Gerry (Jerry? It's not like I ever read his nametag or anything) was a thoroughly unintelligible security guard who worked the complex around the time the story takes place. When I say unintelligible, I mean it - the guy sounded like the offspring of the Team Fortress 2 pyro and a cement mixer. A cement mixer that spoke yinz. Never did understand a damned thing he said. Neither, I think, did anyone else.
That's Pittsburghese for you, though - this town will stop loving football long before it embraces the hard consonant. A lot of the locals, when they speak... sentences do not emerge. What comes out is a pile of loosely related vowels, punctuated with the occasional grunt and the glimmer of realization in their eyes that they're not getting through to you. It's not for a lack of trying - the inhabitants of the region all seem to have evolved some sort of highly specialized section of larynx - a post-larynx, perhaps - a section that belt-sands all of the hard pointy bits of words clean off, leaving only the most basic impression of phonetic intent.
That's how you can tell the imports from the locals - the imports sound sober by comparison, even when they're drunk. |
