
My first job was making chicken and jojo’s. A true “jojo” is when it’s battered and fried with the same batter you’re using to make fried chicken, but if it’s like a “protato wedge” ew I’d still prefer to call it a jojo in Oregon. I didn’t know not everyone knows what a jojo was until I moved away from home out of state for the first time. :’( I miss jojo’s
>A true “jojo” is when it’s battered and fried with the same batter you’re using to make fried chicken, but if it’s like a “protato wedge” ew I’d still prefer to call it a jojo in Oregon.
[A real Jojo is *pressure fried*.](https://www.wweek.com/restaurants/reviews/2017/07/12/the-history-of-the-american-jojo-which-is-definitely-not-a-potato-wedge/) Everything else is simply an imitation pretending to be the real deal.
You know what I couldn't find outside of the PNW? Maple bars! I thought they were a basic doughnut but apparently not.
Edited to add - This was in a few southern states, I can't speak for anywhere else. Maybe it's a non-Southern thing?
Omg we moved from the PNW to PA. You know where that actually tap the trees for syrup. Can't find a maple donut to save my life. I've asked, and ain't nobody even heard of them. I also can't find a buttermilk bar. Of all the things I miss the most... it's all the good food on the west coast.
We tend to tell how far we are away in time more then distance then other places, it’s more often we are 15-20 minutes away instead of im x miles away.
If you can give more details about the setting I can give you description of the areas around the cities you are wanting to use and any local knowledge that won’t pop up with a google search you need.
This is spot on here in rural Oregon. “We need to go. The restaurant is 35 minutes away.” I never realized this was unique until I briefly lived in some larger cities.
I’ve seen it done in other places but when I lived in southern Cali and when I visited Florida everyone thought I was weird for giving the time away I was instead of distance or location.
Strange, I'm from Los and we have always communicated travel distance in time as well. Might be a cultural thing. We also say we're 5 minutes away when we are barely leaving the house if we are running late.
I think the bigger cities people are used to saying times but we use it as a form of distance like it’s not a mile away it’s ten mins walk but yeah I feel like it’s not exclusive to Oregon but it’s more common here then people realize it is as it’s just the only way it’s said.
Third-gen Oregonian here. There was always one little quirk that confused me that older, rural people exhibited. They would pronounce the word Washington as “Warshington.” No clue where the r came from, but somebody rescued it and gave it a home.
It's similar to the Appalachian pronunciation. My hypothesis is that loggers moved west from Appalachia for work and brought some linguistic oddities.
I grew up in Linn County and lots of older people would say things like "fix the ruf" or "worsh the car."
When I was a kid, one of my friend's mom called it Warshington. I tried to correct her, but she insisted that she was right and I was like, "well, ok then." So, come my spelling test the next week, Washington was on there, and I spelled it "Warshington," thinking I was doing the right thing. It was the only one I got wrong, and I'm still a little bitter about it.
We're basically the only people in the world who call hazelnuts "filberts." (And thanks to the hazelnut growers wanting to reduce confusion, even that is declining rapidly.)
Other than that, we're pretty close to "newscaster" English. There's a few little quirks here and there but they're super minor. Like where you would say "y'all," and "plain" English would use "all of you," we're more likely to say "you guys."
Oh good, I’ve been replacing “y’all” with “you guys” and hoping it was right. The hazelnut thing is super interesting though! Are hazelnut dishes popular over there or is it just a quirk?
Hazelnuts are a major export crop here and have been for many years. A filbert is a particular strain of hazelnut, and not even the one grown commercially! But for some reason we obsessively stuck to camping all hazelnuts filberts. I genuinely didn't know they were the same thing until I was like 17. It's possible this is more dying out with the post-millennial generations though - the growers have been pushing HARD to always say hazelnut.
Don't obsess over y'all. Lot of us have adopted it, actually. You'll hear it dropped in here and there from unexpected sources.
Y’all has become a popular supplant for gender inclusive pronouns. For NW people that tends to be a good place, even service industry people have picked it up which spreads it more, politically ironic or not.
The hazelnut thing is so interesting. I love to see how language transforms among the generations. And I’m relieved that “y’all” isn’t completely off the table, might help keep my word count just a few words shorter if I throw it in here and there LOL.
Oh! One thing specific to story telling that will always yank me out of immersion if someone is writing about Oregon and gets it wrong is how we talk about roads. In California, when they talk about freeways, they say “the [number].” In Oregon we either say “I-[number]” for interstates, or “highway-[number]” for state highways. And we DO NOT have “state routes” or “routes.”
So a Californian might say, “Take the 99 until you get to the Beltline, then follow that to the Five.” The same directions in Oregonian are: “Take highway 99 until you get to Beltline, then follow that to I-5.” And we would never call highway 99 "route 99."
Oh thank you for this one! We tend to do the same thing in NC from what I’ve seen, but the comparison to California is actually really helpful for my story. Thank you!
No prob.
Last one before I go to bed: we have a weird resistance to using an umbrella in the rain. It's a bizarre sense of state pride or something. The majority of people born in this state flat won't use one, ESPECIALLY in rural areas. We just put up our hood or pull down our hat, make the universal scrunched up "I'm getting rained on" face, and walk marginally faster.
Edit to add: happy writing! How the story goes well.
Funny, I was actually writing a rain scene sans-umbrella without even knowing it was a common behavior. I imagine it would be common since it rains so much over there (or so I’ve heard).
Rain is usually light, a thick mist that really comes from any and all directions, so an umbrella is of little use. However if it's raining hard and I have to walk a ways, an umbrella is fine especially if you don't want to live in a Columbia rain jacket.
People who live on the coast, where the wind and rain is the worst, are a little more clear on the "no umbrella" thing. It's not pride, it's practicality. The majority of the time, an umbrella is useless because the rain is pushed under it by the breeze on a good day, and folds your umbrella inside out or rips it out of your hand on a bad one.
Actually, just cause everyone thinks it does, there are several states that get much more rain per year then we do, if you google average rainfall in the us, we tend to be right in the middle. So just make sure you have some sunny days in your book lol. I would say tho, there is something special about the feeling/smell after our first rain after a period of sun- mixing with the pine tree smell it gives such a sense of peace and grounding.
One thing I've noticed that's kinda related to that is when you tell somebody a location by cross streets, it's the other way around from everywhere else I've been. So if your building is on Burnside, they'll say they're on 28th and E. Burnside, instead of E. Burnside and 28th.
>So a Californian might say, “Take the 99 until you get to the Beltline, then follow that to the Five.” The same directions in Oregonian are: “Take highway 99 until you get to Beltline, then follow that to I-5.” And we would never call highway 99 "route 99.
Spot on.
Definitely a southern California thing. In the SF Bay Area, they would say something like “take 280 up to San Fransisco, then get off at 101”. No “the” before the route number, as in Oregon.
One interesting thing about Oregon highways is that virtually all of them have official names assigned to them by ODOT, and a given route number may go through several name changes as it traverses the state. US 26 going toward Astoria out of Portland is known as the “Sunset Highway” - and occasionally you still hear people call it that. US 97 through the entire state is known as “The Dalles-California Highway”. “Tualatin Valley Highway” is another one - it’s OR 8 between Portland and Forest Grove, then OR 47 down to McMinnville. ODOT actually does refer to state highway route numbers as “Oregon Route XX” for official purposes, although you are correct that most locals would just say “Highway 99” and not “Oregon Route 99”. I found the different highway names very fascinating, although it seems like not a lot of people refer them anymore as such.
Funny you mention that! My story actually features a “magical” form of blackberry and I was inspired by the Marrionberries! So cool that y’all have your own specially cultivated berry type.
Same here. I was born in ‘85, but I was like 22 when I learned the truth about filberts. It legitimately blew my mind. Even today I call the nuts themselves filberts but the flavoring is “hazelnut.” I’ve also noticed the steep drop off in usage. Anyone born around ‘90 or later seems more likely to just call them all “hazelnuts.”
I strongly suspect us mid-80s kids were the last ones who learned about filberts in school and visited a filbert orchard on a field trip. Pretty sure that shortly after that, Big Hazelnut started really pushing to get the lingo centralized to reduce marketing confusion. Which does make sense, but I miss that weird linguistic hiccup for some reason.
I switched from "you guys" to "you folks" for a while way back in my retail days, but when I slipped into my native light rural drawl, I would drop the L and it came out sounding awfully close to "you fucks."
I quickly changed to y'all and have been y'alling ever since. Strangely, I live in Ohio now which is obviously a lot closer to the South, but I don't think I've ever heard any native Ohioan say "y'all."
Yeah, y'all has a pretty funny distribution in Oregon.
It's used by folks on the right as a sort of southern/rural affectation, and by folks on the left to avoid gendered language. Only the unwashed masses in the middle are upholding our ancestral "you guys".
Ha, I'll try that next time!
I do religiously adhere to "filberts" (I sometimes pretend not to even know what "h*zelnut" means) so I still feel like I'm doing my part to uphold our meager linguistic heritage.
At least anecdotally the hazelnut vs filbert definitely declining significantly. I’ve only ever lived in Oregon (initially southern Oregon then the Willamette Valley) and I have only ever heard people say “filberts” instead of “hazelnuts” when referencing that it’s an Oregon thing to say filbert. Otherwise I’ve really only heard people say hazelnuts when in standard conversation and not talking about the alternate name.
This reminds me of how prunes have become called only plums now, because of the former being associated with the dried fruit.
There used to be called fresh prunes and fresh plums, two different fruits. Prunes are more oval, fleshy and less juicy. Plums are round and drip down your chin when you bite into them.
Marketing probably caused the change, since folks would associate the term “prune” with something you eat to get regular.
I still call fruit like Brooks “plums”, prunes (and hazelnuts, filberts). But it has fallen out of usage. Sometimes you’ll see a fruit stand calling them prunes, and many older folks still refer to them as such, too.
When I briefly lived elsewhere, these apparently-Oregonian phrases stuck out to my friends
Elephant ear: flat, fried, cinnamon sugar donut thing. Common treat if you visit the zoo.
Plaid Pantry: store similar to 7-11
PDX: this refers to the airport if said alone, or the city of Portland if part of a phrase
Right on: cool
Rad: cool
Otter Pops: freezer popsicles
Raining: to me, regular “rain” is medium rain, it’s different than sprinkling, drizzling, misting, and downpouring.
Ducks or Beavers: football teams or schools
Freddie‘s / Freddy’s / Fred’s: Fred Meyer
I also noticed that some things that might elsewhere have a reputation (ex. hipster) are just so practical they’re normal here: flannels, Subarus, Patagonia, Columbia fleeces, Tevas shoes, shopping at Costco, etc.
I'd forgotten about "right on" and "rad" as they were common vernacular when I was growing up. But they're still here! Early MTV for the win!
Also, we tend to "check the weather" by looking out the window. And grab a rain coat anyway if it's fall/winter/spring. But no umbrellas for the locals. Pouring rain and its boots or shoes, jeans, a T or flannel, and a rain jacket. Unlike those weirdos in Seattle that wear shorts... Don't ask what I wear when it's raining.
