Holy Wah

Hello, you have A Way with Words?

Yes, this is Bart Ingraham.

Hi, Bart, how you doing? Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Sutton’s Bay, Michigan, which is in Little Nile County, up in the northwestern corner of Michigan.

Okay, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

You’re in Copper Country?

No, no, no, not quite that far north.

That’s about another hundred miles, but that’s what my question has to pertain to.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Let’s hear it.

I was in a play that was written by Jeff Daniels, and the play is kind of a regional favorite called Escanaba in the Moonlight.

And one of the main characters uses the expression, holy wah.

And I thought it was a writer’s license and something that was kind of made up, until I was in at one of my neighbors’ house one day, and they had a visitor.

And I just stopped in briefly to ask a question, made my statement.

She said, holy wah.

And I said, what part of the UP are you from?

And so the question is, is what does holy wah mean?

So they use it in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

They do.

And how does she use it?

The character in the play, to paraphrase it, says, I was on my way to deer camp, and I was thinking about all of the things I had to bring, when all of a sudden, holy wow, right there in front of me, it’s a 30-point buck.

That’s pretty good.

A 30-point buck.

That’s solid, Bart.

A 30-point buck.

I’d make you my leading man if I ever write a play.

So I have no idea where it came from, but I’ve always been very curious.

This is what happens when people are surrounded by too much water.

They get their own way of speaking.

Yeah, that’s true.

It is.

It’s called the peninsula.

It is literally called the peninsula effect.

It happens in economics and other disciplines as well.

People tend to behave differently when they are geographically limited.

You know, when it’s not easy to go to the next county or state.

I always wondered what was wrong with us.

It explains Manhattan as well.

And actually, Chesapeake and a few other places.

-huh.

Holy wah. I have never heard holy wah associated with any place else but the Upper Peninsula.

There’s all other kinds of ways to express astonishment or excitement or amazement, right?

Yeah.

This one, I think it’s got a fairly prosaic origin.

We think it’s probably just a corruption of wow, holy wow.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Or maybe what just happened.

Do you ever hear wow sounding like wah, just wow on its own?

No, but given the accents and the proclivity to speak differently in the Upper Peninsula, I could understand where it came from.

Yeah, there’s a tremendous Finnish population up there, right?

That’s correct.

Yeah, so that would be my only other guess, but I don’t know of any direct connection.

So you’re not from there. You’ve just encountered people from there, from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

That’s correct. That sometimes happens to us when we live in the lower part of the peninsula, the other peninsula, if you will.

I see.

So you’re not a troll.

No, I would be a troll because I live under the bridge.

Gotcha. There we go.

But not the bridge between the two parts? Okay.

Right.

So we don’t have much on Holy Wall.

We know that you use it, but that’s it.

We don’t know the origin.

It’s been around for at least 30 years, probably older than that.

And I think they’re really proud of that as they are of other aspects of their dialect.

I mean, it’s almost a kind of marketing tool.

You know, you see it on T-shirts and mugs.

Oh, you betcha.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Because it’s such a mecca for tourists.

All I know is that when you get around the right people, you can tell where they’re from.

It’s true. It’s true.

Bart, you’ve been a lot of fun. Thanks for giving us a call, all right?

Well, thank you so much for having it.

Take care. Bye-bye.

You betcha. Bye-bye.

Hey, Youpers, we want to hear from you.

If you know something about Holy Wa, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.