A thought inspired by the recent landfall of Hurricane Gustav and my far-behind-in-my-reading of James Lee Burke’s Last Car to Elysian Fields:
Years ago I attended a business convention in the city of Elision, Louisiana.
Elision is not the name of the city, though it certainly sounds like a good Cajun name—the convention was in New Orleans. Before I left, a colleague asked me, “When you’re down there, find something out for me. Is the city name pronounced with four syllables—new-or-lee-ans—or three—new-or-leens?”
On my return, I reported: “One: nawlns.”
Elision is the act of eliminating letters or syllables when pronouncing a word. Think of libary instead of library, wershester sauce instead of worcestershire sauce, dint instead of didn’t. (The opposite—inserting letters or syllables in pronunciation, as in sherbert instead of sherbet—might be known as “anti-elision” or “confusion.” And who the hell knows what it’s called in instances like Farve instead of Favre.)
And while we’re on the topic, I hereby declare today National Elision Day. Why today of all days? It’s Wensday, of course . . .
(And, oh yeah—Arlo Guthrie? He votes for three syllables:)
I grew up in a town whose most famous native son is Frank King, creator of the Gasoline Alley comic strip (premiered 1918) once common in the Sunday comic pages. Growing up, I knew the comics section of the Sunday newspaper as the “Sunday funnies.” Certainly people in other regions called it that, too. Not that I cared, back when. As a youngster in moderately rural Wisconsin (Tomah, specifically, population 5,460 at the time), I didn’t know and therefore didn’t care that terminology might differ in other regions—I was then oblivious to such concepts as terminology and regions.
Until just recently, I had no idea that—oof-dah!—such colloquialisms as “Sunday funnies” might represent linguistics on the cusp (and maybe even at the lip of the eave trough, what some of you might know as a “rain gutter”) of language change.
Wisconsin lies at the edge of many of the most significant changes currently underway in American English. Learn more about what makes Wisconsin English remarkably distinctive and worth studying!
What? Drinking fountains the world over are now being called “bubblers“!? Maybe. Maybe not. The quote is from the Wisconsin Englishes website, where some serious stuff is going on, what-hey?:
Two major vowel changes in the US meet in Wisconsin. The eastward change is where the words caught and cot are pronounced essentially the same. The westward change is where vowels rotate in what is called the Northern Cities Shift ( bit > bet > butt > bought > baht > bat; six > sex > sucks > Saux’s > socks > sax ).
Doncha know! Allow me a juvenile giggle over the “six > sex > sucks > Saux’s > socks > sax” progression. As a native Wisconsinite, this progression makes me wonder about what really goes on in Sauk City. Methinks that sax/socksophones are not involved.
I love this site, because it takes a marvelous Everything You Know About English Is Wrong “I’m-serious-but-I-don’t-take-it-with-funereal-solemnity” attitude.
Bottom line, because it’s Sunday and we all need an injection of funnies, I’ll leave you with something I rarely promulgate (a word seldom used in the comics/funnies/funny papers)—an internet list. In the spirit of Jeff Foxworthy (with some of the verbal things prioritized), “You might be from rural Wisconsin if . . .”
You know that “combine” is a noun.
You can make sense of “upnort” and “batree”.
Pop is the only name for soda.
You know that “creek” rhymes with “pick”.
You hear someone use the word “oof-dah” and you don’t break into uncontrollable laughter.
You know what knee-high by the Fourth of July means.
You know how to polka, but never tried it sober…
You know it is traditional for the bride and groom to go bar hopping between the reception and wedding dance.
You know the difference between “Green” and “Red” farm machinery, and would fight with your friends on the playground over which was better! [Brohaugh notes: I grew up with Red, but much prefer Green.]
You buy Christmas presents at Fleet Farm.
You spent more on beer & liquor than you did on food at your wedding.
Every wedding dance you have ever been to has the hokey pokey and the chicken dance.
Your definition of a small town is one that only has one bar.
The local gas station sells live bait.
You or someone you know was a “Dairy Princess” at the county fair. [Brohaugh notes: Wasn’t me. Honest.]
You let your older siblings talk you into putting your tongue on a steel post in the middle of winter.
You think Lutheran and Catholic are THE major religions. [Brohaugh notes: Add Packer fandom—see next entry.]
Football schedules, hunting season and harvest are all taken into consideration before wedding dates are set.