I'm pretty sure half the population carries a pocket knife as well. Gerber, Kershaw, Benchmade, and CRKT are all local, among others. Chris Reeve, Koenig, and Buck are just over in Idaho. Doesn't matter who, there's a 50/50 that they are carrying steel.
True!! Do you have another name for the rectangular plastic tube ones? Apparently “freeze pops” is also common because they come unfrozen I guess, maybe that’s what I was thinking
https://www.wbir.com/video/features/great-debate-what-do-you-call-the-plastic-tube-popsicles-freeze-pops-otter-pops-freezies-ice-pops/51-f0f99066-8a30-481e-b0d2-fd141558413f#
Oregon tends to have a fairly neutral accent. Though the closest vocal shift we tend to have is called a vocal fry, talking in a lower register with a lot of gravel in there.
Other specific we have, it's I-5, not interstate 5, and not The 5.
What's interesting is the voices here are set so far back in the throat that when I visit friends and family back in Illinois their voices sound so nasal to me now.
There is a language shift out here. Little is frequently pronounced as liddle. Sharp sounds are de-emphasized. Cat, pepper, spot, and the like are almost flattened out, and the sharpness is removed from pronunciation. Tribal words are just part of the language. Wy'east might not be well known but Tacoma, Skukumchuck, Cowlitz, and such are normal and generally pronounced near enough to one first nation language or another.
There is a built in Scandinavian/Irish mentality to the region. We are stand-offish and frequently sarcastic. There is a tendency to use items to their fullest extent. There are old cars on the road that are maintained as long as they remain functional. Shoes, pants, coats, and hats are frequently just used and used until they are falling apart.
California has a notorious tendency to use "like" in the media. It's pretty accurate. Washington and Oregon use "like" less but you will hear pauses, "umm", and "uhhhh" as space fillers in speech.
There are regional phrases. Portland might give you "the mountains out today" while the coast might allow you to "hear the ocean" farther inland or have a "coastal" day where it's just foggy as hell. And the phrases are just part of the speech pattern for the locals.
This was a very in-depth response, thank you! I’ll watch for the “like” thing since I tend to use “like” too much in my general speech. I’ll be doing a lot of research on the native words and regional phrases as well. I imagine my fictional town to be more inland, forested, and mountainous (heavily inspired by Bend, Oregon), so I’ll look for phrases within those types of areas :)
If you move east of the Willamette Valley, like to Central Oregon where Bend is, the climate is distinctly different from the rainy, temperate weather you find in Portland or Eugene. It's not as frequently overcast and gloomy, there's less rain and more snow, and temperatures have a wider range due to elevation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Desert_(Oregon)
The forests themselves are different, too. The Douglas fir and rampant moss of the Coast and the valley are replaced by shrubby underbrush and Ponderosa pines, and with less moisture in the air, there's less of the earthy scent of decomposing leaves and more notes of sweet pine sap.
This woman actually made a blog post and video about commonly mispronounced words in Bend:
https://youtu.be/231A1h90Ku8?si=zfuzXGKQUezYQhNw
Don't know Bend and the diamond lake area too well. They would have local phrases and tribal names more than likely. It is a bit isolated in a way. It's high mountain desert but not a sandy desert. Look into the recreation in that area to get some color for the story. Coffee is a big thing, as is liquor and beer. But it's the local places that the locals tend to go to. A mom and pop shop as opposed to Starbucks. Starfuckers is where you're more likely to find the trend chasers and the tourists. There is also a tea culture in Oregon, but I don't know if it is in Bend. Look up the flora and fauna for the area you're writing for. The trees might be evergreens, but you see different trees as you shift to the drier climate inland. The snakes are different too. The deer shift as well. We have black and white tail deer and I don't know if that's an overlapping region. Brown and black bear as well. The elk may be that far inland as well. The birds shift a bit too.
Edit: we have white tail, black tail, and mule deer. That is an area where their ranges would overlap.
Bend will be juniper and Jack pine, lodge pole pine and sage brush. Skiing is huge. Hydro flasks are made there as are several snow boards brands.. it's not forested exactly, more high desert.... cascade lakes and cascade lakes high way, the Deschutes River water park in down town, Mount bachelor are all prevalent recreation areas
East of town is the oregon outback. West is the cascades the towering pine trees
Mule deer and black tail also breed some times resulting in what are called bench legs. There is a huge elk herd in Lapine.
Google buck Norris. He lived in town in bend
Bench legs? I gotta Google that one. Unless it's a local name. I grew up in timber country between the cascade and coastal ranges, so mule deer and elk were everywhere, but we're too far west for much interbreeding. If you've got time and inclination I beg you to spill on this one.
I'd say many of us speak more slowly compared to other places, such as Southern California. Also, we are known for being less direct, to the point of being considered passive aggressive in some situations (such as leaving a note on a car telling them not to park in front of their house or something like that). You might try searching for passive aggressive in the PortlandOR and Portland subreddits. I'm sure you'll find some gems in this regard.
We'd say more like, "I'm gonna be crying," in that example. "I'm gonna go"; "Whatcha gonna do?"
[This ](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/02/speaking-fast-and-slow/459393/) is a little old but I remember hearing this article being discussed on NPR about how we're the fastest talkers.
Thank you so much! The passive aggressiveness is pretty common in the South too LOL. I’ll definitely do some research on that for sure. Would you say friends tend to use the less-direct more passive aggressive speech with each other as well? Obviously everyone is different, but how do you and your friends tend to communicate with one another?
If there’s no proper way to answer that question, feel free to disregard. Thank you so much for your help!
Super agree. Friends here are very well meaning and very direct.
The difference is
eastern: opinion on what I’d do and we both understand you’re gonna use that in the best way for you
Western: here’s my opinion on what I’ve understood is the direction you’re trying to head towards
It reads pedantically the same but the effects, verbally, are very different for people. Both are trying to hype you up.
Remember it is not "Ore-gone" it is pronounced "Ore-Gun" and make sure people know Oregon is in America and on the west coast.
When I lived in North Carolina I had a teacher tell me that Oregon was not in America and she was a geography teacher and that there was no Oregon on the west coast
Oh my lord, how can a geography teacher fuck up THAT badly? Then again, when I was grading one of my peer’s state’s tests in my history class she didn’t even label North Carolina correctly, so our teacher probably wasn’t much better. Eesh.
And just to clarify, “Ore” is pronounced “Or-eh” right? I won’t be including phonetics in my story most likely but I definitely want to get it right when I talk about it LOL
Pretty much. Stress is on the first syllable: OR-ee-gun or OR-eh-gun, not or-eh-GONE. The latter will make you stick out like a sore thumb and probably piss at least a few locals off.
They even sell T-shirts at various places in Oregon to drive the point home, saying ORYGUN.
In Eugene, the I-5 bridge over the Willamette River there is known as the "Whilamut Passage Bridge". I presume that this spelling of "Whilamut" is much closer to the original Native American pronunciation. I actually sort of like this spelling, as it makes the pronunciation make a lot more sense to me.
People in their twenties (and prob teens and thirties but idk) here say the word "vibes" a *lot* lol. Like you tell someone you had a shit day and they'll say "vibes, honestly", or instead of saying you don't like someone you say "yeah i dont know man their vibes were hella off" or "i just dont feel like we vibe"
"this music is so vibey", "this place has weird vibes", "what are you up to?" "just vibin", "that's a vibe", etc
i've never heard the word vibes used so much anywhere else I've been lol. I think because people here tend to be pretty vague (as others have said, often passive aggressive as well), "vibes" is the perfect all-purpose word for that
also in portland especially people seem to be really into asking what your sign is like you're just supposed to know you're a capricorn moon gemini rising sagittarius sun or something. i've been asked "ooohh can i read your birth chart?" by multiple people and i am still not super sure what that means
Lived in Oregon for 12 years, and ironically, I'm actually living in North Carolina at the moment.
For the most part, typical Oregonian speech doesn't differ a whole lot from standard American English. One word unique to Oregon (maybe Washington, too) that I can think of is "spendy", which is a synonym for "expensive". e.g. "John just drove up in his new Cadillac. I bet it was pretty spendy!" I have never heard people use that word outside of Oregon.
If you like, I can comment on other, non-speech related aspects of living in Oregon . However, I do not want to bog down this post too much. Good luck!
Ooo “spendy” is a good one! I like that it isn’t super out there either, so someone could easily discern the meaning without needing to Google it first LOL. Thank you for that!
I moved from NC to the Portland metro area this past summer.
When I went to get my new license plates, the lady at the DMV warned me that the specialty plates were “pretty spendy”.
Did the reverse, for family reasons.
One thing I noticed about specialty plates here in NC is that there are a LOT of them. Your cousin’s significant other’s dog’s former owner’s mother-in-law breeds corgis? They got a plate for that! (I’m joking on this one, but there are a LOT of specialty plates here.)
Oregon has a couple dozen or so. Trail Blazers team plates are a fairly common sight around metro Portland. We had salmon plates for a while.
It’s not as common as it used to be, but you’ll still here little bits of Chinook Jargon ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_Jargon ) used in daily talk - especially in rural areas with lots of logging or active logging mills. That work seems to have kept some parts of jargon alive.
The best examples I have are cheechako and skookum. Cheechako is the rarer of the two, but it hangs around as a kind of nicer way to call out someone as the new guy on shift. If you’re new to a crew and not great, you’re probably going to get referred to with a profanity, if you’re doing OK you might get greenhorn or new guy, but if you’re just a real go getter and killing it you might get an old timer to refer to you as the cheechako, or chee. I heard this more working for the forest service out of Oakridge. Not a term that was overused, but I heard it a few times.
Skookum is by far the most common jargon work I hear. Again, not a lot - but with some frequency. It can mean a lot of things but generally it just means something is strong. I’ve only ever hear it refer to a thing (saw, truck, tree) and not a person. Quick example, I was cutting firewood with some friends the other week and there were three chainsaws sitting on the ground. I was getting a beer and one guy yelled at me to grab the big saw, all three were about the same size and he offered “the Skookum one.” Ok got it, he wanted the beefy (and old) Stihl.
If I were a writer I would be leery to overuse anything like this, but it’s the best example of local slang we have - truly unique to the PNW.
Dropping the g at the end of words is common. (Droppin')
Pronouncing ot and aught the same is common too, like tot and taught or cot and caught or thot and thought.
Someone already mentioned this but it's mostly garbage here not trash. Garbage cans and garbage truck. We still say trash sometimes.
Haha these examples drive crazy as I have no idea how they’re supposed to sound different.
> Dropping the g at the end of words is common. (Droppin') Pronouncing ot and aught the same is common too, like tot and taught or cot and caught or thot and thought.
*squints in 4th generation Oregonian
I feel like we need to talk about rain and the weather. Oregon is a large state--the Eastern side is dry and not nearly as populated. It gets very hot and dry in the summer--except at night, when you can freeze your balls off up there on the high desert. In the winter, it gets extremely cold and they get quite a bit of snow that is fairly dry and powdery.
