I’m heading back to the Great White North in a couple weeks for New Years… and by the Great White North, I mean Ohio. So in honor of my upcoming travel, the translation this week is a Cincinnati phrase.

Please?

When someone from Cincinnati needs you to repeat something, or say it louder… they say please. Another word for, huh? When I say it, which I still do even though I’ve been moved for well over a decade, I tend to lean in… so I can hear better.

Cincinnati was settled by a lot of European immigrants, with a heavy emphasis on German… hence the reason they have the largest Oktoberfest outside of Germany, is a sister city to Munich and has one of the handful of Hofbräuhaus’s outside Deutschland. It is common in German culture to say “bitte” when you need someone to repeat something, and bitte means “please” in German.

Just another reason why German has had such a big influence on my life… my great-grandparents immigrated from there (to NYC, not Cincy), I studied abroad there, studied the language AND was surrounded by so many German tendencies growing up in Cincy!

So, there you have it… a Yankee Translation Tuesday!