Community Corner

How Strongsville People Talk: City Has its Own Dialect

Popular maps show how local residents pronounce words, use phrases

Are they tennis shoes or sneakers? Do you eat dinner or supper? Subs or hoagies?

If you spend time on Facebook, maybe you've seen someone share a dialect map that shows how people in various regions of the United States talk -- different phrases they use to describe things and different ways they pronounce words.

Well, Strongsville made the map. And around here, we don't use words like "cruller," and we eat "car-mel" candy rather than "car-a-mels."

The maps were produced by Joshua Katz at NC State University, and he's uncovered some fascinating stuff.  

While there are obvious regional commonalities -- around here, we call a group "you guys" while in the south, it's "ya'll" -- the research shows variations even within the Cleveland area.

For example: More than 67 percent of people in Strongsville crack open a "pop" when they're thirsty and only 24 percent drink a "soda." 

But just a few miles away in Cleveland Heights, almost 30 percent of people say "soda" and 58 percent say "pop."

Click here to see the dialect maps. Scroll down to find Strongsville or another city and you can search all 122 of them. 


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

More from Strongsville