Saturday you go to your local bowling alley. [Brohaugh notes: Vlasek’s Bowling Alley, to be specific. Alas, it’s no longer there.]
There was at least one kid in your class who had to help milk cows in the morning… phew!
You have driven your car on the lake.
(Side note: David Benjamin has written a superb memoir of growing up in my home town of Tomah, Wisconsin, just a few years ahead of me in the categories of school grades and age. I recommend The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked primarily for its grace and style, then for its sharp observations on growing up in the ’50s. It’s a much better read than, say, an aged comic strip, an internet list or a snarky language blog . . .)
Once again in the spirit of the 4th of July weekend, I shall now reenact the least-famous battle of the American Revolution: The Battle of Bumpkin Hill. The Bumpkins—that’s us.
In a recent David Crystal blog, Crystal noted that a blog correspondent had written “to say she is ‘fascinated by the American habit (inability?) to say mirror, terror, etc as we do in two discrete syllables. mir-r, ter-r, is what we hear.’ Why do they do it?, she asks. She offers four explanations:” And then the four explanations—which I tend to believe were not intended to be insulting—followed:
1. A desire to be stylish or a reluctance to be too correct/too English?
2. Their frequent desire to speed speech up, as in giving a year as Two thousand eight instead of Two thousand and eight?
3. A form of shyness, like saying duiper instead of nappy?
4. Or maybe a Deep South accent becoming unable to embrace it?
Well, at least the correspondent didn’t include possible explanations involving “cowboy,” “Jed Clampett,” or “bloody ingrate colonists.” Obviously, I’m a mite irked by the theories, not because of the correspondent’s refusal to allow that regional differences are a natural part of language change, but by the implication that all Americans are self-absorbed idiots consciously disdaining correctness. Most of us are self-absorbed idiots consciously disdaining correctness, but by no means all of us.
Crystal, bless him, was purely educational in his response, and when a commenter challenged some of the thoughts, he kindly explained, “I’m allowing the post to appear without editing, but I would like to flag up that I don’t welcome intemperate expression on my blog. Some of the views that come in to me are often, from a linguistic point of view, wildly misconceived, but there is nothing to be gained by reacting to them with hostility.” I respect that. But because I’m one of those Americans afflicted with his own form of shyness, and one of those afflicting you with his own blog, allow me to examine the correspondent’s possible explanations one by one from this side of the pond:
1. A desire to be stylish or a reluctance to be too correct/too English? Yes, every syllable that comes out of Americans’ mouths goes through a “How correct/English is it?” mental filter before being uttered. As far as “stylish”—I had a paisley shirt in 1965. Does that count? 2. Their frequent desire to speed speech up, as in giving a year as Two thousand eight instead of Two thousand and eight? BadConcision!BadConcision! We use such shortenings to catch up on time lost running everyday words and phrases like “t’rbl mr’r” through our “How correct/English is it?” mental filter. (I mean, filt’r.) 3. A form of shyness, like saying duiper instead of nappy? Americans? Shy? That perhaps is the first time I’ve heard that accusation. But specific to the example, we say diaper because it’s the word we use. It’s not like we say elevator instead of lift or truck instead of lorry out of squeamishness. Oh, don’t say lorry! It makes me blush! Besides, ninety-nine percent of Americans don’t know what the hell a nappy is. (It’s a diminutive of [oh, I’m blushing now!] napkin, a word with several uses, among them “sanitary napkin,” a phrase we do use.) 4. Or maybe a Deep South accent becoming unable to embrace it? Yes. All Americans speak in a Deep South accent. With Shallow South dialects near the Canadian border. Particularly in Wisconsin, Idaho, and parts of North by Northwest, starring Cary Grant (who was English). Perhaps Cary was from the Deep South Wales.
How many people consciously shape their pronunciations out of “desire,” “reluctance,” conscious rejection of correctness, deliberate wallflowerism or “shyness,” and/or whatever the hell #4 meant? Crystal—again,bless him—responded with a dispassionate discussion of regional pronunciation. One quote in particular: “Where did the American /r/ come from in the first place? Think of the people on the Mayflower, and where many of them came from,” in essence holding a mir-r back on portions of . . . well, need I say more?
primarily for its grace and style, then for its sharp observations on growing up in the ’50s. It’s a much better read than, say, an aged comic strip, an internet list or a snarky language blog . . .)
, 
and 
. Feel free to 
