Once you take out politics, religion, and sports, there’s probably nothing Americans disagree on more than pronunciations and local dialect.
And if you don’t have a map, you might find that out as easily as taking a train to New York City and trying to order a hoagie.
They’re hoagies in Philadelphia, grinders in New England, and heroes and wedges in New York, but they’re all different names for just one type of sandwich: the submarine. And as John Green reveals in his latest Mental Floss video, most of the regional linguistic discrepancies are all about food.
The only thing that should matter is how the food tastes, but we can’t help but hold on to our regional loyalties—especially if we live in a state that uses a different term than the rest of the country.
He’s even included slang from other countries, but one particular region uses more slang far more often than the rest of the U.S.
“I’m starting to think, New Englanders, that you just want to be different,” Green noted.
Photo via Mental Floss/YouTube