The Two Most Annoying Forms of Geographical Errorspeak
June 6th, 2007 by Brian
I live in the city of Chicago and all of my relatives live in the suburbs. Sometimes when they see me they ask “so how do you like living downtown?”
Often I dispense with the explanation that Chicago has neighborhoods and only a tiny fraction of those neighborhoods comprise what’s correctly known as “Downtown.” What my relatives mean to ask me is “so how do you like living in the city?”
My friends from high school also make this mistake sometimes but I usually don’t let them get away with it. I actually take the time to explain to them that I live in the northside neighborhood of Rogers Park which is not considered to be anywhere close to downtown. Learning the correct geographical terminology will enrich their lives and possibly prevent them from making a fool of themselves while talking to girls who live in the city.
The OTHER one that makes me cringe is when people universally apply the phrase “down there” to suggest direction. For example, if one of my friends who lives to the south were to ask me “so how long have you lived down there?” I would cringe because I clearly live to the north of him. There’s no “down” anywhere in that equation. If he had asked me that while I lived in Champaign (to the south) it would have been correct.
Geography is a relative to how far away you are from the place in question. Living out in the burbs, Chicago is all “the city”. If you live “downtown” or in a neighborhood does not matter, it all sort of blends into a single point in my mind.
Your relatives are probably doing the same thing: everything east of 294 and west of the lake is “downtown” in their venatuclar.
That’s true, and I wasn’t implying that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that I can’t help being annoyed by it.
I think it has something to do with my career in the sciences and the requisite need to use correct terminology all the time.
I’ll toss out a Chicago geography bit that annoys the crap out of me. It applies those living in Chicago and the suburbs of Chicago. The “roo” in Roosevelt Road is pronounced like “robot”, not “rooster”.
The 26th president of the United States was Teddy Roosevelt. The “Roo” in his name is pronounced like “robot”, not “rooster”. The 32nd president of the United States was Franklin Delanor Roosevelt. The “Roo” in his name is pronounced like “robot”, not “rooster”. Everyone knows this. Then why do so many people in and around Chicago pronounce Roosevelt Road improperly?