Lexical Differences

Lexical differences are really fun to talk about because there are so many words that people use to say the same thing.  I think these differences make language comprehension much more difficult than any phonetic differences.  Mainly because without a mutual agreement on the definition of a word, people cannot communicate their point.  It is a less extreme version of an interaction between an American and a tourist who only speaks there native language, except with lexical differences we can easily explain what we meant.  This comparison was a stretch, but it still represents the same kind of confusion.  

My favorite lexical difference that new jersey has to offer is the terms benny and shoobie.  Though, benny is definitely more common and is used to describe the people who come to the jersey shore from north jersey or new york.  Generally, they are the hawaiian shirt, white socks and sandals tourist that come for the weekends causing bumper to bumper traffic for all shore residents.  And when agreeing to something, instead of saying "sure, I'll do that"  I say "shore, I'll do that."  That is mostly pronunciation, though.  Lexical differences came up in my Psychology 1 class.  We were discussing Whorfian hypothesis and how language limitations dictates certain attitudes and behaviors of that group.  The bigger the lexical differences, the bigger the attitude and culture difference is between groups.  It is an interesting theory, though it is not exactly accurate.