I'm proud to say that I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It has some wonderful distinctions such as Summerfest on the lake, and the Milwaukee Domes. We also have another strange distinction of being one of two small isolated regions in the country that drink their water from bubblers instead of something more mundane, like a water fountain. Actually, they're the same thing, but Milwaukeeans are proud of their bubblers. I still have a "bubbler" t-shirt to commemorate my home town. (I also love my Moo-waukee t-shirt, but that's a different story.) I still remember going to college in California and getting strange looks when I asked for the nearest bubbler. Strangely, if I'd gone to college in Boston, they would have probably known what I was talking about, since that is the other place in the country that maintains the bubbler shibboleth, as shown quite nicely by this regional dialect survey.
The survey also turned up another oddity. I've lived my entire life in a soda zone. While most of the country says pop or coke for sweetened carbonated beverages, the places I have lived (eastern Wisconsin, California, and Maryland) are all known for saying soda instead. To me pop sounds like what kids would say. And coke... it's just kind of silly. I don't say pitbull when I mean dog now do I?
It's also fitting that one of the dialect survey questions is actually about the pronunciation of the name Craig. To be honest I don't know how to answer that question.
Reference. The Dialect Survey conducted by Bert Vaux, who, ironically, has moved to the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
4 comments:
When I was a kid we drank soda, never pop. My favorite is "spicket" for
spigot. In 'Bawlmer' they tend to say
spicket.
Yep, spigot/spicket is another one of the survey questions, although I would say it's not so geographically specific.
Huh. Now I feel like I have to go watch lots of Laverne & Shirley reruns to see if they got the vernacular right. (Because all I know of Milwaukee is what I learned on that show.) ;-)
Please no, not Laverne & Shirley! Or Happy Days either, which is the parent series, also set in Milwaukee. These series written and produced by Californians, and for cripes sake Laverne is a New Yorker! Very few producers can capture any culture other than New York or L.A. (although there are some excellent exceptions such as Fargo and Good Will Hunting.)
Post a Comment