Talking Like a Native 2
Categories: Observations
Date: Monday, 25 February 2008, at 11:24 am
I previously wrote quite a bit about the San Francisco accent and dialect. Here now is another article on the subject that was just published in yesterday’s I.J. It seems to owe a lot to its predecessor, but it adds a few more details nonetheless.
“Fedoras or Not, Sanfrancisco’s Still the Tops”
by Barry Tompkins, Marin Independent Journal, 24 February 2008.A friend recently sent me a story written back when men wore a fedora to a baseball game and women wouldn’t dare think of going downtown without gloves and matching purse. It spoke of San Francisco as I remember it — a quirky “town” that held itself to a different standard than Cleveland or Pittsburgh or any other American city for that matter.
I am a born and raised San Franciscan who still thinks there’s something unique about the place, and who wants to reach down an offender’s throat and physically remove his adenoids when a reference is made to “Frisco.” Anyone worth his weight in “It’s-Its” knows that not only isn’t it “Frisco,” it’s not San FRANcisco either. It’s basically one word: Sanfrancisco.
And, while I’m at it, the same is true of Sanazzay, Losgatas and Elsabrantee as well.
Here in “The County” (Marin is acceptable and so is The County — but Marin County is used only by those who still cling to the image of hot tubs and peacock feathers) we have Sanrafell. As soon as you hear “Ra-fa-yell” you know the speaker is either from Guadalajara or has just scored big on his Spanish I grammar final.
I was raised on Cabrillo Street in San Francisco — not terribly far from Arguello. And with all due respect to political correctness, if anyone had referred to either street as “Ca-breeyo” or “Ar-gwayo” they would have been looked upon as someone with the local knowledge of Alf.
San Francisco, to a San Franciscan, is a village. A local is defined by his or her school, and I’m not talking about Harvard or San Francisco State (Which incidentally, is the only “State.” Sonoma, Stanislaus and Hayward must find their own moniker. “State” is only San Francisco State). When a San Franciscan asks what school you went to, he only means what high school did you attend.
If you went to Lowell, you were pretty smart and very likely Jewish or Chinese. Lincoln was the Sunset (never the Sunset District, or Richmond District — just the Sunset or the Richmond). Washington was a melting pot where nobody knew what racism was and everyone co-mingled. If you went to Galileo, you knew every place to eat in North Beach and everywhere in Chinatown you could buy firecrackers. St. Ignatius was Italian Catholics and Sacred Heart was Irish Catholics. Mission and Balboa students were from blue-collar, working-class and sometimes hardscrabble backgrounds where grit was the ticket to life success.
And, as soon as the question, “Where’d you go to school?” was answered, the immediate response was, “Do ya’ know…?”
And you always do.
If a San Franciscan goes to “The Lake,” it is always Tahoe — not Clear or Stow or Berryessa. If he goes to “The River,” it is always the Russian River, never the Sacramento, Petaluma or Feather. “The Beach” was what there was at the end of “The Park.”
Dorothy Parker was right when she said, “There is no there there” in reference to Oakland. To a native San Franciscan, Oakland is a part of the netherland simply referred to as, “Across the Bay.” That would include El Cerrito, San Ramon, Alamo, Danville, Walnut Creek, San Leandro, Hayward and God knows what other burgs might have come along since we last visited. As a true San Franciscan I am proud to tell you I’ve been to Istanbul more times than I’ve been to Walnut Creek.
“The County” is another issue. As I’ve mentioned in this space before, Marin was to a San Franciscan what Oz was to Dorothy and Toto.
A real San Franciscan can usually tell what part of The City you came from just by inflection and speech pattern. If you were born “South of the Slot,” your accent was a dead giveaway. North Beach had its own lingo. And, one person from “The Road” could identify another.
The story my friend sent me reminded me that San Franciscans know that when you refer to an intersection, it’s always 25th and Balboa, or 16th and Mission. Numbered street first. Always. Don’t ask me why — it just is. And you never have to identify Street or Avenue — you just know.
Even though my city, I think, has become something of a transient sort of place where a native is someone who barely remembers life before Gavin Newsom, I think that’s OK. It’s now in the hands of Gen X, or is it Y or Z — or have we started back at A yet?
I wandered into Perry’s on Union Street the other night and it looked just about as it did a generation or so ago, when we spent countless hours solving the world’s ills and sopping up the last drop of chardonnay. Only there was someone else sitting in my seat.
And I think I went to high school with her mom.
Barry Tompkins is a longtime sports broadcaster who lives in Marin. Contact him via lifestyles@marinij.com.
© Marin Independent Journal