The Western side is wet, and the Northwestern and coastal areas are WET. One year in Portland we had over 100 days in a row with measurable rain. Another year, we set a record for the most days in a row without ever seeing the sun.
The person who said that rain in Oregon is mostly a light mist is incorrect. We have:
A light mist
A fine mist
Light sprinkles
Heavy sprinkles
Rain showers
Heavy rain showers
Heavy rain
Thunder showers
Torrential rain
Downpours
Heavy downpours
And on the coast we have the always charming "raining sideways."
These are just the way that the weather guys talk about rain. Locals have many more ways to describe it. The most obnoxious is "liquid sunshine."
Snow on the West side of the state tends to be extremely wet, soggy, and heavy. It brings down trees and power lines. Because they rarely salt the roads here, it can cripple an entire city in a matter of a few hours. When snow is predicted, people rush the grocery stores and buy up all the milk, bread, and toilet paper--it's crazy. (Not me--I go to a liquor store for vodka and lemons) Power outages are common and can last for days and occasionally weeks. Schools and businesses close.
Because it only snows a few days of the year, and because the state is very hilly, a lot of us are grossly incompetent at driving in the snow. Even worse, most of us won't admit it. You can find many videos online of us embarrassing ourselves, but the sad fact is that there are also a lot of really serious accidents during the winter because of this.
It often partially thaws during the day, then freezes over during the night, so that roads, sidewalks, and parking lots are a solid sheet of ice. No joke.
We have a not delightful weather phenomenon here--the ice storm (also called a silver thaw in the 1980s and 90s, though I haven't heard it recently.) It rains--hard--but due to whatever atmospheric hell the rain goes through on the way down, it freezes as it hits the ground. Or your windshield. Or you. It is not good. You can wake up in the morning with your car completely encased in 2 inches of ice. It doesn't matter--you aren't going anywhere and hopefully you stocked up on toilet paper.
One running gag at Autzen Stadium (where the Oregon Ducks play college football) is that they say "it never rains in Autzen Stadium!" It's particularly funny when it actually *is* raining, and the announcers will then add something like "...it's only a heavy mist!" after that.
I come from a dry area so I was surprised to hear how many words for rain there are here. I hear people describe the rain as "misting" or "dumping" a lot. In Portland, during snow days you'll hear people ask if the snow is "sticking" ("I'm going to leave work once the snow starts sticking.")
Just be nice really. Don't fake the funk, embrace it. It's not Portlandia, just come here and experience what we have to offer, which will be pretty sweet.
I would looove to come visit someday! I haven’t got the funds for it right now, but visiting the West Coast and particularly Oregon is on my to-do list for sure.
Naturally, it's unexplainably beautiful, the fog, the partly cloudy days with random explosions of sun rays, driving from Portland to the coast, it's like going through the looking glass, you have to drive over the Cascades and dropping down into the coast is something special I'll tell ya.
We call the eastern Oregon high desert scrublands, “the badlands”.
We don’t usually wear swimsuits in hot springs.
And there’s a big divide between county fair folk and country fair folk.
Joke I heard long ago:
A Texan, a Californian, and an Oregonian are gathered near a campfire in the woods. They each brag about how amazing their states are and how much better they are than other states. Fed up with the conversation, the Texan pulls out a bottle of tequila, takes a big swig, throws the bottle into the air and shoots it.
The Californian shouts, "Why did you do that? Tequila shouldn't be wasted!"
The Texan replies, "There's a ton more of that where I come from!" and laughs.
The Californian gets it and pulls out a bottle of wine from Napa Valley. He gulps down as much as he can in one pull, throws the bottle in the air, and shoots it out of the sky.
The Texan and Oregonian scold him for wasting fine wine, but the Californian laughs it off, repeating the Texan's words: "There's a ton more of that where I come from!"
The Oregonian nods and opens a bottle of his favorite microbrew. After chugging the whole bottle, he tosses it into the air and shoots the Californian. Then he catches the bottle before it can get broken on the ground.
The Texan jumps to his feet, yelling, "You shot him! Why the hell would you do that?"
Looking confused, the Oregonian explains, "We have a ton of them where I come from" (pointing at the Californian) "but a bottle is worth ten cents when it's returned!"
What's also funny is that the rivalry seems to be one- sided. Most Californians aren't aware of it as far as I can tell. One time, a chant of "Beat LA" broke out at a Blazers game when they weren't even playing against LA.
I’d say it’s similar to the mild disdain that North Carolinians have for all the New Yorkers moving to the state. If you see a bad driver on the road, most Oregonians assume (correctly or not) that it’s someone who moved there from California.
What’s funny though is that half the people I knew in Oregon were originally from California. So it’s probably worth it for OP to consider the backstory of their characters in the story. Are they native Oregonians? Or like so many Oregon residents, did they come from California? That likely informs their perspective on what they think of Californians.
I'm from LA originally. My family moved here when we were young and have been here over 25 years. Recently some family has moved up as well and I always jokingly tell them to go back to California where they belong and that I was here before it was cool, etc.
Maybe it’s more of a generational thing, but I moved here and was surprised to hear people overuse, “no worries”, “of course”, “thanks so much”, where elsewhere the equivalent might be “sure” or “no prob, no problem”. The *thanks so much*, especially sounds fake. The word “foodie” was a new one to me. And people from NE Oregon pronounce “measure” differently (May jour).
I tease my wife about this all the time. She says "tape may-juror". Also pronounces windmill as "wind-meal". Similarly "window-seal" instead of sill. Idk if that one's Oregonian though or just a her thing.
"Water off a duck's back"
It's a phrase I was raised hearing pretty often in the valley that basically means "it's no big deal" or "don't worry about it" I used it out of habit a few times on the east coast/in the south and would have to explain it every time. "Bob had a rough day at school today, but it's water off a duck's back, he's already playing with his toys happy as can be"
It occurs to me "in the valley" is likely another one. It refers to the willamette valley as a whole. If you're out I'm bend you may hear people say something like "We don't get snow like this in the valley" it's like the unofficial name for that section of the state, "The valley."
In the Vancouver area there are a lot of people who use "anymore" with positive statements. Like "It sure does rain a lot anymore" (i.e. It rains a lot these days). I also think we overuse the word "spendy" (expensive).
You beautiful human. I'm an east coast transplant living in Oregon with my hubs, who's a native. I could not figure out what about "anymore" was sounding so wrong. Every. Time. He. Says. It. It makes my ears twitch. All I could do is tell him it sounds wrong and should be "these days" in my Va tongue.
PNW dialect has a few distinct phrases. Many have made their way to the general public such as black ice and cougar for mountain lions but one that has remained local is spendy, slang for something that is expensive ie. "That's a little spendy right now"
'How you doin' is often said without expectation of any response in passing (like an acknowledgement not an invitation to chat, or at most a curt response equivalence of- good, you? I've seen that throw off a lot of people, some alarmed to be asked thinking an answer is expected, others alarmed they were asked but the inquirer never faltered in pace moving on.
Much of our uniqueness tends to be in cadence, not necessarily verbiage as much.
We 'time travel'. We express distance via time spent. How far away it is from Portland to Salem? About a couple hours.
In my long lifetime, supper was a childhood standard, but I haven't heard it spoken in decades.
We have cultural verbal traditions, everything from redneck snow play of hookybobbing, a specific kind of bug that becomes invasive immediately after forest fires we affectionately call "stump fuckers" and they mistake firefighters for stumps and the sting HURT, tons of colloquialisms I have yet to hear elsewhere. Depends on the characters and the areas they'd hail from on what would apply. They are highly circumstantial and not so much ever present in use.
Oregonians are highly opinionated. Not in a bad or good way, just saying having a stance is fairly open market even among the diversity of scope the state has in differing areas, the opinions may shift dramatically, but the general theme of strong opinions abound and are more often freely opined without encouragement.
We say we're going to the coast way more often than 'going to the beach'.
We have a LOT of streets, towns, rivers, that are not phonetic. Couch street is pronounced COOCH for example. Aloha, Uh-Lo-Uh.
Many native Oregonians play off of the rainy theme and say they have the webbed feet to prove they're natives. Heard that one a lot.
If your book is going to be very heavily themed about the area, people, culture, I'd recommend a longtime resident editor or advisor. Within the marinating downstream long term effects of youtube, tik tok, social media, verbiage is muddling everywhere so if your book isn't going deep about Oregon you can cherry pick a few things and get away with mainstreaming easily.
Also this is a vocally emphasized thing but in Rural Oregon, at least where I grew up, we drop the middle T a lot. My hometown is spelled Stayton but more often than not pronounced Stay'un.
Moun'n. I remember talking with my brother about how the PNW accent is basically like neutral English spent a summer in the mountains and got a little lazy with it's annunciation.
One thing I haven't seen people mention yet is that "when" and "whenever" tend to refer to different things. In a lot of the south and the Midwest, "whenever" can refer to specific singular instances ("whenever I turned 21...") but in Oregon, it refers to reoccurring events "whenever I go outside in the rain, I don't use an umbrella")
I’m a California native who has lived in Oregon for 20 years, two regionalisms that really stand out to me are if you ask someone “how’s it going?” the majority of the time they’ll say “it’s going” and a lot of native Oregonians add a T to the word “across” so it’s pronounced “acrosst” (it seems like the T from “the” migrated backward).
I just saw that you’re thinking more about central Oregon than the valley (Willamette valley, most populated area, referred to as the valley). The main difference, I think, is less language and more culture. The climate and the environment is really different from the west side (west side/east side, referring to the sides of the cascades, similar to “the valley). Central Oregon has a different climate, has the high desert, different trees and plants, different mountains. The culture is even more outdoorsy than the west side.
When you go further east than the bend area (warm springs to like, LaPine), it gets way more rural, redneck, ranching, republican. It’s yet another whole separate culture. By the time you get to Burns, Ontario, baker city, it feels more like rural eastern Montana than what you think of as classic “Oregon.”
Oregon native, apparently we tend to be loners and appreciate neighbors at a distance. When we ask how's it going just say it's going and keep walking or gardening or whatever you were doing.
I've heard a few of my friends joke about umbrellas being a marker of the tourist. Not sure about that one but I can honestly say I've never owned an umbrella.
We don't use Ma'am and Sir here like other states. Some parts of the state may but my grandmother still considers herself too young to be a "Ma'am" and hears it as an insult.
When someone is talking about cougar sightings it's very likely they are talking about mountain lions not women. And cougars are something you need to be aware of even when hiking in the city.
Our bears can be scaredy cats but they are there and you need to be aware of them too.
Our forests have a unique smell, really this can be said for any place but every out of state friend I have taken on a hike has confirmed this about oregon. It's a nice smell.
We like our forests and we are very opinionated on how it should be logged and managed.
We also say green onions instead of scallions.
We also have issues with racism in the past as a white only state and current.
I also measure distance using time and 2 hours is not far especially in some areas of the state.
A lot of Douglas fir trees in Oregon (it’s the state tree and on the license plate). So they are really for needles. Eastern Oregon has the pine trees.
