[HN Gopher] The enduring mystery of 'Jawn,' Philadelphia's all-p...
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The enduring mystery of 'Jawn,' Philadelphia's all-purpose noun
(2016)
Author : tomcam
Score : 58 points
Date : 2022-09-16 19:25 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| jawns wrote:
| I've been using variations of "jawn" or "jawns" as my username
| for 20+ years.
|
| It's a word that has endured surprisingly well, as slang goes.
| And it's a conspicuously egalitarian term. You'll find it used in
| both blue-collar and white-collar settings, and across racial
| lines. There's very little tribal attachment. Nobody cares if you
| appropriate it. The general sentiment is the more jawn users, the
| better.
|
| But unfortunately, I'm afraid it may have jumped the shark when
| the "Jawn Morgan" billboards started appearing:
|
| https://billypenn.com/2022/05/25/jawn-morgan-billboards-phil...
| Stupulous wrote:
| > across racial lines... Nobody cares if you appropriate it.
|
| It seems like the first tweet from your linked article is
| suggesting otherwise.
| spyspy wrote:
| ard
| phlalexsh wrote:
| ehhhh I disagree. I definitely cringe when I hear a hipster
| who's lived here for 2 years try to inject jawn into every
| conversation. Feels very forced. Also Jawn being put on pins
| and shirts is also very cringe to me
| gerdesj wrote:
| "I definitely cringe" and "Also ... is also ... very cringe
| to me"
|
| You certainly get plenty of mileage out of the word cringe.
| Is it a verb, is it an adjective - who knows? Your also ...
| also construct riffs on "either ... or", "both ... and" and
| the like. There must be a name for terms like that - you get
| them in Latin too so they've been around for a while eg nec
| ... necque (neither ... nor).
|
| Jawn is just a colloquialism but I've seen also ... also
| several times before now. I've also seen very cringe too.
|
| I am not taking the piss but I feel that I am watching
| language evolve right in front of me. I suspect that whilst
| this article and set of threads gets itself all whizzed up
| over jawn, it is missing the rather bigger point about
| language and conversations that travel at the speed of light
| instead of just sound and is distributed by the internet and
| not just the post office.
|
| On HN we pontificators have an audience that a Roman
| Imperator could only dream of.
| lc9er wrote:
| Yeah. I feel like there's two types of people that actually
| use jawn: those that are very Philly and those that are
| trying, really, really hard to sound Philly. I can't say I've
| said jawn with a straight face since I was a little kid.
| maxpowersage wrote:
| Wentz and Foles at Minnesota. Tom Brady rests.
| tillinghast wrote:
| Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. Shaka, when the walls fell.
| sosborn wrote:
| Hawaii equivalent is "da kine"
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn,' Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun
| (2016)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20574296 - July
| 2019 (108 comments)
|
| _The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose
| Noun_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11367406 - March
| 2016 (52 comments)
| [deleted]
| maxcan wrote:
| Philadelphia born and raised and for my life I couldn't define
| what 'jawn' means.
| jonnycat wrote:
| Same here, I only learned about it as an adult.
| SpikeDad wrote:
| Same although haven't been there for many years and still I
| never heard lawn once from my parents, my relatives or myself.
| Is there a more localized area of Philly that uses it - my
| family covers south and west Philly.
| shashanoid wrote:
| Ayo i'm from philly this made me chuckle
| tzs wrote:
| I wonder if this gave South Park the idea for "marklar" [1]?
|
| [1] https://southpark.cc.com/clips/151539/welcome-to-marklar
| thebiglebrewski wrote:
| I'm upvoting this jawn!
| tomrod wrote:
| > According to experts, it's unlike any word, in any language.
|
| I introduce you to "kwan" (or "kuan") from Visayan, which serves
| the same purpose.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/DoesNotTranslate/comments/jmkvbd/fi...
|
| Kwan is not just a time-filler word like "um." You can legit use
| it in a sentence as an object-filler word and people still
| understand.
|
| "I was surfing at the kwan and ate some kwan with hot sauce."
| "Was it good?" "Oh yeah!"
| orange_joe wrote:
| I don't believe that it's unique "thing" is pretty widely used
| in a similar way.
| tengwar2 wrote:
| Thingy, whatsit, whatchermacallit - there are loads of these
| words. "Jawn" may have slight differences in the way that it
| is used when compared with "whatsit", but it doesn't seem
| very different. "Dongle" used to be used this way (by the
| person who invented the copy-protection dongle, who then
| repurposed the word). And then there'a the old faithful Latin
| "re".
| istjohn wrote:
| "Thing" isn't used for people or places though.
| linschn wrote:
| Same as "smurf", then?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smurfs
| jonhohle wrote:
| But "smurf" also has adjective, adverb, and verb forms in
| addition to being a noun.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Smurf yeah!
| tomrod wrote:
| Yes! Very similar to my recollection (it was my not my first
| language, but lived there awhile).
| choudharism wrote:
| Como "weon" en Chile // Like "weon" in Chile
|
| https://spanish.stackexchange.com/a/4839
|
| The "w" sound keeps repeating in the themes here, interesting.
| anon_123g987 wrote:
| In Hungarian it's "ize".
