How much time does it take to become a local?

[dktshb]

I lived in LA for 21 years and probably felt like a true local after 10 years. I have been in SF for 8 years now and I feel it will probably take the full 10 years to feel like a local. I still deep inside identify as an Angeleno and probably always will.

[downtownpdx]

In Portland you’re a local when you can pronounce the downtown river correctly - It’s WillAMette, damnit 😁

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by downtownpdx

In Portland you’re a local when you can pronounce the downtown river correctly - It’s WillAMette, damnit ������

This comment reminds me of the first time I visited Portland, staying with friends who moved out that way post college.

I grew up in the Chicago burb of Wilmette, IL (pronounced "WILL-met"), and force of habit kept making me pronounce the Willamette River as "WILL-uh-met river", which was of course met with their derisive disapproval everytime.

I'm pretty sure that the derivations of Wilmette, IL and the Willamette River have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

[Comrade]

For Utah? Your first time blaming something on Californians.

[SIGSEGV]

I know California driver is a term in both Oregon and Nevada. Has it made it to Utah? (California drivers are tame compared to East Coast standards anyways)

[SIGSEGV]

In Nevada, you pretty much just need to pronounce Nevada right (wrong).

[Derek]

Originally Posted by downtownpdx

In Portland you’re a local when you can pronounce the downtown river correctly - It’s WillAMette, damnit 😁

Don’t forget Couch and Glisan.

[Six Corners]

There's a joy in giggling at tourists, visitors, or newcomers who don't correctly pronounce local street names that have been anglicized from their original language. It's like being in on an inside joke. However, I feel, it gets a bit awkward when an outsider who speaks the language those streets are derived from natively or fluently tries to say them. Here in St. Louis, we have a lot of streets with French names that have been heavily anglicized. I was working on a project in an area that has many of these French streets and part of the project team included an architect native to Spain who was fluent in French. He wanted to pronounce the names of these streets in French and it was a little embarrassing for the local team members to be like "hey man, here's the thing.."

I also think it depends on if a specific person feels confident they are a local through gained experience and knowledge. If I can trick you into thinking I've always lived in a place, how am I not a local?

[muppet]

That's like me living with a Greek bloke. I have to correct him EVERY time he mispronounces:

Hercules as iraklis
Aphrodite as afro ditty
Perseus as persayus
Pegasus - piggasus
Poseidon - pohsaydonn
Bibliotheque - vivliotiki
Crete - critty
Rhodes - rohdos
Hermione - urmyoni
Plato - platto
Uranus - oorahnos
Meteor - mettayor
Moussaka - moosa-car
Baklava - backler-var
Cyprus - keyprus
Europe - evroppi

Though can't be blamed as he is a foreigner, and we really should be patient - he's just not had the education. He then chases me around a bit and screams.

[Steely Dan]

Here's an interesting call-in program from Chicago's public radio station regarding who gets to rightfully hold the label "Chicagoan".

https://www.wbez.org/say-more-with-mary-...who-gets-to-claim-the-title-of-chicagoan


Provincialism is alive and well in the Land of Chicago.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Six Corners

There's a joy in giggling at tourists, visitors, or newcomers who don't correctly pronounce local street names that have been anglicized from their original language. It's like being in on an inside joke. However, I feel, it gets a bit awkward when an outsider who speaks the language those streets are derived from natively or fluently tries to say them. Here in St. Louis, we have a lot of streets with French names that have been heavily anglicized. I was working on a project in an area that has many of these French streets and part of the project team included an architect native to Spain who was fluent in French. He wanted to pronounce the names of these streets in French and it was a little embarrassing for the local team members to be like "hey man, here's the thing.."

Mispronounced French place names are common throughout the Midwest, i.e. Versailles (Ver-Sales).

Russia, OH is pronounced "Roo-shee".

I also think it depends on if a specific person feels confident they are a local through gained experience and knowledge. If I can trick you into thinking I've always lived in a place, how am I not a local?

Yeah but you can't trick somebody whose family has been there for 100+ years. There is stuff you just won't know and people you won't know and it will become obvious pretty quickly, like within 5 minutes if not quicker. Plus, you won't have the accent, or in the case of my neighborhood, the accents (plural). Oddly both accents sometimes appeared in the same family, which was baffling, kind of like how some Kennedys didn't have the Kennedy accent.

[Six Corners]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Mispronounced French place names are common throughout the Midwest, i.e. Versailles (Ver-Sales).

Russia, OH is pronounced "Roo-shee".

I know. My point was more about feeling silly explaining to native speakers how they've been changed.

Yeah but you can't trick somebody whose family has been there for 100+ years. There is stuff you just won't know and people you won't know and it will become obvious pretty quickly, like within 5 minutes if not quicker. Plus, you won't have the accent, or in the case of my neighborhood, the accents (plural). Oddly both accents sometimes appeared in the same family, which was baffling, kind of like how some Kennedys didn't have the Kennedy accent.

You're assuming everyone who has been in a place for a long period of time has a full and complete knowledge of its history and culture and has personally experienced it, which is impossible, especially in larger cities. A book I read about a journalist's experiences in Chicago reinforces this idea (specific to Chicago) that you can become very intimately familiar with your own neighborhood, its history, and local flavor while only having surface level knowledge of the rest of the city, or you can have moderately in-depth knowledge of the city has a whole. You cannot know the whole city intimately because you cannot possibly live long enough to have time to do so.

Even in Omaha, where I grew up, and have the most "local" knowledge of, there are things that have been around during my time that I have never experienced or even have knowledge of. Sometimes I talk to my parents about something Omaha related that they do not have knowledge of.