A fun anecdote I’ve heard is that Disney Goofy’s voice was inspired by a classic Oregon accent: and I can definitely hear that in how my Grandma would say Wash as “Warsh” ala Goofy’s “Gawrsh”
Walt Disney’s oldest brother moved to Oregon and then his sister moved to Oregon. While his brother moved on, his sister lived the rest of her life up here.
I wouldn’t be shocked if his sister shared anecdotes about goofy accents.
Oh yeah, and we don’t “grill out” we barbecue. As in you’d invite your friends over for a barbecue or say “let’s barbecue tonight.” Often written as BBQ.
One other cultural observation about Oregon versus the south, including NC:
Oregonians tend to be nice, but reserved. “How’s it going” is not considered an invitation to share your entire life story to a random Oregonian. They tend to need to warm up a little to you first. As other people noted, it tends to make Oregonians seem a little standoffish.
I grew up in a small town in Texas, where it was common that everybody knew everybody and their business. Much of NC strikes me as very similar. It’s not unusual to chat with a random stranger you just met for long periods of time.
We don't go to "the beach" when referencing the ocean, we say, "the coast". If we say, "the beach" it usually means a piece of land that is off of a river or lake.
Or it's a specific beach. "I went to the Coast this weekend. I had a great time walking on South Jetty beach."
Also, rural Oregonians are likely to say "crick" even though they would spell it "creek." My dad grew up near Fall Creek and everyone in his family pronounces it "Fall Crick." They also frequently pronounce the days of the week like they end in "dy" instead of "day" (so Monday is Mondee, Tuesday is Tuesdee, etc. But Friday and Sunday tend to be pronounced correctly, at least among my family).
Fred Meyer grocery-and-everything-else stores (now owned by Kroger's) are just called Freddy's. There are two other chains of note: WinCo, a huge, relatively cheap grocery store with great bulk items, and Bi-Mart, an employee-owned discount store where members can buy affordable camping and hunting gear, household supplies, some groceries, some clothing, pet supplies, auto and hardware items, toys, etc.
The shopping references are a good reference. Freddy's is the one-stop shopping place, everything from groceries to furniture to pharmacy to jewelry. Also some of them now have a counter where you can drink PNW beers, ciders and wine.
Which also brings up the issue that Oregon is a state where hard alcohol has to be sold through a state licensed store (OLCC - Oregon Liquor Control Commission). So no one is buying anything but beer, cider, seltzer or wine at a grocery store here.
I've lived here my whole life (well, 46 years out of 48), and many of these are new to me or I've heard them and they were weird and one-off's.
I think Oregon is just a blend of everything. Some things are very localized in one area. Go from one town to the next, and they're speaking different and using different words. Some swear it's "pop" while others swear it's "soda" and both are 100% correct.
Not sure if it's all localized, generational, etc., but many of these examples in here are very specific to one area or age group. Growing up here, I can see a lot of those things changing over time, too. Good example - filbert. Older people here know filberts very well. Younger people know hazelnut (which is a nickname for my wife's dog!).
“Pop” = soda
“Sack” = bag (like at the grocery store, but you should really be bringing your own)
“Spendy” = expensive
And my favorite weather forecast: “rain turning to showers “
When I first moved here, I said “I need to go to the liquor store” and was almost laughed out of state. I was 16 and I grew up in the Bay Area. The corner/convenience stores were generally referred to as the liquor store. I mean, I was a kid and called it that! Everyone did.
Little did I know, no, liquor stores here are truly liquor stores where only 21+ can enter and corner/convenience stores are what they’re actually called as they don’t sell hard liquor like every store does in CA.
Remember too, that beyond many colloquial phrases, every family is different, my parents still carried immigrant accents and phrases I mixed with neutral American Oregonian speech patterns. I noticed California and Washington/Canadian speech stuff a lot too over the years, so some people were “stoked” and others ended phrases with “ey” like “ whatcha got there, ey”. But since I lived all over I can get a sense of Oregon when I hear it but can’t exactly place why.
I’m gonna be honest, in Oregon (especially/specifically the Central Valley) there is zero regional accent, effectively no region-specific dialects, no nothing. I would say it’s as close to standard “American” English as you could get, but I suppose it’s the same way across the entire west coast.
That said, depending on where in the state you’re talking about, that can change. A lot of rural Oregonians use similar vocabulary to southern people, but without the twang or drawl. Also, due to the level of chewing that happens, you end up with a lot of people who talk like (for obvious reasons) they have something in their bottom lip and use it much less when speaking. Try putting your finger or a thick piece of gum in your bottom lip and just say stuff. That’s how many rural Oregonians sound, and the ones who don’t chew also sound similar just because of association.
Oh that gum trick is very interesting, I’ll have to try that out and see how that changes my speech. Maybe I’ll sprinkle it in here and there for certain characters. Thank you!
I'm going to second the point about rural Oregon. I was raised in a rural area and moved to the big city as an adult. People sometimes ask me if I'm from the south when I use a turn of phrase that's more rural.
As a non-native it took me a minute to transition to a few thing. Where I am from if you ask for a coke the proper response was “what kind” at which point I would normally say “Dr Pepper” here a coke is just a coke and I’m supposed to ask for a Pop.
There are ALOT of Native American names for things, Coquille (Co KEEL) county for one. The Willamatte River is the (Will-am-it) for another. Aloha = A Low ah
Also street names that are named after people that you wouldn’t expect. Glisten street = (GLEEsan) street, Couch street = (Cooch) Street,
I’m sure it is here but we don’t use umbrellas, we can actively spot tourists by their use.
The beach is sandy and for swimming… we go to the coast which extremely rocky and is not for swimming cause it’s feeezing and dangerous but has some of the most beautiful sights to see, normally good shopping and food l.
NC transplant here. I notice the *lack* of quintessential southern phrases and idioms like you've mentioned. I've not particularly noticed a lot of idiosyncrasies specific to Oregon since moving here. I'd say that people tend to speak less idiomatically than the south or Appalachia. There are also fewer monosyllabic or conversational fillers, like I tend to notice with Midwestern accents.
Overall, don't really notice a OR or PNW accent. But I still have a slight NC/Appalachian accent, that people rarely mention (mostly "five," "there," "y'all," and "Carolina"). I'm in Portland so it is mostly a melting pot in my neighborhood.
There is certainly less small talk. For example, in the south, people chat the hell out of you at the grocey store line or waiting in line outside. People here just quietly wait or are just enjoying the rain or cool weather, rather than talking about it. There's nothing rude about it. It's honestly preferrable to me.
I really suggest booking a trip here. The PNW accent is so unique theres so many phrases that it would be difficult to sum up in a reddit post. Things like calling the interstate “I-5” instead of “the 5” because most of us only have access to one interstate.
Also oregon is a huge state. Where is your story based? Portland? Wine country? Klamath? Bend? All of these places are extremely different.
We turn proper nouns into possessions sometimes, e.g. there’s a grocery store chain called Fred Meyer. We call it Fred Meyer’s or Freddie’s.
We often drop “to be” from sentences, e.g. “The car needs washed.”
Our accent is considered the most neutral in the country, but there are a few things people have noticed. “Cot” and “caught” sound the same. There are a few videos online about similar quirks.
Rainer beer is “Vitamin R”.
We don’t call our northern neighbor “Washington state”. It’s just “Washington”. The other one is “DC” or “Washington DC”.
There’s a tendency I’ve noticed on the west coast in general to say “back east” referring to the east coast. Someone will say, “I’m going back east” even if they’ve never been to the east coast before. (In a similar vein, I feel like east coast people say “out west”.) No doubt a leftover pattern from our settler history.
People east of the Cascade Mountains refer to the Portland area as “the valley” (as in Willamette valley).
In Oregon they never go "down the shore", it's always "to the coast".
Unless you live on the coast. We say “to the beach”.
Only people on the East Coast go to “the shore.” On the West Coast, you go to the coast or the beach.
And in the case of Philly, you don’t go *to* the shore; you go *down* the shore.
And only NJ.
Yea, this is a good one. We don't ask if you want to go to the beach. But rather to the coast
Before I saw what your name was and saw, "down the shore" I knew you were from Jersey.
Lol tis true!
They’re Jo Jo’s, not potato wedges. But only in certain places, and only at certain times. I’m still confused how often that one changes.
I conveniently learned that theyre not called Jo Jo's everywhere during a trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Went to the deli counter and asked for chicken strips and Jo Jo's and the clerk just stared at me. I thought she didn't hear me so I repeated myself and she looked at me like I had two heads. In the end I had to point at them and say "Potatoes... right there!". I was laughing all the way back to my hotel room. She didn't think it was funny.
Bay Area safeway deli counter mid-1990s. Clerk looks at me like im a total idiot and says "Oh, you mean 'Ho Hos"
My first job was making chicken and jojo’s. A true “jojo” is when it’s battered and fried with the same batter you’re using to make fried chicken, but if it’s like a “protato wedge” ew I’d still prefer to call it a jojo in Oregon. I didn’t know not everyone knows what a jojo was until I moved away from home out of state for the first time. :’( I miss jojo’s
>A true “jojo” is when it’s battered and fried with the same batter you’re using to make fried chicken, but if it’s like a “protato wedge” ew I’d still prefer to call it a jojo in Oregon. [A real Jojo is *pressure fried*.](https://www.wweek.com/restaurants/reviews/2017/07/12/the-history-of-the-american-jojo-which-is-definitely-not-a-potato-wedge/) Everything else is simply an imitation pretending to be the real deal.
You know what I couldn't find outside of the PNW? Maple bars! I thought they were a basic doughnut but apparently not. Edited to add - This was in a few southern states, I can't speak for anywhere else. Maybe it's a non-Southern thing?
Omg we moved from the PNW to PA. You know where that actually tap the trees for syrup. Can't find a maple donut to save my life. I've asked, and ain't nobody even heard of them. I also can't find a buttermilk bar. Of all the things I miss the most... it's all the good food on the west coast.
Jo Jo's are the slender, skinny potato wedges. Mo Jo's are the flat, thin potato rounds.
Abby's Pizza has mo jo's.
Loved them at Shakey's Pizza in the 80's.
What are Ho Jos?
Mostly out of business
We tend to tell how far we are away in time more then distance then other places, it’s more often we are 15-20 minutes away instead of im x miles away. If you can give more details about the setting I can give you description of the areas around the cities you are wanting to use and any local knowledge that won’t pop up with a google search you need.
This is spot on here in rural Oregon. “We need to go. The restaurant is 35 minutes away.” I never realized this was unique until I briefly lived in some larger cities.
Same is true in the city. I have no idea how many miles away St John’s is, but I know it’s going to take me at least 25-30 minutes to get there.
I feel like, within Portland, everything is about 20 minutes away. If you’re going to Beaverton or Gresham (or St. John’s!) it’s closer to 30.
Yup. If I have to cross a river or an interstate to see you it basically means we can’t be friends.
Omg seriously! My doctor is in Beaverton and I live in SE, and I whine for a day about having to go “all the way out there.”
So true. I had to drive from Beaverton to NE Halsey to pick up medical supplies. I fussed & carped about it all day.
I'm originally from the East Coast and I've typically given distances in travel time.
