What words do people in your region use that people in other regions might not understand?

 My grandmother was born and raised in a rural setting, she never referred to a kitchen faucet as such, it was known as a hydrant, there was a distinct difference between dinner and supper, and the former was sometimes called vittles. A bank account was called a passbook, because when she was young, that was the book used to keep track of your balance. When you asked someone to give you a ride, or if someone took you somewhere in a vehicle, the verb was “carry”, as in “Jimmy, since you’re going that way anyway, can you carry me to the post office?”  Or, “If the bus to Tildeville doesn‘t carry me close enough to the center of town, I’ll call a taxi to carry me there.”

  An unspecified amount of money that you kept on your person for emergencies was “car fare”, according to my mother. My aunt always refers to a purse as a pocketbook. I always thought a pocketbook was a woman’s wallet that went inside the purse, but my aunt called it differently. When I was growing up, the phrase “your folks” specifically referred to your parents.

  Also, we always said “soda pop”, not “soda”. When I joined the Marine Corps at age 18, the fellows heard me say “soda pop” and almost burst their collective spleens laughing at me. I learned in an instant to never refer to it as anything other than soda for the rest of my life. 

 Here locally in San Diego, right next to Mexico, many people who grew up with Spanish as either their primary  language, or it was a prominent language throughout their upbringing, use the phrase “What  happened”? when they actually mean “what’s going on?” or “what do you mean” or “what did you/he/she say?” They also say, “When you get down from the car” as opposed to “When you get out of the car.”

  Almost any US location outside of California, Oregon , and Washington state is referred to as “back East”, especially by people who migrated from those areas to the West Coast.
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