This may be straying from the original point, but another famous Western
Pennsylvania idiom, the use of _ignornant_ to mean "ill-mannered,"
also extends beyond Pittsburgh to the west. It shows up in _Huck Finn_.
 
And since I have now legitimatized digressions, let me note that on
another listserv there is a hot discussion going on concerning the
differences between punctuation in England and the U.S. For example,
above I put the comma inside "ill-mannered," but in England it would
go outside, where all our students want to put it. Some on this other list
have argued that we ought to switch to the British system and be done
with this needless correcting of what apparently is natural.
 
It has also been noted that the British see the comma splice as normal
and correct. Since professional writers use the comma splice in this
country whenever it feels right to them, perhaps we should quite worrying
about this punctuation non-issue, too.
 
        --Bill Murdick