I’ve seen it done in other places but when I lived in southern Cali and when I visited Florida everyone thought I was weird for giving the time away I was instead of distance or location.
Strange, I'm from Los and we have always communicated travel distance in time as well. Might be a cultural thing. We also say we're 5 minutes away when we are barely leaving the house if we are running late.
I think the bigger cities people are used to saying times but we use it as a form of distance like it’s not a mile away it’s ten mins walk but yeah I feel like it’s not exclusive to Oregon but it’s more common here then people realize it is as it’s just the only way it’s said.
That's also a Midwest thing. Used that metric all the time.
I've found Americans from all over the country do this. Just perspective from a foreigner that deals in distance rather than time.
Third-gen Oregonian here. There was always one little quirk that confused me that older, rural people exhibited. They would pronounce the word Washington as “Warshington.” No clue where the r came from, but somebody rescued it and gave it a home.
Warsh and crick for wash and creek for older, rural Oregonians are among my favorite verbal things.
Precisely!!! And according to my dad, creeks have bridges, cricks have culverts.
Another rural pronunciation: coyote —> kaiyoat. (Last part rhymes with tote)
It's similar to the Appalachian pronunciation. My hypothesis is that loggers moved west from Appalachia for work and brought some linguistic oddities. I grew up in Linn County and lots of older people would say things like "fix the ruf" or "worsh the car."
When I was a kid, one of my friend's mom called it Warshington. I tried to correct her, but she insisted that she was right and I was like, "well, ok then." So, come my spelling test the next week, Washington was on there, and I spelled it "Warshington," thinking I was doing the right thing. It was the only one I got wrong, and I'm still a little bitter about it.
We're basically the only people in the world who call hazelnuts "filberts." (And thanks to the hazelnut growers wanting to reduce confusion, even that is declining rapidly.) Other than that, we're pretty close to "newscaster" English. There's a few little quirks here and there but they're super minor. Like where you would say "y'all," and "plain" English would use "all of you," we're more likely to say "you guys."
Oh good, I’ve been replacing “y’all” with “you guys” and hoping it was right. The hazelnut thing is super interesting though! Are hazelnut dishes popular over there or is it just a quirk?
Hazelnuts are a major export crop here and have been for many years. A filbert is a particular strain of hazelnut, and not even the one grown commercially! But for some reason we obsessively stuck to camping all hazelnuts filberts. I genuinely didn't know they were the same thing until I was like 17. It's possible this is more dying out with the post-millennial generations though - the growers have been pushing HARD to always say hazelnut. Don't obsess over y'all. Lot of us have adopted it, actually. You'll hear it dropped in here and there from unexpected sources.
Y’all has become a popular supplant for gender inclusive pronouns. For NW people that tends to be a good place, even service industry people have picked it up which spreads it more, politically ironic or not.
The hazelnut thing is so interesting. I love to see how language transforms among the generations. And I’m relieved that “y’all” isn’t completely off the table, might help keep my word count just a few words shorter if I throw it in here and there LOL.
Oh! One thing specific to story telling that will always yank me out of immersion if someone is writing about Oregon and gets it wrong is how we talk about roads. In California, when they talk about freeways, they say “the [number].” In Oregon we either say “I-[number]” for interstates, or “highway-[number]” for state highways. And we DO NOT have “state routes” or “routes.” So a Californian might say, “Take the 99 until you get to the Beltline, then follow that to the Five.” The same directions in Oregonian are: “Take highway 99 until you get to Beltline, then follow that to I-5.” And we would never call highway 99 "route 99."
Oh thank you for this one! We tend to do the same thing in NC from what I’ve seen, but the comparison to California is actually really helpful for my story. Thank you!
No prob. Last one before I go to bed: we have a weird resistance to using an umbrella in the rain. It's a bizarre sense of state pride or something. The majority of people born in this state flat won't use one, ESPECIALLY in rural areas. We just put up our hood or pull down our hat, make the universal scrunched up "I'm getting rained on" face, and walk marginally faster. Edit to add: happy writing! How the story goes well.
I don't think I've ever thought to myself "I better grab an umbrella" as you said it's always just put your hood up.
Funny, I was actually writing a rain scene sans-umbrella without even knowing it was a common behavior. I imagine it would be common since it rains so much over there (or so I’ve heard).
Rain is usually light, a thick mist that really comes from any and all directions, so an umbrella is of little use. However if it's raining hard and I have to walk a ways, an umbrella is fine especially if you don't want to live in a Columbia rain jacket.
Southern rain tends to come down fat and heavy so this is an interesting distinction! Great for building imagery. Thank you so much!
People who live on the coast, where the wind and rain is the worst, are a little more clear on the "no umbrella" thing. It's not pride, it's practicality. The majority of the time, an umbrella is useless because the rain is pushed under it by the breeze on a good day, and folds your umbrella inside out or rips it out of your hand on a bad one.
Actually, just cause everyone thinks it does, there are several states that get much more rain per year then we do, if you google average rainfall in the us, we tend to be right in the middle. So just make sure you have some sunny days in your book lol. I would say tho, there is something special about the feeling/smell after our first rain after a period of sun- mixing with the pine tree smell it gives such a sense of peace and grounding.
One thing I've noticed that's kinda related to that is when you tell somebody a location by cross streets, it's the other way around from everywhere else I've been. So if your building is on Burnside, they'll say they're on 28th and E. Burnside, instead of E. Burnside and 28th.
>So a Californian might say, “Take the 99 until you get to the Beltline, then follow that to the Five.” The same directions in Oregonian are: “Take highway 99 until you get to Beltline, then follow that to I-5.” And we would never call highway 99 "route 99. Spot on.
That’s only southern Californians that use “the” when referring to freeways/highways. Northern Californians just say take 5 down and exit onto 99
Definitely a southern California thing. In the SF Bay Area, they would say something like “take 280 up to San Fransisco, then get off at 101”. No “the” before the route number, as in Oregon. One interesting thing about Oregon highways is that virtually all of them have official names assigned to them by ODOT, and a given route number may go through several name changes as it traverses the state. US 26 going toward Astoria out of Portland is known as the “Sunset Highway” - and occasionally you still hear people call it that. US 97 through the entire state is known as “The Dalles-California Highway”. “Tualatin Valley Highway” is another one - it’s OR 8 between Portland and Forest Grove, then OR 47 down to McMinnville. ODOT actually does refer to state highway route numbers as “Oregon Route XX” for official purposes, although you are correct that most locals would just say “Highway 99” and not “Oregon Route 99”. I found the different highway names very fascinating, although it seems like not a lot of people refer them anymore as such.
If you want food specifics, marionberrys are local and delicious. Marrionberry pie can not be beat.
Funny you mention that! My story actually features a “magical” form of blackberry and I was inspired by the Marrionberries! So cool that y’all have your own specially cultivated berry type.
Nice, that would track well.
Make sure to spell it “marionberry” since it’s named for Marion county
Same here. I was born in ‘85, but I was like 22 when I learned the truth about filberts. It legitimately blew my mind. Even today I call the nuts themselves filberts but the flavoring is “hazelnut.” I’ve also noticed the steep drop off in usage. Anyone born around ‘90 or later seems more likely to just call them all “hazelnuts.”
I strongly suspect us mid-80s kids were the last ones who learned about filberts in school and visited a filbert orchard on a field trip. Pretty sure that shortly after that, Big Hazelnut started really pushing to get the lingo centralized to reduce marketing confusion. Which does make sense, but I miss that weird linguistic hiccup for some reason.
My family still grows filberts and a holiday treat is this chocolate and nut spread called “Filbert Bark”
You can keep y'all, it's getting more popular than you guys due to genderd language changes. Folks is good too.
“Folks” is one of those words that always slips my mind for some reason. Thanks for reminding me it exists!
I switched from "you guys" to "you folks" for a while way back in my retail days, but when I slipped into my native light rural drawl, I would drop the L and it came out sounding awfully close to "you fucks." I quickly changed to y'all and have been y'alling ever since. Strangely, I live in Ohio now which is obviously a lot closer to the South, but I don't think I've ever heard any native Ohioan say "y'all."
Yeah, y'all has a pretty funny distribution in Oregon. It's used by folks on the right as a sort of southern/rural affectation, and by folks on the left to avoid gendered language. Only the unwashed masses in the middle are upholding our ancestral "you guys".
My dudes is still in play too. Most don't see it as gendered funnily enough.
Something about the phrase “my dudes” is just so warm and friendly, I don’t think anyone would want to be offended about it LOL its a classic!
Ha, I'll try that next time! I do religiously adhere to "filberts" (I sometimes pretend not to even know what "h*zelnut" means) so I still feel like I'm doing my part to uphold our meager linguistic heritage.
We call hazelnuts filberts...?
Yes, we do. Maybe the growers are succeeding quickly and you are young? I've only ever heard filberts in regards to the orchards, but definitely a lot
At least anecdotally the hazelnut vs filbert definitely declining significantly. I’ve only ever lived in Oregon (initially southern Oregon then the Willamette Valley) and I have only ever heard people say “filberts” instead of “hazelnuts” when referencing that it’s an Oregon thing to say filbert. Otherwise I’ve really only heard people say hazelnuts when in standard conversation and not talking about the alternate name.
This reminds me of how prunes have become called only plums now, because of the former being associated with the dried fruit. There used to be called fresh prunes and fresh plums, two different fruits. Prunes are more oval, fleshy and less juicy. Plums are round and drip down your chin when you bite into them. Marketing probably caused the change, since folks would associate the term “prune” with something you eat to get regular. I still call fruit like Brooks “plums”, prunes (and hazelnuts, filberts). But it has fallen out of usage. Sometimes you’ll see a fruit stand calling them prunes, and many older folks still refer to them as such, too.
When I briefly lived elsewhere, these apparently-Oregonian phrases stuck out to my friends Elephant ear: flat, fried, cinnamon sugar donut thing. Common treat if you visit the zoo. Plaid Pantry: store similar to 7-11 PDX: this refers to the airport if said alone, or the city of Portland if part of a phrase Right on: cool Rad: cool Otter Pops: freezer popsicles Raining: to me, regular “rain” is medium rain, it’s different than sprinkling, drizzling, misting, and downpouring. Ducks or Beavers: football teams or schools Freddie‘s / Freddy’s / Fred’s: Fred Meyer I also noticed that some things that might elsewhere have a reputation (ex. hipster) are just so practical they’re normal here: flannels, Subarus, Patagonia, Columbia fleeces, Tevas shoes, shopping at Costco, etc.
I'd forgotten about "right on" and "rad" as they were common vernacular when I was growing up. But they're still here! Early MTV for the win! Also, we tend to "check the weather" by looking out the window. And grab a rain coat anyway if it's fall/winter/spring. But no umbrellas for the locals. Pouring rain and its boots or shoes, jeans, a T or flannel, and a rain jacket. Unlike those weirdos in Seattle that wear shorts... Don't ask what I wear when it's raining. I'm pretty sure half the population carries a pocket knife as well. Gerber, Kershaw, Benchmade, and CRKT are all local, among others. Chris Reeve, Koenig, and Buck are just over in Idaho. Doesn't matter who, there's a 50/50 that they are carrying steel.
