Mainers don’t “hurry,” they “book it”: travel site helps translate Maineglish

Frequently when you come across a listicle or ranking posted online about Maine, it’s been compiled by someone in some far-off corner of the country who seemingly mixed a few stereotypes with some Google results on trendy restaurants and called it good.

Emma Thieme (BDN file photo)

Emma Thieme (BDN file photo)

Every so often, you might find a “10 best things about Maine” written by someone who at one point in his or her life vacationed here, and has some legitimate working knowledge of a few of the less trendy attractions, as long as those attractions are still along the southern coast somewhere.

But today, we bring you a somewhat rare bird in the “Maine list” world, a piece compiled by a fourth generation Mainer living in Winterport. Emma Thieme posted “The 25 funniest expressions in Maine” to the travel website Matador Network, where she’s a contributing editor.

So this mini-guide to Maine English — Maineglish, as the fellows in the video above called it — actually has some bona fides.

A sampling of the Matador Network piece:

  • Instead of “foyer,” we say “dooryard.”
  • Instead of saying something is “cute,” we say “that’s cunnin.'”
  • Instead of describing a short drive, we say “up the road a piece.”
  • Instead of asking what somebody is doing, we ask “Chupta?”
  • Instead of saying something is in the basement, we say “down cellar.”

Click here to read Thieme’s full list of 25 Maine expressions and their out-of-state English translations.