News

November 15, 2007

Heynabonics: Easy as one, two, tree

Video on YouTube.com depicting Northeast Pennsylvania’s unofficial language proving to be quite a hit.

Chris O’Donnell walked into the bank on Tuesday, and the manager screamed at him.

He’s not a bank robber but an Internet celebrity of sorts.

The teller recognized him.

Apparently that teller was responsible for at least one of the more than 64,000 views a video starring O’Donnell has received on the Internet video-sharing site YouTube.com.

O’Donnell wrote “Heynabonics” for his comedy troupe, One Laugh at Least, a decade ago. It was filmed in 2005 and was screened before this summer’s blockbuster hit “Evan Almighty” at the Endless Mountains Theatre. About two weeks ago, it went online.

“I swear to you, I thought it would get 20 hits, and that would include my wife hitting it 10 times,” O’Donnell said.

When O’Donnell was speaking at 7 p.m. Tuesday, the video had 52,000 hits. Less than 24 hours later, it broke the 64,000 mark.

“It’s been seen by more people than (the number of people who live in) the city of Wilkes-Barre,” O’Donnell said.

The video stars Greg Korin, a member of One Laugh at Least and the Community Film Project, teaching a class about heynabonics, the unofficial language of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The other two stars are O’Donnell and his wife, Shivaun, who act as two out-of-towners who move to the area and want to blend in by learning to speak like natives. They learn such words as “heyna” (which means “isn’t it?”) and the old NEPA favorite “youse” (which “pluralizes” you.)

“My mother would kill me if she heard me talking like that,” Chris O’Donnell said, though later admitting his mother does say “battree” instead of battery. “I’ve had friends talking like that. I hear it all the time. When we were finishing “Heynabonics,” we went out to eat, and the waitress asked, ‘What do youse want?’ ” (which is another way of asking, “May I take your order?”)

That’s also in the five-minute skit.

“They know that we’re laughing with them,” Korin said. “It’s the beauty of the way Chris wrote the piece. It would be easy to become antagonistic and mean-spirited and poke fun at these people. I didn’t want to take it in this direction, and neither did Chris.”

One Laugh at Least – Chris and Shivaun O’Donnell, Korin, John Schugard, Jack Gibbons and Karen Novick – is calling an impromptu meeting on Sunday to discuss what to do next.

Maybe there will be a DVD or a collection of videos online, similar to Will Ferrell’s FunnyOrDie.com.

And maybe there will be a party when the video hits 100,000 views.

“And we’ll have pierogies,” Chris O’Donnell said.

HEYNABONICS TO ENGLISH

Need some help with your heynabonics? Here’s a cheat sheet supplied by Chris O’Donnell that’s sure to help. The heynabonics word is on the left and its translation to the right. O’Donnell said he spells phonetically. There may not be a correct spelling, but he already got some grief for the way he spelled heyna.

Heyna – Isn’t it, or isn’t it right?

Couple two-tree – Several

Jeet? – Did you eat?

No, ju? – No, did you?

Ta – To

Da – The

What do youse want? – May I take your order?

VIEW THE VIDEO

Log on to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sMI2jb16eo

Tweet	Follow @TLnews