Even if someone's family has been in a place for hundreds of years, the most recent generations of that family did not experience life in that place longer than they've been alive. So even if, say, a given neighborhood was an enclave for a certain ethnicity for most of its existence, and then in the 1990s was transformed or gentrified into a artsy, hipster place, no one born during or after the 1990s has any experience with the place as what it used to be. They can only hear about it. Same as I would be doing as a transplant.

And accents? Not everywhere has an accent and most places that have historically had them are seeing them become less common among younger generations. Chicago has an accent, but none of the city natives my age (older millennial) have that accent. The only people I've encountered who do are older. St. Louis has one too. None of the younger city natives here have it either.

And some food for thought: The State of Colorado has a specialty license plate called the Pioneer license plate that you used to only be able to acquire if you could prove you were descended from the earliest settlers to Colorado, before it was a state IIRC. I have never lived in Colorado, but I can prove I am a descendant of Colorado pioneers and could have legitimately acquired that license plate if I moved there. Family members of mine settled in Boulder. One the longest serving mail carrier in Boulder, while another was a long running state senator for that region. There's even a historic house in Boulder bearing the family name. But I've spent all of maybe a day in Boulder in my entire life? So where does that put me as far as being local to Boulder with my receipts my family has shaped the trajectory of Boulder?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Six Corners

Even if someone's family has been in a place for hundreds of years, the most recent generations of that family did not experience life in that place longer than they've been alive. So even if, say, a given neighborhood was an enclave for a certain ethnicity for most of its existence, and then in the 1990s was transformed or gentrified into a artsy, hipster place, no one born during or after the 1990s has any experience with the place as what it used to be. They can only hear about it. Same as I would be doing as a transplant.

but having a family connection to long ago histroical events in a place can make them seem more real and relevant.

to someone who grew up in michigan (or wherever) and moved to chicago after college, the great chicago fire of 1871 is total ancient history. they might be aware of its occurence, but not have a good handle on what that catastrophe actually meant for the city and its inhabitants.

to me, a 6th generation Chicagoan whose ancestors' home was destroyed by the great fire, it lives much more significantly in my mind. not because I literally lived through and expereienced the fire, or even met any of my ancestors who did, but because I have heard the stories passed down the generations to me about how they survived and got through the ordeal. I've got a real familial connection to the event that makes it a lot more than just "ancient history" for me.


now, none of this is to say that being deeply rooted in a place is better than being a transplant or immigrant. I firmly believe that the best cities should have healthy doses of both (old blood + new blood = good blood), but let's not go overboard and start claiming that there's no difference at all between being a generations-deep local vs. a transplant/immigrant/newcomer/whatever.

[Six Corners]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

but having a family connection to long ago histroical events in a place can make them seem more real and relevant.

to someone who grew up in michigan (or wherever) and moved to chicago after college, the great chicago fire of 1871 is total ancient history. they might be aware of its occurence, but not have a good handle on what that catastrophe actually meant for the city and its inhabitants.

to me, a 6th generation Chicagoan whose ancestors' home was destroyed by the great fire, it lives much more significantly in my mind. not because I literally lived through and expereienced the fire, or even met any of my ancestors who did, but because I have heard the stories passed down the generations to me about how they survived and got through the ordeal. I've got a real familial connection to the event that makes it a lot more than just "ancient history" for me.


now, none of this is to say that being deeply rooted in a place is better than being a transplant or immigrant. I firmly believe that the best cities should have healthy doses of both (old blood + new blood = good blood), but let's not go overboard and start claiming that there's no difference at all between being a generations-deep local vs. a transplant/immigrant/newcomer/whatever.

That's very true and you're right, having generations of family in a place does provide a greater connection to that place and its history. I believe there are tiers of local-ness. My feeling is that, you can move to a place and engulf yourself in being a part of the community, learning its history, experiencing its different cultural offerings, and adapting to local norms enough where it's undetectable that you haven't always lived there until someone starts really prying into, like your example, how the great Chicago fire has impacted them on a personal level. At the same time, I believe there can be people who just aren't as interested in their own communities and just don't know much about them. Although local norms probably still come more naturally.

That said, I am speaking as an urban planner where it's been part of my job in many respects to know and experience a region I hadn't grown up in, especially when I worked in local regional government. So I've personally had more of a look at how the sausage is made than, say, Brayden Techbro who just came for the vibes.

[Steely Dan]

^ For sure! I agree with all of that.

Any individual newcomer can choose to become more well-versed in a place than even most of the locals are.

My earlier post was talking more in generalizations about old schoolers and newcomers

The ideal is a city that has plenty of old schoolers to really root it, along with health doses of newcomers to prevent it from getting too stale.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Six Corners

So I've personally had more of a look at how the sausage is made than, say, Brayden Techbro who just came for the vibes.

You know Brayden Techbro too??

He was cool at first... until you got to know him.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Six Corners

So even if, say, a given neighborhood was an enclave for a certain ethnicity for most of its existence, and then in the 1990s was transformed or gentrified into a artsy, hipster place, no one born during or after the 1990s has any experience with the place as what it used to be. They can only hear about it. Same as I would be doing as a transplant.

No, a multi-generational native and a transplant aren't the same thing at all. This is not how culture works. And who is telling the story? The character of the storyteller (i.e. grandparent) is central to the impact of the story on its hearer. The transplant can't hear a local story from their grandparent because their grandparent didn't grow up there.

And unfortunately, grandparents and others often unintentionally pass down inaccurate stories. This is how you end up with situations like Elizabeth Warren thinking she's Native American when she's not.