“Chilly bin,” an actress in a New Zealand show called Wellington Paranormal said. What’s a chilly bin? It was obvious, in the scene, that a cooler, a portable ice chest, or whatever you call it in your region was the product of her concern. Colloquialisms, like this one, fascinate me. I’ve even been informed that I use some colloquialisms, we all do, without knowing it. We use terminology, phrases, and various descriptors that our ancestors, family, and friends do, and we absorb all this from those in their country, region, and locale. My cousin uses some different terms and phrases, and everyone around him does too. They also have a subtle, almost imperceptible drawl, and they overemphasize their ‘R’s’ in a manner that catches the ear. They live an hour and a half from me.     The modern version of the portable ice chest made its first relatively wide-scale appearance around 1951, which means the terms cooler and chilly bin weren’t derived from old world languages. Chilly bin also isn’t a result of a creole, a pidgin, or any other linguistic quirk with a characteristic mixing of parent languages typically born in a culture of multilingual settings. The term chilly bin was born and bred in New Zealand. So, when and why did New Zealanders (AKA Kiwis) begin calling the portable ice chest the chilly bin? A short but decent search of the term chilly bin suggests there is no person or event responsible for the term, and there is no point of origin or any identifiable historical trails for the term. “It’s just Kiwis being Kiwis,” some sources say. One explanation for this lack of explanation is that sometimes Kiwis simply enjoy “adding a touch of Kiwi personality to the English language, making it distinct and memorable.”  How do linguistic quirks, specific to a locale, start? How do they survive the “Isn’t it called a cooler?” corrections? “Yes, but that’s not what we call it here,” I imagine fathers telling their children. “But we’re the only ones who call it that,” I imagine the kids replying. The population of New Zealand stands at just over five million, so I can only guess that people who are proud of their heritage and traditions, big and small, have a tough time sustaining them against the language found in movies, TV, and the internet. Though I know nothing about New Zealand, and I’ve never met a Kiwi, I have to imagine that younger people, though proud of their heritage and traditions, refuse to use the term chilly bin, because it sounds so local, yokel.  

It’s All Relative to Relatives

I have a cousin who moved from the Midwest to the Southern part of the United States. Our family is from a region of the Midwest that has no discernible accent, and this cousin spent his entire childhood, the formative years, in our locale, until his family moved south in his early teens. When we visited him, decades later, we found that he switched languages. I didn’t understand that as a young kid, so I asked him about it. He said something about how he didn’t intend to switch, but he picked it up as a result of linguistic osmosis.  “It sounds like everyone down here made the switch,” my brother said. “They all speak with an accent.”  Our cousin overheard this and joked, “Son, down here, you’re the one with the accent.” Manufacturers make a concerted effort to localize their products for consumers, and online stores often do the same. If New Zealand comprises roughly five million, manufacturers likely do not spend too much time and effort regionalizing their products to accommodate their terminology. Kiwis surely recognize the more worldly terms “cooler,” “portable cooler,” or “ice chest,” but the maintain their terminology among one another. I could see the term chilly bin existing in an inclusive world that involved New Zealanders speaking among one another, but I would think that involving themselves in the world wide web would lead them to recognize that they’re holding onto the term in some kind of quant Kiwi manner that should eventually weed itself out among those who don’t want to ascribe to their quaint Kiwi traditions.     Americans have slang terms, the French do, and the Brits do. We all have slang terms that we use growing up, and isn’t it fascinating how they transcend generations? What Americans call a popsicle, the Brits call an ice lolly. Americans refer to the “rising chair” as an elevator, and the Brits call it a lift. Due to the fact that the Brits used to own America, the inclination might be that Britian should own these linguistic levers, but America tends to dominate the world in media, technology, and international business. When we talk about media, we’re including TV shows and movies, and since American entertainment is more popular worldwide, their lexicon tends to dominate. Most countries formerly owned by the Brits (Australia and New Zealand in particular) adopted their slang and lexicon, but the Americas branched off and refused to use British slang in an apparent effort to further their revolutionary quest for total freedom, but did the British then refuse to adopt the American lexicon, because they refuse to speak the language of their refuse? Or are dialects and colloquialisms a natural course of insular language/lexicons among people?  Order fish and chips in Britian, and you’ll receive a plate of fish and fries. Some suggest that most Brits do not call French Fries chips when they order it as a standalone, as various American fast-food chains have forced the term French Fries into the British vocabulary, but the term fish and chips continued in Britain when it’s ordered as a meal. Brits call chips, or potato chips in America, crisps. Some sites suggest that the Brits see the fried bits of potato Americans know as French Fries as those that were chipped off a potato, i.e. each fry was chipped off a potato. The actual origin of the French Fry may have started in 1629, in the country of Chile, or later in Spain, but the Belgians and French have had a long dispute that the French Fry developed in their country. Regardless, we can only guess that the Brits developed the term chips, because they are averse to referring to anything with a French designation. The term fish and chips hold true for Aussies, the Irish, and Kiwis.

