Maine-speak. Ayuh.

MAINE-SPEAK. AYUH.

A few summers ago, a city friend visited us on the island. The first time I said “osprey,” he thought I was referring to Asprey, a luxury store in New York specializing in leather goods and expensive jewelry. And about tomali, that green stuff in lobsters? He exclaimed, “Oh look, tapenade.” As though the crustacean sprawled dead on his plate had first journeyed to the south of France and ingested a hefty amount of chopped olives and capers. An odd, innocently mistaken usage and worth a chuckle or two, but not in the same league as the faulty translation I encountered while researching a possible trip to Sicily a few years back. On its website, an Italian company boasted of its specialty in touring small villages and helping “Italian-Americans looking for their family’s ant sisters.”

More recently, after suffering a stroke, my father was hospitalized for two weeks in Arizona. Of the Critical Care doctor who treated him, my husband, in a letter of commendation to the hospital’s CEO, referenced the Oliver Wendell Holmes’ quote: “a profession is great when greatly pursued.”  In expressing my gratitude, I more simply told the doctor, “You’re the finest kind.”  Maine-speak that, apparently, needed no translation.

Mainers, I’ve often heard it said, “talk funny.” Meaning mostly, I suspect, the substitution of an “ah” for an R. How, for example, back in Illinois I breathe air and here it’s something called “aya.” Or the way the grocery check-out gal calls you "deah." But lest you think you're someone special when she does so, just listen to how she greets the customer behind you or just about anyone else waiting in line.

While all regions have their own way of saying things, a person muddling through some of our Downeast lingo may need a greater assist. Recently I learned “sailing under bare poles” somewhat courteously acknowledges a person’s poor financial condition. “Gunning the ledges” is likely to mean a DownEaster is out hunting for sea ducks. If you keep the “stick stirring,” you’re prone to bring up old, sore issues or disputes. My college era summer-time tanning concoctions of baby oil and iodine may be evoked when I hear “oiling up,” but I now know that fishermen hauling on foul weather gear is a better forecast than any weather report I’m apt to pick up on the radio.

I now know, too, that in some households here, dinner is still likely to mean lunch. And that barrens means blueberries. I’m years past finding anything the least bit oxymoronic in “wicked-good.”   

Gratefully, my dad’s doc was that, too.