Re: USAGE: Pop, smearcase, kolaches

Melissa Phong wrote:
>
> >Quoth Jeffrey Henning:
> >> I heard that plenty growing up in eastern Ohio, though some of my relatives
> >> would have said, "that shirt needs warshed."  Oh, how I miss my
> >> grandmother -- she warshed, she sat on the davenport, she bought us pop,
> >>she liked smearcase, she made kolaches, she swept (rather than vacuumed or
> >> hoovered), she sat on the shore teaching me to suck... eggses... eggses it
> >> is!  And she did a hundred other wonderful things that have nothing to do
> >> with American dialects.
>
> Then Don replied:
> >snip
> >As for the nifty things your gramma did, I have to say I haven't heard
> >*any* of them before *except* for "davenport", which my grandparents
> >(from South Dakota) used.  They never used any other word for it
> >("couch", "sofa") that I remember, but nor did anyone else I knew ever
> >use that word.  Funny thing.
>
I recognize "davenport" and "kolache" from my mother's family (North
Dakota, Bohemian extraction). Living in Minnesota, that seating thing in
the living room was any and all of "davenport", "sofa" and "couch".
"Kolache" are a lovely form of filled pastry that my grandmother would
make. I do have her recipe for the dough, but am not much of a baker.
Poppy seed and prune were Grandma's favorite fillings, although I prefer
cranberry myself. And I never heard the plural with a "-s" or "-z". It
was always just "kolache" as a mass noun.

Laurie
milo@winternet.com
--
"Being bright does not grant an immunity to doing idiotic
things; more like, it just enlarges the possible scope."
     -- Lois McMaster Bujold