Bag-Raising, a Dialect Feature

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Paul Hebing from Memphis, Tennessee.

Hey, Paul, we’re glad to have you. What’s up?

All right. So I have a question about accents and mine in particular. So I am originally from Wisconsin, but I haven’t lived in Wisconsin for over 20 years. My wife is from Florida, and she makes fun of me a lot for the way that I speak with just some words in particular.

So, for example, I am I am not I don’t allow myself to say that that food, the round food that’s bready that you put a schmear on because it often comes out weird. Or at least that’s what I’m told. It sounds normal to me.

So B-A-G-E-L?

That would be the word. Yeah.

Because I say it, bagel, and that sounds perfectly acceptable to me, but every time I say that, she gives me a funny look and says,

What was that?

What is that thing?

B-A-G-E-L, you say?

Bagel.

Say it again?

Bagel.

Okay.

What else do you say?

The knife, a small knife, a dagger is how I say it.

Let’s see.

Snag.

Beg.

Yeah mostly those a words and then o words yeah I’m told I say snow funny as well.

Oh I love it I love it oh you’re so much a product of your your isolect of your your regional.

Your regional variants you’re you’re a great example of the the place that you’re from.

You’re you’re like the archetype of a speech pattern it’s perfect and your wife makes fun of that?

Yeah, she has a master’s in linguistics, so I think she thinks that makes her the standard bearer of how things should be said.

But what kind of linguistics? Like computational linguistics?

I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at the degree that she has hanging up on the wall.

Well, it seems like malpractice to me, Paul’s wife.

It could just be her affectionate way.

Yeah, it’s true. What if she moved to Wisconsin?

Yeah. Wouldn’t people be. We’ve talked about that. And she said that she might lose her mind listening to all my family speak the way that we speak.

Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. She’s probably already picked up some of your speech ways and she just doesn’t know it.

That could be. One can hope because I think it’s a perfectly fine way to say words.

Although I will say I have friends that I grew up with in Wisconsin who also have moved away.

And they also confess that they never say that B-A-G-E-L word aloud because that is the one that people make fun of the most, apparently.

Wow.

All right. So let’s just talk about this a couple of different ways.

One is I want to just, Martha and I often say this, but it bears repeating.

Sometimes these little polite bickerings that we have about language allow a couple to let off some of the steam of a relationship without it building up and coming out in ugly ways.

So we just kind of have these little polite kind of frictions about unimportant languagey things.

And they’re good for the relationship.

And then they don’t mean anything.

And they’re not really serious.

And this bagel bagel pronunciation argument might be one of those things.

And maybe you just let it continue because it’s doing that good job for the relationship.

It is.

It is something that she gets to consistently point out and bring up because apparently I’m never going to change.

Try as I might.

But the other thing I want to say about it is when we have a speech way like this, a dialect feature like this that belongs to a huge pattern that we can map and show that millions of people do it, it is not a mistake.

And her uncomfortableness with it is something she’s allowed to express, but it doesn’t mean that she’s correct if she ever wanted to say that it was wrong.

And it doesn’t sound like she’s saying it’s wrong.

It sounds like she’s saying she’s uncomfortable with it.

Oh, no, she’s told me it’s wrong.

Oh, she needs to give back the linguistics degree.

So in the dialect region that you represent, there’s something called bag, beg raising.

That’s what linguists call it, where these vowels do change.

So bag and beg can swap places.

Bagel can become bagel. I’m exaggerating. And milk can sound like milk and a variety of other things.

But all of these features are part of this dialect region and they belong to this region.

And they’re noted and notable. Just because somebody notices something doesn’t mean the noticeable nature of it makes it wrong. It isn’t wrong just because you notice it.

That is correct. And I should bring that up to her. I was about to say very true. But in addition to having a master’s in linguistics, she is also a philosopher. So I cannot say things like very true because there are no degrees.

There’s no such thing as greeted true.

Oh, no. Tell her that she’s a very unique woman.

She is. She is. And I love her very much, even though I can’t say bagel in front of her.

I hope that you get good bagels wherever you live, Paul, and I appreciate you taking the time to tell us about this.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

What are the little linguistic disputes you have in your house?

We’d love to hear about it.

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