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/iz%C3%A9
| xg15 wrote:
| Germans are probably unimaginative here, but "dings" would
| definitely qualify.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| In Korean _geosigi_ (geosigi) fills this role, which can be
| used as any part of speech.
| yongjik wrote:
| ...and is also used, unsurprisingly, as a euphemism for
| penis.
| tomcam wrote:
| Is it usable in polite company?
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| Yes, the word came to be used as an euphemism because of
| its genericity, not the other way around. If the context
| doesn't suggest otherwise it is not considered impolite.
| tomcam wrote:
| Quite interesting to me, thanks.
| eunoia wrote:
| Sounds very similar to usage of "da kine" in Hawaiian Creole
| English (i.e Hawaiian pidgin).
| tomcam wrote:
| That struck me immediately too.
| andrewnc wrote:
| My favorite part here is that it's a noun and a verb
|
| "i-kwan mo yung kwan" -> "just thing the thing"
| tomcam wrote:
| From your reference it can also be used as a verb, which is
| dope.
|
| I kind of think that there must be a vast amount of Filipino
| culture I don't know about. Big population, but little
| penetration of the culture in mainland USA.
| tomrod wrote:
| Filipino culture rocks. The food, the festivities, the
| languages, the zest for life.
|
| Absolutely loved getting the chance to participate in it here
| and there. I miss speaking to native speakers.
|
| The distinction of verbs and nouns in Austronesian languages
| generally are pretty lax.
|
| Also cool, Tongan and Samoan speakers found Visayan numbering
| mutually distinguishable -- "lima" for 5, for example.
| anon_123g987 wrote:
| English has "verbing", too.
|
| > _" [E]asy conversion of nouns to verbs has been part of
| English grammar for centuries; it is one of the processes
| that make English English."_
|
| https://www.thoughtco.com/verbing-definition-1692587
|
| Just like "jawn" is not unique (not even within English),
| in my experience there's almost nothing really unique in
| any language.
| tomcam wrote:
| Verbing isn't unique, but I do like to explore
| etymological quirks.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Sounds a bit like "yoke" in Irish English.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I grew up 10 minutes from Philadelphia, and I distinctively
| remember kids I know starting to say jawn in the mid 90s. I was
| like wait are you saying joint, as in a spike lee joint? and they
| were like no it's jawn. Around the same time everyone changed the
| emphasized word in the phrase "yeah it is" when in agreement.
| More recently it reminds me how people switched to "all the
| sudden" all of a sudden.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _More recently it reminds me how people switched to "all the
| sudden" all of a sudden._
|
| ...and as a non-native english speaker, I just learned that
| "all of a sudden" is slang and not just a normal part of the
| language.
|
| Wow!
| kencausey wrote:
| I may be wrong but I think rather than 'slang' the correct
| word would be 'idiom'. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idiom
| gerdesj wrote:
| "all of a sudden" is probably ubiquitous in english and so
| whilst it is an idiom, it is a standard idiom!
| googlryas wrote:
| I was raised in south jersey, about 30m from Philly, and I
| remember exactly when jawn hit our little town, right around
| Y2K. I was in 9th grade at the time, and I remember it being
| like an arms race where people were throwing jawns out at every
| little thing, regardless of necessity. I also remember it
| pissed off a couple of the "cool kids" who were actively trying
| to coin "gwat" with the other students. It had some legs at
| first, but jawn came along and everyone forgot gwat.
| ry4nolson wrote:
| that's so fetch!
| jakzurr wrote:
| OMG that's funny! Thanks for sharing.
| merolish wrote:
| Huh, I grew up in Cherry Hill and graduated HS in 2000, guess
| we missed it because I didn't learn about the term until
| years later.
| gxqoz wrote:
| Yeah I feel everyone around me who used this word added a bit
| of a "t" sound to the end. It wasn't until I was an adult I saw
| it spelled out like "jawn".
| xg15 wrote:
| Maybe the opposite of jawn is jawn't?
| x-shadowban wrote:
| ...and then there was a perf regression cause the jawns were
| being autoboxed to Jawns...
| redweer wrote:
| there's a skateboard mag out of Philly called Skate Jawn
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skate_Jawn
| tomcam wrote:
| Wholly appropriate
| foolfoolz wrote:
| shit is a synonym for jawn
| Larrikin wrote:
| Shit is almost never a synonym for a woman
| alistairSH wrote:
| Pretty much. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igh9iO5BxBo
| lelandfe wrote:
| For some reason, "shit" reads as a plural noun to me while
| "jawn" reads singular. I've never really thought about it, hah.
