Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

I would not consider W as a vowel in Cow any more than I would consider L a vowel in Talk, etc. Most linguists consider W a semivowel because it has some vowel-like properties and some consonant-like properties. In Cow the W phonetically combines with the vowel O to shift the vowel sound. This makes it vowel-like. The same can be said of the L in Talk, but few, if any, would go so far as to call L a vowel in English. I suspect that the vowel qualities of W in English are greatly exaggerated, possibly by the arcane mention in the vowel jingle, and the few obscure words in which it is truly a vowel.

I must have missed this episode last year so have only just listened to it.
I was very surprised to hear that there are regions in the US that use the word "bubbler". In my experience everyone in Australia calls them bubblers. I have asked one or two English friends and they do not.
Seems that it not only skipped a few states in the US but bounced over the Pacific Ocean on its way from or to Oz.

Another Wisconsin resident here! I moved to Madison 3.5 years ago from northern Illinois, so "bubbler" was new to me, too. I was sometimes even admonished for using "fountain" instead of bubbler... and for using pop instead of soda... and for hailing from Illinois anyhow, because some Wisconsinites think of all Illinoisans as annoying, uppity, vacationing, bad-driving Chicagoans (and suburbanites). It was a long time before I stopped being paranoid that any small mistake I made in my driving habits would be attributed to my Illinois plates, for instance.

However, Madison and I embraced one another warmly, and I have become even more fascinated with the language and regional accent differences. For instance, two weeks ago, I spent some time chatting with a farmer from the Wausau area (about two hours north of Madison), and he had a strong, wonderfully charming, what I'd call typical Wisconsin accent. And, when I first moved here, it took me less than a week at my new job to notice different accents -- and I grew up less than 100 miles south of Madison!

Oh, and on the unique Sheboygan way of speaking: my friends in the Fox Valley area (Green Bay, Neenah, etc.) tell me that Sheboygan residents often turn S-words into Sch-words, as in, the fish known as "smelt" is pronounced "schmelt". ("You goin' to the schmelt fry Friday night?") I don't know why this quirk happens, but it's entertaining for those of us outside the area.

A Way with Words is my favorite show on public radio. Thanks, Martha and Grant, for fueling my love of language.

I think of this every time I hear your show's closing music:

Almost 20 years ago, some friends of mine related a story about a mutual friend of theirs (unfortunately, making this a friend-of-a-friend story). Their friend sang "Let's call the whole thing off" in a school choir audition. But, he had never heard the song performed and didn't know about the alternate pronounciations. So he sang, "you say to-may-to, I say to-may-to ... you say po-tay-to, I say po-tay-to ..."

And, I love your show, by the way.

Er, yeah ... and that may be the last time I tell that story. It makes me question the veracity of my friends' story. Thanks for the link.

(So thaaaat's what an awkward turtle feels like.)

johng423 said:

When she finished, the director said, "Thank you, Miss Le-vine."
She corrected him: "Actually, it's Le-veen."

That's a great epilog. I never heard that part. I'd be willing to wager the director called the whole thing off.

telemath said:

Regarding the alarmist opinion that texting will ruin literacy...

I'm looking for a historical analogy to compare it to. How about telegraphs? Did the terse nature of telegraphs raise alarm among the purists of the day?

Or how about when all the odd European letters (the German vowels with umlauts, the Danish representations of ae, oe, and aa, etc.) were formed due to a paper shortage? Did that raise the highbrows' eyebrows?

Re: the telegraph shorthand, I think Crystal discusses the historical predecessors of IM and TXT abbreviations in Txtg the Gr8 Db8, and yes, IIRC, there was a similar reaction.

As for the "odd European letters" being formed due to a paper shortage, that sounds very much like a myth to me. I'm not a historian of writing systems, but these characters have predecessors in medieval manuscripts written on parchment and vellum and are much more likely to be derived from suspension marks in the medieval scripts. For example, in German MSs, you'll often find a little suspended "e" where you'd later see an umlaut/diaresis.

My second grade teacher, Miss Walgrave, taught us - in Portland OR public school in the late 1940s - the A E I O U and sometimes Y and, she said, W in "bowl." Miss W was a terrific teacher -my mom told me more than 30 years later that she'd never encountered such a good primary teacher anywhere else - and I'd never questioned this notion until now. If the W is not a vowel in "bowl," what is it?

Also, regarding the Benson bubblers, we referred to the things we drank out of in school as "drinking fountains," and used "bubblers" only for the ones out on the street that Mr. Benson was responsible for. I wonder if anyone else from Portland had that same experience?

Bubblers: Another listener mentioned the "Benson Bubblers" in Portland Oregon, near where I live. They were provided by Simon Benson, local businessman who noted alchohol on the breath of his workers and asked why they drank in the middle of the day. They replied that there was no fresh water source in the area, so he provided money to the City of Portland to commission and install 50 of the four headed bubblers in downtown Portland. Alchohol consumption reportedly decreased by 25%. I think that the style of the bubbler is descriptive of what they do - water bubbles directly upward continuously - no on/off control, and drains through the plumbing. Similar to those vertical rock bubbling fountains you see in front of some expensive homes and commercial buildings where the water flows down the sides of the rock after bubbling up through a hole drilled from top to bottom. So perhaps this style is called a "bubbler," whereas another "fountain" style with an on/off or continuous stream of water flowing out to the side might be called a drinking fountain. As far as I know, both terms are used in Portland, and no one would tell you that it was wrong if you used either word. I've never been to Wisconsin or Rhode Island - but maybe they also have this bubbler style fountain from which the term was popularized?