The Dead Giveaway You Didn’t Grow Up in Oklahoma

If you didn’t grow up in Oklahoma, there’s a real good chance we can tell pretty quick.

It usually happens the first time you say a town name out loud.

Around here, it’s not a test, nobody’s grading you, but it is one of those quiet giveaways. Like calling Cache “Cashay.” Which… honestly makes sense. That’s how the word looks. That’s how the rest of the world says it. But here, it’s just “Cash.” Quick, simple, done.

Another is Altus... Most of us down in SWOK don't get this one wrong, well, the newbie meteorologists usually do, but so do many other people. They always call it Uhl-tus... It's Al-tus. Like you wouldn't call Al Bundy "Ohl Bundy."

And nobody’s going to give you a hard time for it, at least not the first go-round.

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Truth is, Oklahoma is full of names like that. Towns that look one way on paper and come out completely different once a local gets ahold of them. It’s not even that they’re hard, it’s just… you kind of have to know. Like a verbal handshake that lets people know how long you’ve been around.

We don’t have it quite as wild as some places back east, where it feels like half the vowels are optional and the other half are just for decoration. But don’t let that fool you, the Oklahoma learning curve is real.

Spend enough time here, though, and it clicks. One day you catch yourself saying it the “right” way without thinking about it, and that’s when you realize…

Yeah, you’re not new here anymore.