xiphoidprocess replied to your post “god, book prices are the WORST here 'cause of import costs and a...”
I never even noticed 'toward' vs 'towards' until very recently when a boss pointed it out. I grew up in hicksville, Texas, where everyone used 'towards' in speaking and writing. I worked hard to get my accent under control when I left for the east coast at 18 but I guess I missed it? (see also: tendency to say INsurance instead of inSURance, pointed out by a friend). Anyhow I was SUPER surprised to learn I'd been using the more-British variation my whole life.
I grew up in the north east (new jersey and later nyc) and then moved to the south west (socal) and there were a bunch of small differences that cropped up. Like I don’t say ‘Aaron’ and ‘Eryn’ the same way, but people in socal seem to and it confuses the heck out of me (I work with one of each). Certain regions of the US enunciate vowels more and NJ/NY is one of them. Also in NJ we called every large controlled-access road a highway and never used the term freeway. Here there are roads very definitely called freeways that I still stubbornly call highways. That’s...actually a much more complicated topic and has a lot to do with how NJ road systems work. NJ itself is very split on terminology and pronunciation...hilarious considering how small it is. In North and Central Jersey we have a desert food we call Italian Ice (similar to sorbet). In South Jersey they call it water ice because south jersey ruins everything beautiful. Oh yes, also all areas of NJ hate each other intensely and NYC hates all of them. What a place.