In the Northern Midwest, creek is often pronounced crick. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Creek vs. Crick”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Sherry Hagan, and I am from Menominee, Michigan.
Hi, Sherry, welcome.
Hey, what’s up?
Well, I have been listening to your radio show for a while, and I hear about all these family language conflicts, and I had one that I wanted to share with you folks.
Oh, please.
I was born in Clintonville, Wisconsin, but I grew up near Bear Creek, Wisconsin. Now, the creek is spelled C-R-E-E-K, but everyone around that area pronounces it Bear Creek.
And then my girlfriend and I met my husband and her brother and ended up, you know, dating, getting married. And they’re from the Minneapolis area. And they just didn’t understand why we would pronounce it as Bear Creek and not Bear Creek.
And what did you tell them?
And I’m wondering where that comes from. What did you tell them?
Well, I tell them that’s the way it’s always been pronounced. And this is a point of dispute.
Is your marriage in trouble?
Oh, not at all. It’s more of a point of dispute between Jack’s brother and his wife than my husband and I, partly because I just don’t get teased very easily.
But Jack’s brother, Jeff, always had a saying that he’d use with my sister-in-law. And my husband could tell you that running joke that he always uses if he’d like.
Oh, really?
Sure, yeah.
Is he there?
Sure, put him on.
Oh, yeah, he’s there.
Okay, here’s Jack.
Hello.
Hello, Jack.
So what’s this joke?
The joke is, okay, you say you were born in Bear Creek. Well, I sleep between the sheets. What do you sleep between?
-huh.
I see where this is going, and we don’t have to go there.
No, not going to answer that one.
But we get it.
Fill in the blanket home. It’s a good joke.
So you say Bear Creek.
Yes.
In Minneapolis. Is that where you’re from?
I was born in Minneapolis. I went through junior high in central Wisconsin, junior high and high school, which is where I met my wife, Sherry.
Okay.
Crick is all new to you?
Let’s just say I had heard crick when describing a small, barely noticeable trickle of water running down between the fields near a farm. But as far as something that you would put a name to, you jump across a crick. A creek just feels like it’s going to be a little bigger than just jumping across.
Interesting. Interesting. I’ve never heard that distinction before.
There’s a little bit of history here. You know, coming from where you come from, you probably were just as likely to say crick as the members of your family who do say crick instead of creek.
You know, in the northern part of the Midwest and even as far west as the northwest, in parts of California, crick is pretty well documented as being one of the pronunciations of C-R-E-E-K.
Now, it’s not that common in the South, which kind of throws people for a loop because they tend to associate these alternative pronunciations with the South. And in the Northeast, they don’t say it almost at all.
But where you’re from, both Wisconsin and Minnesota and the surrounding states, it’s a thing. It’s a mappable dialect that we can put a name to, we can put a history to, and we can show that it’s fairly widespread.
Thank you, Jack.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
