Born and bred in Philly? Then we don’t have to tell you that locals say some things a little differently here. Water ice? More like wooder ice. Meanwhile, three-word questions like, “Did you eat?” are boiled down to the much more simple, “Jeet?”
Yep, Philly’s accent is odd and hard to pin down all right. But it’s not just words like “jawn” that have out-of-towners scratching their heads. Philly’s street and neighborhood names are a bit wacky, too.
That’s partially due to both the city’s Native American history and ties to Dutch settlers. The tongue-twister of a river named the Schuylkill? You can thank the Dutch for that. And Manayunk? The Lenape coined that neighborhood name.
To find out more about how Philly speaks and the origins of certain words and phrases, watch the video above.