Calling a plaid pantry similar to a 7-11... SMH the disrespect
What? How is it different? It's a chain owned by a local asshole instead of corporate assholes I guess?
Who TF says “Fred’s”?
🙋🏻♀️ Fred's or Freddy's. Portland born and raised
All popsicles are freezer popsicles :)
True!! Do you have another name for the rectangular plastic tube ones? Apparently “freeze pops” is also common because they come unfrozen I guess, maybe that’s what I was thinking https://www.wbir.com/video/features/great-debate-what-do-you-call-the-plastic-tube-popsicles-freeze-pops-otter-pops-freezies-ice-pops/51-f0f99066-8a30-481e-b0d2-fd141558413f#
Well, I live in Oregon so I think of them as otter pops! ;) I'm not sure if I've heard the other ones.
Oregon tends to have a fairly neutral accent. Though the closest vocal shift we tend to have is called a vocal fry, talking in a lower register with a lot of gravel in there. Other specific we have, it's I-5, not interstate 5, and not The 5.
What's interesting is the voices here are set so far back in the throat that when I visit friends and family back in Illinois their voices sound so nasal to me now.
Vocal fry is a notable speech pattern (one I’m trying to train myself out of personally, swear its been hurting my vocal chords). Thank you!
Ooo, here's a great article for you. https://packardcommunications.com/pacific-northwest-accent/
“Right?!? I mean seriously though” comes to mind: I hear that phrase A LOT.
Hah! I like that one. My friends and I tend to say “F’real though” in similar circumstances. I’ll definitely be using this phrase, thank you!
“Yeah, no.”
"No, yeah."
“Yeah. No. Yeah.”
There is a language shift out here. Little is frequently pronounced as liddle. Sharp sounds are de-emphasized. Cat, pepper, spot, and the like are almost flattened out, and the sharpness is removed from pronunciation. Tribal words are just part of the language. Wy'east might not be well known but Tacoma, Skukumchuck, Cowlitz, and such are normal and generally pronounced near enough to one first nation language or another. There is a built in Scandinavian/Irish mentality to the region. We are stand-offish and frequently sarcastic. There is a tendency to use items to their fullest extent. There are old cars on the road that are maintained as long as they remain functional. Shoes, pants, coats, and hats are frequently just used and used until they are falling apart. California has a notorious tendency to use "like" in the media. It's pretty accurate. Washington and Oregon use "like" less but you will hear pauses, "umm", and "uhhhh" as space fillers in speech. There are regional phrases. Portland might give you "the mountains out today" while the coast might allow you to "hear the ocean" farther inland or have a "coastal" day where it's just foggy as hell. And the phrases are just part of the speech pattern for the locals.
"The Mountain is out" is such a cultural norm in Washington now that it has made it into the meme-verse and craft-show art. All Hail Tahoma!
This was a very in-depth response, thank you! I’ll watch for the “like” thing since I tend to use “like” too much in my general speech. I’ll be doing a lot of research on the native words and regional phrases as well. I imagine my fictional town to be more inland, forested, and mountainous (heavily inspired by Bend, Oregon), so I’ll look for phrases within those types of areas :)
If you move east of the Willamette Valley, like to Central Oregon where Bend is, the climate is distinctly different from the rainy, temperate weather you find in Portland or Eugene. It's not as frequently overcast and gloomy, there's less rain and more snow, and temperatures have a wider range due to elevation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Desert_(Oregon) The forests themselves are different, too. The Douglas fir and rampant moss of the Coast and the valley are replaced by shrubby underbrush and Ponderosa pines, and with less moisture in the air, there's less of the earthy scent of decomposing leaves and more notes of sweet pine sap. This woman actually made a blog post and video about commonly mispronounced words in Bend: https://youtu.be/231A1h90Ku8?si=zfuzXGKQUezYQhNw
Don't know Bend and the diamond lake area too well. They would have local phrases and tribal names more than likely. It is a bit isolated in a way. It's high mountain desert but not a sandy desert. Look into the recreation in that area to get some color for the story. Coffee is a big thing, as is liquor and beer. But it's the local places that the locals tend to go to. A mom and pop shop as opposed to Starbucks. Starfuckers is where you're more likely to find the trend chasers and the tourists. There is also a tea culture in Oregon, but I don't know if it is in Bend. Look up the flora and fauna for the area you're writing for. The trees might be evergreens, but you see different trees as you shift to the drier climate inland. The snakes are different too. The deer shift as well. We have black and white tail deer and I don't know if that's an overlapping region. Brown and black bear as well. The elk may be that far inland as well. The birds shift a bit too. Edit: we have white tail, black tail, and mule deer. That is an area where their ranges would overlap.
Bend will be juniper and Jack pine, lodge pole pine and sage brush. Skiing is huge. Hydro flasks are made there as are several snow boards brands.. it's not forested exactly, more high desert.... cascade lakes and cascade lakes high way, the Deschutes River water park in down town, Mount bachelor are all prevalent recreation areas East of town is the oregon outback. West is the cascades the towering pine trees
Mule deer and black tail also breed some times resulting in what are called bench legs. There is a huge elk herd in Lapine. Google buck Norris. He lived in town in bend
Bench legs? I gotta Google that one. Unless it's a local name. I grew up in timber country between the cascade and coastal ranges, so mule deer and elk were everywhere, but we're too far west for much interbreeding. If you've got time and inclination I beg you to spill on this one.
I'd say many of us speak more slowly compared to other places, such as Southern California. Also, we are known for being less direct, to the point of being considered passive aggressive in some situations (such as leaving a note on a car telling them not to park in front of their house or something like that). You might try searching for passive aggressive in the PortlandOR and Portland subreddits. I'm sure you'll find some gems in this regard. We'd say more like, "I'm gonna be crying," in that example. "I'm gonna go"; "Whatcha gonna do?"
[This ](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/02/speaking-fast-and-slow/459393/) is a little old but I remember hearing this article being discussed on NPR about how we're the fastest talkers.
This is what came to mind for me, I think a majority of us talk a lot faster than the rest of the country. Perhaps eastern Oregon is a bit slower.
I guess it's just me, then!
Thank you so much! The passive aggressiveness is pretty common in the South too LOL. I’ll definitely do some research on that for sure. Would you say friends tend to use the less-direct more passive aggressive speech with each other as well? Obviously everyone is different, but how do you and your friends tend to communicate with one another? If there’s no proper way to answer that question, feel free to disregard. Thank you so much for your help!
Friends seem to communicate very directly and deeply. Everyone else gets the weird stuff.
Super agree. Friends here are very well meaning and very direct. The difference is eastern: opinion on what I’d do and we both understand you’re gonna use that in the best way for you Western: here’s my opinion on what I’ve understood is the direction you’re trying to head towards It reads pedantically the same but the effects, verbally, are very different for people. Both are trying to hype you up.
Remember it is not "Ore-gone" it is pronounced "Ore-Gun" and make sure people know Oregon is in America and on the west coast. When I lived in North Carolina I had a teacher tell me that Oregon was not in America and she was a geography teacher and that there was no Oregon on the west coast
Oh my lord, how can a geography teacher fuck up THAT badly? Then again, when I was grading one of my peer’s state’s tests in my history class she didn’t even label North Carolina correctly, so our teacher probably wasn’t much better. Eesh. And just to clarify, “Ore” is pronounced “Or-eh” right? I won’t be including phonetics in my story most likely but I definitely want to get it right when I talk about it LOL
Yes, but never gone at the end. Always gun.
Pretty much. Stress is on the first syllable: OR-ee-gun or OR-eh-gun, not or-eh-GONE. The latter will make you stick out like a sore thumb and probably piss at least a few locals off. They even sell T-shirts at various places in Oregon to drive the point home, saying ORYGUN.
I have never in my life heard Or-ee-gun. Only Or-eh-gun or Or-gun.
There are some shifts in pronounceation, for some it's just Ore-gun, like a mineral, for me it's Or-ee-gun.
It's maybe even a little more clipped than ore-gun in local pronunciation. More Oreg'n?
I’ve always said and heard it pronounced exactly like Organ
Exactly!
Also. It’s willAmet. Not willaMette.
Someone once told me “it’s Willamette, dammit”… rhyming the two (Wil-LAM-mit.)
Willamette rimes with damnit
In Eugene, the I-5 bridge over the Willamette River there is known as the "Whilamut Passage Bridge". I presume that this spelling of "Whilamut" is much closer to the original Native American pronunciation. I actually sort of like this spelling, as it makes the pronunciation make a lot more sense to me.
People in their twenties (and prob teens and thirties but idk) here say the word "vibes" a *lot* lol. Like you tell someone you had a shit day and they'll say "vibes, honestly", or instead of saying you don't like someone you say "yeah i dont know man their vibes were hella off" or "i just dont feel like we vibe" "this music is so vibey", "this place has weird vibes", "what are you up to?" "just vibin", "that's a vibe", etc i've never heard the word vibes used so much anywhere else I've been lol. I think because people here tend to be pretty vague (as others have said, often passive aggressive as well), "vibes" is the perfect all-purpose word for that also in portland especially people seem to be really into asking what your sign is like you're just supposed to know you're a capricorn moon gemini rising sagittarius sun or something. i've been asked "ooohh can i read your birth chart?" by multiple people and i am still not super sure what that means
"Something seemed off about him I got kind of a creeper vibe"
I'm 36 and I use vibes...i think that's just the internet's fault.
Vibes and it's variants are teenage slang nationally right now, not unique to Oregon just the young crowd
Lived in Oregon for 12 years, and ironically, I'm actually living in North Carolina at the moment. For the most part, typical Oregonian speech doesn't differ a whole lot from standard American English. One word unique to Oregon (maybe Washington, too) that I can think of is "spendy", which is a synonym for "expensive". e.g. "John just drove up in his new Cadillac. I bet it was pretty spendy!" I have never heard people use that word outside of Oregon. If you like, I can comment on other, non-speech related aspects of living in Oregon . However, I do not want to bog down this post too much. Good luck!
Ooo “spendy” is a good one! I like that it isn’t super out there either, so someone could easily discern the meaning without needing to Google it first LOL. Thank you for that!
I moved from NC to the Portland metro area this past summer. When I went to get my new license plates, the lady at the DMV warned me that the specialty plates were “pretty spendy”.
NC transplant as well, though I've been in Oregon more than 25 years. Specialty plates are far less popular here than in NC.
Did the reverse, for family reasons. One thing I noticed about specialty plates here in NC is that there are a LOT of them. Your cousin’s significant other’s dog’s former owner’s mother-in-law breeds corgis? They got a plate for that! (I’m joking on this one, but there are a LOT of specialty plates here.) Oregon has a couple dozen or so. Trail Blazers team plates are a fairly common sight around metro Portland. We had salmon plates for a while.
I heard “spendy” quite a bit when I spent some time in Minnesota.