|
| E.g. "can you grab the shit from my truck" vs "can you grab the
| jawn"
| bee_rider wrote:
| Hmm. Would you say "shit" is countably or uncountably plural?
| a_mechanic wrote:
| Uncountable, e.g. "look at all this shit in my truck". I
| cannot count all the shit. For countable plural I will use
| the form "shits", e.g. "these two shits left their bikes on
| my lawn".
| pc86 wrote:
| I would've expected "that jawn" but couldn't for the life of
| me tell you why.
| robocat wrote:
| The words "this", "that", "the" imply a position of an
| object (or noun) relative to the speaker - they are called
| demonstrative pronouns.
|
| You really need to know the difference if trying to speak
| Spanish: https://www.spanish.academy/blog/a-simple-guide-
| to-demonstra...
| verrp wrote:
| "I don't know shit about fuck."
| CollinEMac wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing. Seems to function pretty much
| the same way.
| smm11 wrote:
| Ope.
| a1ku wrote:
| There's a similar word in southern Italy, "cazzafa" or
| "fattappost", which can mean basically anything you don't know or
| remember the exact word for.
| hubrix wrote:
| I think whatever "linguists" did this "research" must be
| undergraduate internet searchers. For example in Russian the
| words "fignya/fignyushka" or the less polite "huynya/huynyushka"
| are used in a very similar way. They are a noun representing an
| abstract "thing" that the listener would understand from context.
| bwestergard wrote:
| In D.C. and Baltimore it's more like "jont".
| jasonlotito wrote:
| All my jawn using friends here are going to love this.
|
| I live outside Philly, and yes, they use jawn.
| tomcam wrote:
| The Philly accent is maybe my least favorite in the USA, but jawn
| definitely needs wider circulation.
| phlalexsh wrote:
| Bad take on all sides
| spyspy wrote:
| Wait til people find out about ard
| Larrikin wrote:
| As a transplant to Philly for college from VA, Philadelphia
| definitely sits in a weird area when it comes to their cultural
| contributions. New York does their best to make sure people from
| Philly know they aren't allowed to be culturally relevant like
| they do with New Jersey so there's a little bit of mixing of
| culture from Philly to NJ. It has Baltimore to bully in a similar
| way as NYC does but evidence of the culture is obvious. Jersey
| club as a music genre is wholly from Baltimore but obviously
| influenced from Philadelphia.
|
| But its influence seems to be completely stopped at DC, where
| people from Philly "who made it" but not in NYC try to show they
| aren't from Philly.
|
| I lived there through college, and never felt any influence to
| pick up the slang since it seemed to just exist in a bubble that
| was ridiculed from all sides. I would say I wanted a hoagie at
| the store, because they would pretend they didn't know what a sub
| was, but thats about it.
|
| But jawn seems like the most boring word that online articles
| like to talk about. Its obviously prevalent but its also not
| unknown and actually fairly common. When I was in Philly earlier
| this year a lawyer's ad on the radio used it prevalently to try
| and show some kind of connection to the city. Its kind of unique
| but uninteresting, similar to a broccoli rabe sandwich bloggers
| rave about since the best cheesesteaks in the city have basically
| been established for decades now.
|
| Now an article explaining 'actin jo (joe??)' I'd love to read
| about because I've never gotten a straight answer on that, but
| have seen fights get started because one girl said it to another.
| cammil wrote:
| Isn't "thing" another word that is like "jawn"?
| novacole wrote:
| As a Philadelphian, i can sum up the usage of jawn as: a place, a
| thing or a girl/woman.
|
| For example this is a valid sentence:
|
| "Person 1: I was at the jawn down the street when that bad jawn
| from up the block walked in. But she didn't say anything.
|
| Person 2: oh that's a bad jawn"
|
| Translation:
|
| "Person 1: I was at the place down the street when that pretty
| woman from up the block walked in. But she didn't say anything.
|
| Person 2: oh that sucks"
| appleflaxen wrote:
| Is "whatever" a similar word in any way?
|
| ""Person 1: I was at the whatever down the street when that bad
| whatever from up the block walked in. But she didn't say
| anything.
|
| Person 2: oh that's a bad whatever"
|
| ?
| SllX wrote:
| Apparently Philadelphian culture is more contextual than literal.
| You just say what's in your jawn and people understand.
| danbolt wrote:
| Jawn is useful for readability, but also provides an easy
| performance benefit too. Iterators for `std::unordered_map` will
| have the proper `const` values and the compiler won't need to do
| any implicit conversions.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Hello GPT3 (or attempt at mocking GPT3 accusations?)
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