English questions

[Travis B.]

Are your guys' English dialects like mine where 'green pepper' exclusively refers to a green bell pepper, while the term 'bell pepper' is practically never used unless one is being a pedant and wants to make clear that, yes, the green pepper is a bell pepper (even though there is no ambiguity, because other green-colored types of peppers such as jalapeños are never called 'green peppers' but rather are referred to by their more specific names, e.g. as 'jalapeños'). (Conversely 'red pepper' does not refer to a red-colored bell pepper by default but rather to a spice made from ground red-colored piquant peppers such as cayenne peppers.)

It's always been "green bell pepper", "red bell pepper" and so on to me, ever since I accompanied my parents on grocery trips as a kid. And back then my family hardly ever cooked with any other peppers, so it had no disambiguating function. We did use chili powder of course, but that's a blend of some kind of capsicum usually with other spices – the bag of Penzeys chili powder I've been working through since I visited my parents last year is made from ancho chilis with Mexican oregano, garlic powder, and cumin, for instance. Since I've grown up and watched a significant amount of cooking Youtube, I've become a lot more culinarily adventurous and it's become pretty natural to refer to hot peppers as "chilis"; cayenne powder is cayenne, and bell peppers remain bell peppers.

(I happen to also be from the Milwaukee area, if that's relevant. This means that the stew I know as "chili" bears more resemblance to pasta fazool than to chili con carne.)

It's interesting that you explicitly say 'bell peppers' whereas I am not used to the word 'bell' being normally used, and you are also from the Milwaukee area.

[salem]

It's always been "green bell pepper", "red bell pepper" and so on to me, ever since I accompanied my parents on grocery trips as a kid. And back then my family hardly ever cooked with any other peppers, so it had no disambiguating function. We did use chili powder of course, but that's a blend of some kind of capsicum usually with other spices – the bag of Penzeys chili powder I've been working through since I visited my parents last year is made from ancho chilis with Mexican oregano, garlic powder, and cumin, for instance. Since I've grown up and watched a significant amount of cooking Youtube, I've become a lot more culinarily adventurous and it's become pretty natural to refer to hot peppers as "chilis"; cayenne powder is cayenne, and bell peppers remain bell peppers.

(I happen to also be from the Milwaukee area, if that's relevant. This means that the stew I know as "chili" bears more resemblance to pasta fazool than to chili con carne.)

It's interesting that you explicitly say 'bell peppers' whereas I am not used to the word 'bell' being normally used, and you are also from the Milwaukee area.

I think it's likely your speech is just more lexically conservative* than mine. You'd obviously be a good deal younger than him, but my grandfather (in his early eighties) calls green bell peppers just "green peppers", I'm pretty sure**. I spent a few years living with him and my grandmother, but I'm also twenty-four and have spent a lot of time online.

* possibly not the right word for this; I suppose I mean "less Californianized", or more markedly regional
** certainly in the context of bratwurst with peppers and onions, which is I think the only thing he cooks with them

[linguistcat]

I don’t know what ‘chili con carne’ is.

Tex-Mex stew traditionally of just beef, chilis, and tomatoes; within Texas itself there is fierce debate over whether including kidney beans is appropriate, while up north there's usually also macaroni involved.

The kind I am used to has kidney beans but no macaroni.

If you involve macaroni, it becomes chili mac to me. I grew up in California and spent most of my life either there or here in the Utah-Idaho area.

[Travis B.]

I think it's likely your speech is just more lexically conservative* than mine. You'd obviously be a good deal younger than him, but my grandfather (in his early eighties) calls green bell peppers just "green peppers", I'm pretty sure**. I spent a few years living with him and my grandmother, but I'm also twenty-four and have spent a lot of time online.

* possibly not the right word for this; I suppose I mean "less Californianized", or more markedly regional
** certainly in the context of bratwurst with peppers and onions, which is I think the only thing he cooks with them

I suspect my speech is highly dialectal even by Wisconsin standards, because a very common question I get from coworkers when I first talk with them in length (e.g. on outings for lunch) is "where did you grow up?" I even get this from people I know are also from Wisconsin -- e.g. at my first Real Job out of college, they brought in contractors from all over the US, and I remember someone from somewhere else in Wisconsin (I think they were from near Oshkosh or like) remarking on my use of [ja] (pronounced pretty much identically to StG ja), which I had my whole life just perceived as another pronunciation of yeah but which turns out to be a particularly Milwaukee dialect form. On one occasion I had someone I did not know figure out which suburb I grew up in, without me telling them anything about myself, just from how I spoke.

[zompist]

Just so Travis doesn't have the monopoly on weird English dialectal observations...

I've been re-reading Lass's Phonology, and he mentions that some US dialects have [mɪiən] for 'million'. I thought that sounded weird till I tried it, and I think I have that, or more precisely [mɪjn̩]. In careful speech I'd say [mɪɫjn̩].

[Travis B.]

Just so Travis doesn't have the monopoly on weird English dialectal observations...

I've been re-reading Lass's Phonology, and he mentions that some US dialects have [mɪiən] for 'million'. I thought that sounded weird till I tried it, and I think I have that, or more precisely [mɪjn̩]. In careful speech I'd say [mɪɫjn̩].

I don't think I've ever heard that, but then I honestly don't have the broadest exposure to other English varieties, even NAE ones. My million is [ˈmɨːɰjɘ̃(ː)(n)]. However, I am not too surprised by this pronunciation, as coda /l/-elision is known in English (hell, the normal pronunciation of Milwaukee here has it).

[Creyeditor]

Slightly off topic: German children also stereotypically use [mi:jo:n] to refer to large numbers (at least in my personal experience), even though standard German has [mIljo:n] for million.