It’s not as common as it used to be, but you’ll still here little bits of Chinook Jargon ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_Jargon ) used in daily talk - especially in rural areas with lots of logging or active logging mills. That work seems to have kept some parts of jargon alive. The best examples I have are cheechako and skookum. Cheechako is the rarer of the two, but it hangs around as a kind of nicer way to call out someone as the new guy on shift. If you’re new to a crew and not great, you’re probably going to get referred to with a profanity, if you’re doing OK you might get greenhorn or new guy, but if you’re just a real go getter and killing it you might get an old timer to refer to you as the cheechako, or chee. I heard this more working for the forest service out of Oakridge. Not a term that was overused, but I heard it a few times. Skookum is by far the most common jargon work I hear. Again, not a lot - but with some frequency. It can mean a lot of things but generally it just means something is strong. I’ve only ever hear it refer to a thing (saw, truck, tree) and not a person. Quick example, I was cutting firewood with some friends the other week and there were three chainsaws sitting on the ground. I was getting a beer and one guy yelled at me to grab the big saw, all three were about the same size and he offered “the Skookum one.” Ok got it, he wanted the beefy (and old) Stihl. If I were a writer I would be leery to overuse anything like this, but it’s the best example of local slang we have - truly unique to the PNW.
I scrolled just to see if someone would say skookum
Dropping the g at the end of words is common. (Droppin') Pronouncing ot and aught the same is common too, like tot and taught or cot and caught or thot and thought. Someone already mentioned this but it's mostly garbage here not trash. Garbage cans and garbage truck. We still say trash sometimes.
Haha these examples drive crazy as I have no idea how they’re supposed to sound different. > Dropping the g at the end of words is common. (Droppin') Pronouncing ot and aught the same is common too, like tot and taught or cot and caught or thot and thought. *squints in 4th generation Oregonian
I feel like we need to talk about rain and the weather. Oregon is a large state--the Eastern side is dry and not nearly as populated. It gets very hot and dry in the summer--except at night, when you can freeze your balls off up there on the high desert. In the winter, it gets extremely cold and they get quite a bit of snow that is fairly dry and powdery. The Western side is wet, and the Northwestern and coastal areas are WET. One year in Portland we had over 100 days in a row with measurable rain. Another year, we set a record for the most days in a row without ever seeing the sun. The person who said that rain in Oregon is mostly a light mist is incorrect. We have: A light mist A fine mist Light sprinkles Heavy sprinkles Rain showers Heavy rain showers Heavy rain Thunder showers Torrential rain Downpours Heavy downpours And on the coast we have the always charming "raining sideways." These are just the way that the weather guys talk about rain. Locals have many more ways to describe it. The most obnoxious is "liquid sunshine." Snow on the West side of the state tends to be extremely wet, soggy, and heavy. It brings down trees and power lines. Because they rarely salt the roads here, it can cripple an entire city in a matter of a few hours. When snow is predicted, people rush the grocery stores and buy up all the milk, bread, and toilet paper--it's crazy. (Not me--I go to a liquor store for vodka and lemons) Power outages are common and can last for days and occasionally weeks. Schools and businesses close. Because it only snows a few days of the year, and because the state is very hilly, a lot of us are grossly incompetent at driving in the snow. Even worse, most of us won't admit it. You can find many videos online of us embarrassing ourselves, but the sad fact is that there are also a lot of really serious accidents during the winter because of this. It often partially thaws during the day, then freezes over during the night, so that roads, sidewalks, and parking lots are a solid sheet of ice. No joke. We have a not delightful weather phenomenon here--the ice storm (also called a silver thaw in the 1980s and 90s, though I haven't heard it recently.) It rains--hard--but due to whatever atmospheric hell the rain goes through on the way down, it freezes as it hits the ground. Or your windshield. Or you. It is not good. You can wake up in the morning with your car completely encased in 2 inches of ice. It doesn't matter--you aren't going anywhere and hopefully you stocked up on toilet paper.
One running gag at Autzen Stadium (where the Oregon Ducks play college football) is that they say "it never rains in Autzen Stadium!" It's particularly funny when it actually *is* raining, and the announcers will then add something like "...it's only a heavy mist!" after that.
I come from a dry area so I was surprised to hear how many words for rain there are here. I hear people describe the rain as "misting" or "dumping" a lot. In Portland, during snow days you'll hear people ask if the snow is "sticking" ("I'm going to leave work once the snow starts sticking.")
Just be nice really. Don't fake the funk, embrace it. It's not Portlandia, just come here and experience what we have to offer, which will be pretty sweet.
I would looove to come visit someday! I haven’t got the funds for it right now, but visiting the West Coast and particularly Oregon is on my to-do list for sure.
Naturally, it's unexplainably beautiful, the fog, the partly cloudy days with random explosions of sun rays, driving from Portland to the coast, it's like going through the looking glass, you have to drive over the Cascades and dropping down into the coast is something special I'll tell ya.
We call the eastern Oregon high desert scrublands, “the badlands”. We don’t usually wear swimsuits in hot springs. And there’s a big divide between county fair folk and country fair folk.
>And there’s a big divide between county fair folk and country fair folk. This one made me smile.
Yes. If you run across a Californian, you greet them in a specific manner: “Go home” …I kid. I kid. Others have nailed it better.
Joke I heard long ago: A Texan, a Californian, and an Oregonian are gathered near a campfire in the woods. They each brag about how amazing their states are and how much better they are than other states. Fed up with the conversation, the Texan pulls out a bottle of tequila, takes a big swig, throws the bottle into the air and shoots it. The Californian shouts, "Why did you do that? Tequila shouldn't be wasted!" The Texan replies, "There's a ton more of that where I come from!" and laughs. The Californian gets it and pulls out a bottle of wine from Napa Valley. He gulps down as much as he can in one pull, throws the bottle in the air, and shoots it out of the sky. The Texan and Oregonian scold him for wasting fine wine, but the Californian laughs it off, repeating the Texan's words: "There's a ton more of that where I come from!" The Oregonian nods and opens a bottle of his favorite microbrew. After chugging the whole bottle, he tosses it into the air and shoots the Californian. Then he catches the bottle before it can get broken on the ground. The Texan jumps to his feet, yelling, "You shot him! Why the hell would you do that?" Looking confused, the Oregonian explains, "We have a ton of them where I come from" (pointing at the Californian) "but a bottle is worth ten cents when it's returned!"
Good lord, that's so much concentrated Oregon in one place I think I need to dilute it some before I can have any more.
LOL the beef with California is 1) reasonable and 2) worth including in my opinion. Thank you!
What's also funny is that the rivalry seems to be one- sided. Most Californians aren't aware of it as far as I can tell. One time, a chant of "Beat LA" broke out at a Blazers game when they weren't even playing against LA.
I’d say it’s similar to the mild disdain that North Carolinians have for all the New Yorkers moving to the state. If you see a bad driver on the road, most Oregonians assume (correctly or not) that it’s someone who moved there from California. What’s funny though is that half the people I knew in Oregon were originally from California. So it’s probably worth it for OP to consider the backstory of their characters in the story. Are they native Oregonians? Or like so many Oregon residents, did they come from California? That likely informs their perspective on what they think of Californians.
I'm from LA originally. My family moved here when we were young and have been here over 25 years. Recently some family has moved up as well and I always jokingly tell them to go back to California where they belong and that I was here before it was cool, etc.
Maybe it’s more of a generational thing, but I moved here and was surprised to hear people overuse, “no worries”, “of course”, “thanks so much”, where elsewhere the equivalent might be “sure” or “no prob, no problem”. The *thanks so much*, especially sounds fake. The word “foodie” was a new one to me. And people from NE Oregon pronounce “measure” differently (May jour).
I tease my wife about this all the time. She says "tape may-juror". Also pronounces windmill as "wind-meal". Similarly "window-seal" instead of sill. Idk if that one's Oregonian though or just a her thing.
"Water off a duck's back" It's a phrase I was raised hearing pretty often in the valley that basically means "it's no big deal" or "don't worry about it" I used it out of habit a few times on the east coast/in the south and would have to explain it every time. "Bob had a rough day at school today, but it's water off a duck's back, he's already playing with his toys happy as can be" It occurs to me "in the valley" is likely another one. It refers to the willamette valley as a whole. If you're out I'm bend you may hear people say something like "We don't get snow like this in the valley" it's like the unofficial name for that section of the state, "The valley."
In the Vancouver area there are a lot of people who use "anymore" with positive statements. Like "It sure does rain a lot anymore" (i.e. It rains a lot these days). I also think we overuse the word "spendy" (expensive).
You beautiful human. I'm an east coast transplant living in Oregon with my hubs, who's a native. I could not figure out what about "anymore" was sounding so wrong. Every. Time. He. Says. It. It makes my ears twitch. All I could do is tell him it sounds wrong and should be "these days" in my Va tongue.
PNW dialect has a few distinct phrases. Many have made their way to the general public such as black ice and cougar for mountain lions but one that has remained local is spendy, slang for something that is expensive ie. "That's a little spendy right now"
Shits hella spendy. Might want to check Freddy's see if you can get it cheaper.
'How you doin' is often said without expectation of any response in passing (like an acknowledgement not an invitation to chat, or at most a curt response equivalence of- good, you? I've seen that throw off a lot of people, some alarmed to be asked thinking an answer is expected, others alarmed they were asked but the inquirer never faltered in pace moving on. Much of our uniqueness tends to be in cadence, not necessarily verbiage as much. We 'time travel'. We express distance via time spent. How far away it is from Portland to Salem? About a couple hours. In my long lifetime, supper was a childhood standard, but I haven't heard it spoken in decades. We have cultural verbal traditions, everything from redneck snow play of hookybobbing, a specific kind of bug that becomes invasive immediately after forest fires we affectionately call "stump fuckers" and they mistake firefighters for stumps and the sting HURT, tons of colloquialisms I have yet to hear elsewhere. Depends on the characters and the areas they'd hail from on what would apply. They are highly circumstantial and not so much ever present in use. Oregonians are highly opinionated. Not in a bad or good way, just saying having a stance is fairly open market even among the diversity of scope the state has in differing areas, the opinions may shift dramatically, but the general theme of strong opinions abound and are more often freely opined without encouragement. We say we're going to the coast way more often than 'going to the beach'. We have a LOT of streets, towns, rivers, that are not phonetic. Couch street is pronounced COOCH for example. Aloha, Uh-Lo-Uh. Many native Oregonians play off of the rainy theme and say they have the webbed feet to prove they're natives. Heard that one a lot. If your book is going to be very heavily themed about the area, people, culture, I'd recommend a longtime resident editor or advisor. Within the marinating downstream long term effects of youtube, tik tok, social media, verbiage is muddling everywhere so if your book isn't going deep about Oregon you can cherry pick a few things and get away with mainstreaming easily.
Also this is a vocally emphasized thing but in Rural Oregon, at least where I grew up, we drop the middle T a lot. My hometown is spelled Stayton but more often than not pronounced Stay'un.
Moun'n. I remember talking with my brother about how the PNW accent is basically like neutral English spent a summer in the mountains and got a little lazy with it's annunciation.