The Loo 

In my locale, we’ve loaded the American lexicon with contractions. ‘Fyouwanto’ is a common phrase in certain regions of America that contracts the words if you want to. Brits say, ‘Innit’ for isn’t it, as in, “Cold day today, innit?” My very young son once noted that Americans say, “I’m headed to the restroom” if they’re in a restaurant and “I’m going to the bathroom” if they’re at home. Brits say, “I’m headed to the loo” regardless where they’re at. I’ll admit here that I always thought they were saying, the Louvre. Now, I know the Louvre, the art museum in Paris, is pronounced “The Loov-rah,” but when I hear the Brits and Americans refer to that museum, they say, “The Loov.” Seeing as how Brits often leave off the last syllable of many of the words they say, I thought “the loo” was a tongue-in-cheek shot to the French that they developed to conflate the waste removal room with one of France’s most treasured tourist destinations.  As with most commonly and casually used terms, “the loo” has uncertain origins. As such, we can only derive possibilities and theories. One theory has it that the loo was derived from the French term for water: l’eau. “This theory suggests that the word “loo” was originally used to refer to a water closet or a room with water facilities, which eventually came to be associated with toilets. Another theory is that the term “loo” originated from the cry of “gardyloo” used by medieval French-speaking servants in Scotland before throwing their waste matter out of the window. Over time, the theory states, the cry of “gardyloo” may have been shortened to “loo” and used to refer to the location where waste matter was disposed.” Gardyloo basically means “guard yourself for the water/waste,” or “watch out for the waste matter that I’m about to throw out the window here.” At some point, so goes the theory, the Brits just shortened it to “the loo”. 

Linguistic Laughter

When my Southern cousin eventually returned to the Midwest, he said, “I was almost afraid to talk, because every time I opened my mouth, someone started giggling.” Our laughter is an unfortunate, involuntary, and almost reflexive reaction to anyone who uses different terms, speaks with regional dialects, or has a specific drawl or accent. We laugh based on the ‘I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry’ confusion. On my trip to the South, I managed to get the shock and awe giggling out of my system, but there was something about his drawl, his colloquialisms, and his slang, idioms, and patois that still had us all looking at each other, pumping our eyebrows, and giggling, because it was one of those “I’m sorry, I know it’s rude, but I can’t stop laughing” moments.  If you’ve ever been on the other end of the laughter, you know we all have regional dialects, accents, and ways of saying things that are regional and local. The worst thing I ever heard was “You’re not from here are you?” a cashier asked me. “You know how I can tell? You don’t have an accent.” My initial thought was that I didn’t have her accent. I’ve since learned that in my region of the country, we don’t have any accent. We might be the section of the country with the least amount of accent, and little in the way of regional dialect. I don’t write that to gloat, as I think accents, dialects, and drawls are colorful, and my region of the country might lack those more than any other. Yet, we do have various colloquialisms and slang terms. It’s all relative, but when we’re young, and we have no idea that there is another way to say what we’ve said our whole life, we don’t understand it when someone says something different or they say it a different way, and it strikes us as funny. Homer Simpson summed this up with his typical brilliance saying, “He’s talking funny-talk,” after hearing Herschel Krusofsky (AKA Krusty the Clown) pray in Hebrew.