Many years ago, when I was at the University of Illinois but shortly after I had moved away from South St. Louis, I happened to be speaking to a class, and I mistakenly said "Dahrmatory", obviously my word for "dormitory". Right after the class, one of the students came up to me, and asked me if I came from St. Louis. When I confirmed that, she said that she was a linguistics major, and that there was a cell of about 100 miles in diameter around St. Louis when a defined accent was identified. The key to that cell was that "or's" were generally pronounced like "ahr". Another favorite example is "hahrse" for "horse". So we are a very unique subset of the world! With regard to the pronunciation of "Gravoi", I always thought that that was a valiant try to pronounce this French word as close to the French as was, perhaps, reasonable. "Grav wah" would, of course, be correct in French, but pretty tough for Americans. But most French words in St. Louis are much closer to the correct French than they are in the rest of the US. For instance, we always said "River de Pair" for "River des Peres", and that's almost exactly right. In contrast, in Illinois, I actually lived in a city called "Des Plaines" and pronounced exactly like that - with both "s's" loudly included. I'm sure St. Louisans would have called it "De Plan", and be much closer. Nancy Johnson from Los Angeles now -----Original Message----- From: DINETTEGUY@aol.com [mailto:DINETTEGUY@aol.com] Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 12:49 AM To: MO-STLOUIS-METRO-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [StL-Metro] Gratiot Street My grandmother used to say "Go warsh you hands in the zink." She also said arl for oil! I was born in South St. Louis and it has been pointed out to me that we say SouSt.Louis as all one word. Diane H. ==== MO-STLOUIS-METRO Mailing List ==== If you haven't visited Dave Lossos' "Genealogy in St. Louis" website (http://genealogyinstlouis.accessgenealogy.com/) you might want to take a look.