Jeat? No, Joo?

Watch the video of me explaining "Jeat? No, Joo?" 

or read this!

Imagine you're on vacation in Maine sitting on a bench outside a local ice cream parlor enjoying two scoops of something good in a waffle cone when you see a man, let's call him Carl, walk up to a car another man has just parked. The second man, let's call him Dick, gets out of his car to speak to his friend, "Funny runnin' into you here."

"Imagine that," Carl answers. "Jeat?"

"No. Joo?" says Dick.

"Well, let's go," replies Carl, and the two walk off together.

This could be a confusing situation for anyone unfamiliar with how to talk like a Mainer. What did they mean?

Well, in any language, speakers quite naturally shorten what they say and speed up how they say it, especially when they know they're talking to a member of the same language group. By language group, I mean a group of people who use the language in the same way, not just who use the same language. If either if these men were speaking to someone he didn't know, he'd likely speak more clearly.

"Jeat" and "Joo" are examples of this kind of shortened, sped up speech. "Jeat" is simply a reduced form of "Did you eat?" and "joo" is part of the reply, "Did you?"

I'm not sure if this exchange is strictly a Mainerism, or if you'll hear this question and reply all over the English-speaking world, but I suspect you'll find it mostly closer to the woodlands and harbors where some locals have lived for generations.

This type of reduction is actually quite common, and is usually a lot easier to understand when the word which follows "did you" starts with a consonant instead of a vowel. Consider "Ja buy anything for me?" Is it clearer that this means "did ya buy?" The "did ya (you)" is a lot easier to perceive because it contrasts with the 'b' in "buy," whereas the 'e' in "eat" is a lot harder to distinguish from the preceding "ya."

So, if a friend comes up to you and asks, "jeat?", you'll know to answer, "you buying?"

Now ya know.