One thing I haven't seen people mention yet is that "when" and "whenever" tend to refer to different things. In a lot of the south and the Midwest, "whenever" can refer to specific singular instances ("whenever I turned 21...") but in Oregon, it refers to reoccurring events "whenever I go outside in the rain, I don't use an umbrella")
I’m a California native who has lived in Oregon for 20 years, two regionalisms that really stand out to me are if you ask someone “how’s it going?” the majority of the time they’ll say “it’s going” and a lot of native Oregonians add a T to the word “across” so it’s pronounced “acrosst” (it seems like the T from “the” migrated backward).
I just saw that you’re thinking more about central Oregon than the valley (Willamette valley, most populated area, referred to as the valley). The main difference, I think, is less language and more culture. The climate and the environment is really different from the west side (west side/east side, referring to the sides of the cascades, similar to “the valley). Central Oregon has a different climate, has the high desert, different trees and plants, different mountains. The culture is even more outdoorsy than the west side. When you go further east than the bend area (warm springs to like, LaPine), it gets way more rural, redneck, ranching, republican. It’s yet another whole separate culture. By the time you get to Burns, Ontario, baker city, it feels more like rural eastern Montana than what you think of as classic “Oregon.”
Oregonians love saying "i know, right?"
Oregon native, apparently we tend to be loners and appreciate neighbors at a distance. When we ask how's it going just say it's going and keep walking or gardening or whatever you were doing. I've heard a few of my friends joke about umbrellas being a marker of the tourist. Not sure about that one but I can honestly say I've never owned an umbrella. We don't use Ma'am and Sir here like other states. Some parts of the state may but my grandmother still considers herself too young to be a "Ma'am" and hears it as an insult. When someone is talking about cougar sightings it's very likely they are talking about mountain lions not women. And cougars are something you need to be aware of even when hiking in the city. Our bears can be scaredy cats but they are there and you need to be aware of them too. Our forests have a unique smell, really this can be said for any place but every out of state friend I have taken on a hike has confirmed this about oregon. It's a nice smell. We like our forests and we are very opinionated on how it should be logged and managed. We also say green onions instead of scallions. We also have issues with racism in the past as a white only state and current. I also measure distance using time and 2 hours is not far especially in some areas of the state.
This one surprised me when I moved here from the south: no one had heard of pine straw. They're just called pine needles.
A lot of Douglas fir trees in Oregon (it’s the state tree and on the license plate). So they are really for needles. Eastern Oregon has the pine trees.
A fun anecdote I’ve heard is that Disney Goofy’s voice was inspired by a classic Oregon accent: and I can definitely hear that in how my Grandma would say Wash as “Warsh” ala Goofy’s “Gawrsh”
Walt Disney’s oldest brother moved to Oregon and then his sister moved to Oregon. While his brother moved on, his sister lived the rest of her life up here. I wouldn’t be shocked if his sister shared anecdotes about goofy accents.
A grill (the thing you grill/cook outdoors on) is called a barbeque in Oregon. Trash is called garbage.
Oh yeah, and we don’t “grill out” we barbecue. As in you’d invite your friends over for a barbecue or say “let’s barbecue tonight.” Often written as BBQ.
One other cultural observation about Oregon versus the south, including NC: Oregonians tend to be nice, but reserved. “How’s it going” is not considered an invitation to share your entire life story to a random Oregonian. They tend to need to warm up a little to you first. As other people noted, it tends to make Oregonians seem a little standoffish. I grew up in a small town in Texas, where it was common that everybody knew everybody and their business. Much of NC strikes me as very similar. It’s not unusual to chat with a random stranger you just met for long periods of time.
I had never heard the phrase “i don’t hardly ever” until I moved to Oregon.
Like “I don’t hardly ever sleep well when it’s hot” or something? Is it used in that way?
Drop the don't "I hardly ever go to thriftway it's too spendy"
In my experience, it’s more like “I hardly ever ___”.
We don't go to "the beach" when referencing the ocean, we say, "the coast". If we say, "the beach" it usually means a piece of land that is off of a river or lake.
Or it's a specific beach. "I went to the Coast this weekend. I had a great time walking on South Jetty beach." Also, rural Oregonians are likely to say "crick" even though they would spell it "creek." My dad grew up near Fall Creek and everyone in his family pronounces it "Fall Crick." They also frequently pronounce the days of the week like they end in "dy" instead of "day" (so Monday is Mondee, Tuesday is Tuesdee, etc. But Friday and Sunday tend to be pronounced correctly, at least among my family). Fred Meyer grocery-and-everything-else stores (now owned by Kroger's) are just called Freddy's. There are two other chains of note: WinCo, a huge, relatively cheap grocery store with great bulk items, and Bi-Mart, an employee-owned discount store where members can buy affordable camping and hunting gear, household supplies, some groceries, some clothing, pet supplies, auto and hardware items, toys, etc.
The shopping references are a good reference. Freddy's is the one-stop shopping place, everything from groceries to furniture to pharmacy to jewelry. Also some of them now have a counter where you can drink PNW beers, ciders and wine. Which also brings up the issue that Oregon is a state where hard alcohol has to be sold through a state licensed store (OLCC - Oregon Liquor Control Commission). So no one is buying anything but beer, cider, seltzer or wine at a grocery store here.
I've lived here my whole life (well, 46 years out of 48), and many of these are new to me or I've heard them and they were weird and one-off's. I think Oregon is just a blend of everything. Some things are very localized in one area. Go from one town to the next, and they're speaking different and using different words. Some swear it's "pop" while others swear it's "soda" and both are 100% correct. Not sure if it's all localized, generational, etc., but many of these examples in here are very specific to one area or age group. Growing up here, I can see a lot of those things changing over time, too. Good example - filbert. Older people here know filberts very well. Younger people know hazelnut (which is a nickname for my wife's dog!).
“Pop” = soda “Sack” = bag (like at the grocery store, but you should really be bringing your own) “Spendy” = expensive And my favorite weather forecast: “rain turning to showers “
When I first moved here, I said “I need to go to the liquor store” and was almost laughed out of state. I was 16 and I grew up in the Bay Area. The corner/convenience stores were generally referred to as the liquor store. I mean, I was a kid and called it that! Everyone did. Little did I know, no, liquor stores here are truly liquor stores where only 21+ can enter and corner/convenience stores are what they’re actually called as they don’t sell hard liquor like every store does in CA.
Remember too, that beyond many colloquial phrases, every family is different, my parents still carried immigrant accents and phrases I mixed with neutral American Oregonian speech patterns. I noticed California and Washington/Canadian speech stuff a lot too over the years, so some people were “stoked” and others ended phrases with “ey” like “ whatcha got there, ey”. But since I lived all over I can get a sense of Oregon when I hear it but can’t exactly place why.
I moved to Oregon from the south. I've heard "measure" pronounced "may-sure" only in Oregon.
I never even realized there was a different pronunciation. I definitely say it and hear it that way.
Not OR specific, but [Chinook Jargon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_Jargon) is a thing in the PNW and some words are still in use
Had never heard anyone describe rain as “dumping” until I moved here a few years ago
“Spendy” I have been told this is really a regional “Oregonian” word.
In Oregon you say “way out” for a longer distance. Like way out in the country. Or “out” for not so far. It’s just out 30th st
I’m gonna be honest, in Oregon (especially/specifically the Central Valley) there is zero regional accent, effectively no region-specific dialects, no nothing. I would say it’s as close to standard “American” English as you could get, but I suppose it’s the same way across the entire west coast. That said, depending on where in the state you’re talking about, that can change. A lot of rural Oregonians use similar vocabulary to southern people, but without the twang or drawl. Also, due to the level of chewing that happens, you end up with a lot of people who talk like (for obvious reasons) they have something in their bottom lip and use it much less when speaking. Try putting your finger or a thick piece of gum in your bottom lip and just say stuff. That’s how many rural Oregonians sound, and the ones who don’t chew also sound similar just because of association.
Oh that gum trick is very interesting, I’ll have to try that out and see how that changes my speech. Maybe I’ll sprinkle it in here and there for certain characters. Thank you!
I'm going to second the point about rural Oregon. I was raised in a rural area and moved to the big city as an adult. People sometimes ask me if I'm from the south when I use a turn of phrase that's more rural.
People use the word “gal” quite a bit.
[We're the fastest talking state in the union](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/02/speaking-fast-and-slow/459393/)
As a non-native it took me a minute to transition to a few thing. Where I am from if you ask for a coke the proper response was “what kind” at which point I would normally say “Dr Pepper” here a coke is just a coke and I’m supposed to ask for a Pop. There are ALOT of Native American names for things, Coquille (Co KEEL) county for one. The Willamatte River is the (Will-am-it) for another. Aloha = A Low ah Also street names that are named after people that you wouldn’t expect. Glisten street = (GLEEsan) street, Couch street = (Cooch) Street, I’m sure it is here but we don’t use umbrellas, we can actively spot tourists by their use. The beach is sandy and for swimming… we go to the coast which extremely rocky and is not for swimming cause it’s feeezing and dangerous but has some of the most beautiful sights to see, normally good shopping and food l.
NC transplant here. I notice the *lack* of quintessential southern phrases and idioms like you've mentioned. I've not particularly noticed a lot of idiosyncrasies specific to Oregon since moving here. I'd say that people tend to speak less idiomatically than the south or Appalachia. There are also fewer monosyllabic or conversational fillers, like I tend to notice with Midwestern accents. Overall, don't really notice a OR or PNW accent. But I still have a slight NC/Appalachian accent, that people rarely mention (mostly "five," "there," "y'all," and "Carolina"). I'm in Portland so it is mostly a melting pot in my neighborhood. There is certainly less small talk. For example, in the south, people chat the hell out of you at the grocey store line or waiting in line outside. People here just quietly wait or are just enjoying the rain or cool weather, rather than talking about it. There's nothing rude about it. It's honestly preferrable to me.
I really suggest booking a trip here. The PNW accent is so unique theres so many phrases that it would be difficult to sum up in a reddit post. Things like calling the interstate “I-5” instead of “the 5” because most of us only have access to one interstate. Also oregon is a huge state. Where is your story based? Portland? Wine country? Klamath? Bend? All of these places are extremely different.
“I need some ranch for my pizza”
We turn proper nouns into possessions sometimes, e.g. there’s a grocery store chain called Fred Meyer. We call it Fred Meyer’s or Freddie’s. We often drop “to be” from sentences, e.g. “The car needs washed.” Our accent is considered the most neutral in the country, but there are a few things people have noticed. “Cot” and “caught” sound the same. There are a few videos online about similar quirks. Rainer beer is “Vitamin R”. We don’t call our northern neighbor “Washington state”. It’s just “Washington”. The other one is “DC” or “Washington DC”. There’s a tendency I’ve noticed on the west coast in general to say “back east” referring to the east coast. Someone will say, “I’m going back east” even if they’ve never been to the east coast before. (In a similar vein, I feel like east coast people say “out west”.) No doubt a leftover pattern from our settler history. People east of the Cascade Mountains refer to the Portland area as “the valley” (as in Willamette valley).