Essential English phrases

The median strip of a road. Never 'the median'. It is also the high ground people move their cars onto when heavy rain is forecast, so the word does real work here.

What Louisiana calls a county — the last civil-law fossil in its local government. New Orleans and Orleans Parish are the same jurisdiction with the same boundary, which simplifies exactly one thing about living here.

The plastic cup a bar will pour your drink into so you can take it outside. Open containers are legal on the street in glass-free form across much of the city, which is not the case anywhere else in this app.

The two dominant house types — a one-room-wide house with rooms in a line, and the same with a partial second storey at the back. A 'double' is a duplex version. Most of the rental market is described in these words.

The pavement, from the French. Older residents use it without irony, and it appears in property descriptions. The banquettes here are also the most broken in America, courtesy of live oak roots and subsiding soil.

A little something extra, thrown in free. A thirteenth beignet, an unasked-for pickle. From Louisiana French by way of Spanish; the concept is genuinely load-bearing in local commerce.

A Carnival organisation that puts on a parade or ball. Dues-paying, year-round, and for many residents the main social institution in their life. Some are old and closed; plenty of the newer walking krewes will take anyone.

The dancing crowd that follows a brass band — originally the mourners behind a jazz funeral, now a Sunday afternoon parade run by a social aid and pleasure club. Following one is free and expected. The route is published in advance.

The Saints chant, and by extension a whole civic identity. Used as a greeting, an exclamation and a noun for a fan. Do not attempt the full chant until you have heard it once.

Hello, how are you. The correct reply is 'awrite'. A 'Yat' is a native of the white working-class downriver neighbourhoods, named for the greeting, and the accent sounds far more like Brooklyn than like the South.

Doing the food shopping — a direct calque of the French faire son marché. Nobody here thinks it is unusual.

On a po-boy: lettuce, tomato, pickle and mayonnaise. The counter will ask 'dressed?' and expects a yes or no, not a discussion.

The local compass. The Mississippi bends so hard through the city that north and south are useless; everything is given as upriver, downriver, toward the river or toward Lake Pontchartrain. Learn this in week one and the whole city becomes legible.

The utility that drains the city and bills you for water. Both halves of that sentence are ongoing local controversies. Its name is a punchline and its pumps are why the city is habitable.