My good friend Lisa, and the co-owner/creator of this site, shot me over the above picture the other day and I replied: “Hey, I just passed that sign on 287.” Or it pretty much seems I should have, seeing as these declarations are certainly applicable to our great Garden State.
Let’s take them one at a time, shall we?
Yes, we do speak 4 languages, and all of them fluently. English, yes. Goes without saying, no? Profanity. Yes, we have smashed together some of the most colorful X-rated phrases on the planet, so it’s not just the blue words we can spew but how indeed we spit them. Jersey. Yes, that is a language all its own. And you really have to be from our great state to understand it. And Sarcasm. As Carly Simon says, ‘Nobody does it better,’ and I believe it is one of our great cultural gifts.
Let me give you an example of how we use a bunch of the above (specifically, profanity, Jersey and sarcasm).
I have a friend, born and raised here, who moved to Florida about five years ago. She is constantly telling me how in an instant of meeting someone she can tell they are from Jersey, as such by their speech as ‘tude (which is often the same thing). But she tells me all the time how her sarcasm isn’t so easily digestible to others not from here, something I have seen myself when I have traveled. One example is when somebody she is talking to tells her something that she finds surprising my friend often replies with her usual, “Get the **** out of here,” to which many a non-Jersian has said to her: “Why, do you want me to leave?”
Or there are these examples from what I do and have done…
I had a buddy in California, who when he’d ask me a question, and I’d reply, for clarification he’d usually follow up with, “Oh yeah, that’s cool. Is that where that is?” or with a “I never knew that” or some such. To which I would pretty much always reply, he told me (I never realized I was doing this) with a “Yeah, I don’t ******* know.” I’d immediately throw out my non-denial denial so in good old Jersey fashion I couldn’t be held accountable for my answer.
Or, the fantastically ambiguous Italian New Jersey-based (and I am of Italian descent on both sides so I am surely qualified to make this statement) “It is what it is,” when asked a pointed question about something I really don’t want to commit an answer to.
(Use it, it works.)
And yes, as the sign also says: The roads are rough, the attitude comes standard
I’m sure there are some New Jersey-centric books exploring the subject of New Jersey-language and ‘tude, either how they work together or separately. And I know that other places in the country and the whole world have their idiosyncrasies when it comes to what they say and how they say it. But I just know our Jerseyism runs deep and Lisa’s sign text prompted me today to give forth on what I feel are some of our better qualities.
Now, get the **** outta here, cause this is what it is.
