recently settled LIRR strike<\/a> had folks throughout the New York metropolitan area talking about the massive railroad \u2014 and exposed the hidden tendency by some on the island to pronounce the acronym as a mono-syllabic word.<\/p>\nWhile a handful of folks who grew up with the habit told The Post that it\u2019s the right call, the vast majority of metro area commuters thought it was just plain silly.<\/p>\n
The recently settled LIRR strike made the railroad the talk of the town \u2014 and the subject of a linguistic debate.. Stephen Yang for NY Post<\/p>\n
Nearly all straphangers questioned by The Post had never heard the LIRR referred to as \u201cLURR.\u201d Stephen Yang for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cCalling the L-I-R-R \u2018LURR\u2019 is like auditioning for \u2018Pirates of the Caribbean\u2019 on the Oyster Bay branch,\u201d Oyster Bay Town Supervisor Joseph Saladino chimed in. \u201cAt that point, your monthly pass should come with a parrot and a bottle of rum.\u201d <\/p>\n
Bayside resident Margaret, who grew up in Flushing, said LURR \u201csounds made up.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you found anyone who said they\u2019ve heard that before?\u201d she asked a reporter. \u201cI say train. Most people just say Long Island Rail Road.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of the 17 commuters interviewed at the Bayside train station, none had ever heard someone use LURR before, and only one of 15 quizzed at the Mineola station knew the debate existed at all.<\/p>\n
The sole dissent came from Emilio Onolfi, a Long Island native.<\/p>\n
The few rail riders who said they refer to the LIRR as the LURR said it\u2019s no big deal. Christopher Sadowski<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, I\u2019ve heard it forever,\u201d Onolfi claimed to The Post. \u201cI live in Manhattan now but I grew up on the South Shore and that\u2019s how I\u2019ve always heard it. I still here LURR.\u201d<\/p>\n
Uday Sekhon, a Baruch College student from Mineola, said he\u2019s also on the Lurr bandwagon \u2014 and thinks it\u2019s even catching on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think LURR is definitely picking up steam, especially online,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople from Nassau [County] don\u2019t really say it, but I feel like a lot more people from the city are saying it. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of arguments online, a lot of people getting bashed during the last week, during the strike,\u201d Sekhon added. \u201cI\u2019ve seen more debate online this past week than every about LURR.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut yeah, it\u2019s real. I say LURR. Lots of people do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just call them LIARRS. Real New Yorkers are calling \u201cbaloney\u201d on one unsettled issue with the Long Island…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":820551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,19615,10209,6084,5248,9904,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,4413,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-820550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-commuters","tag-lirr","tag-long-island","tag-metro","tag-mta","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}